Jones had wondered whether his followers would collectively obey an order for suicide, and now he knew. With that knowledge came certainty. In Jonestown or in Russia or wherever the uncertain future took him and his followers and hope was lost, there could be a grand gesture, one assuring Jim Jones’s deserved place in human memory and history books. It had always been a possibility, but after this White Night it was no longer a matter of if, but when. On Jones’s instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.
