1995: Religious cultists release the toxic nerve gas sarin at multiple locations in the Tokyo subway. A dozen people will die, and thousands suffer injuries ranging from mild to severe.
Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese cult combining bits of Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism and end-of-days Christianity. The name combined the Buddhist mantra om with the Japanese for "supreme truth."
With a worldwide membership of 20,000 to 40,000, Aum had a net worth in 1995 of about $1.5 billion. It made money through standard religious techniques like donations, tithing and paraphernalia sales. It also employed the New Age technique of high-priced indoctrination seminars. In addition, it ran some businesses, including a restaurant chain and a computer factory that assembled Taiwanese electronic components into computers it sold at its own downtown Tokyo store.
The cult also built a facility to manufacture biological and chemical weapons by the ton. Aum experimented with botulin toxin, anthrax, cholera, Q fever and the Ebola virus. Operatives tried to release botulin near the Diet in 1990, and near the imperial palace in 1993. An anthrax release from its Tokyo office building in 1993 caused foul smells, brown steam, pet deaths and stains on cars and sidewalks. None of these attacks is known to have caused death or injury.
Things changed on June 27, 1994. Cult members drove a truck to a residential neighborhood in Matsumoto, about 200 miles northwest of Tokyo, then used a computer system to remotely release a cloud of sarin. Their primary targets were three judges who lived there and were about to rule against the cult in a big real estate case.
Sarin was first created in Nazi Germany. The volatile nerve agent is 500 times more toxic than cyanide: A single pinhead-size drop can kill an adult. The Matsumoto sarin attack killed seven people and injured 500, of whom 200 were admitted to hospitals at least overnight.
Despite all that, Aum Shinrikyo managed to pull off its most audacious — and deadly — attack just nine months later. In the Monday morning rush hour of March 20, five cult members boarded different subway trains converging on central Tokyo.
Four of them each carried two plastic bags loaded with sarin, and the fifth had three bags. At nearly the same moment, they each dropped the bags to the floor of the jam-packed train and punctured them with a specially sharpened umbrella tip. The cultists then quickly stepped off the trains as they pulled into the next station. Getaway drivers were waiting outside the station for each of them.
The liquid began vaporizing, and people began getting sick. Some of them got off the trains at subsequent stations, stumbling onto the platforms. At each stop, more gas spread, and more liquid was tracked off the trains and into the stations. The deadly sarin vapor also clung to the clothes and bodies of its victims, sickening those who rushed to their aid.
Some of the trains continued traveling — one for an hour and 40 minutes — before finally stopping to deal with the emergency ... and stop spreading it. Emergency and hospital services later got heavily criticized for the uncoordinated response.
Symptoms included bleeding from the nose and mouth, coma, convulsions, difficulty breathing, extreme sensitivity to light, flulike symptoms, foaming at the mouth, fevers, loss of consciousness, loss of memory, loss of vision, nausea, vomiting, paralysis, respiratory problems, seizures and uncontrollable trembling. Some survivors suffered these problems permanently, along with disturbed sleep, nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many victims with initially mild symptoms went to work before sickening later and going to the hospital. Others probably never sought medical care. Estimates of the injured range from 3,800 up to 6,000. The sarin killed 12 people.
Police began raiding cult buildings and property all over Japan within 48 hours, wearing hazmat equipment that had been issued to them for this purpose ... the week before the Tokyo attack. The cult had in fact gotten wind of an impending crackdown and unleashed its subway attack to kill police officers.
The Japanese government revoked Aum Shinrikyo's status a religion and seized as many of the cult's assets as it could find. Some members later reorganized on a much smaller scale as Aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a key symbol in mathematical set theory).
About 200 people were arrested. About 20 are either still in Japan's lengthy trial process standing trial or have already been convicted. At least eight Aum members, including the founder, have received death sentences for their roles in the attack.
Source: Emerging Infectious Diseases, Japan 101
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