.......an interesting discussion of the Aum Shinrikyo "doomsday" cult in Japan. Here was an organization that had an extraordinary amount of money at its disposal, several well-equipped labs and as many as 100 highly-trained scientists, working full-time, dedicated exclusively to the task of figuring out how to inflict mass casualties upon the Japanese population, in an attempt to provoke an apocalyptic war.
Nevertheless, over the course of 17 different attacks, using a range of biological and chemical weapons, they never managed to kill more than a few dozen people. The most "successful" was the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 people and severely injured another 42.
Many people found this attack terrifying, yet for Gardner, it was also strangely reassuring. After all, it would be difficult to imagine circumstances more propitious for the success of a terrorist plot: "A fanatical cult with a burning desire to inflict mass slaughter has heaps of money, international connections, excellent equipment and laboratories, scientists trained at top-flight universities, and years of near-total freedom to pursue its operations." Yet they came nowhere near accomplishing their ends.
All of this goes to show that even terrorists who get their hands on biological or chemical weapons (or nuclear material, for that matter), are still a long way away from being able to hurt large numbers of people. Yet in August of 2006, 44 per cent of Americans told Gallup that they were "very" or "somewhat" worried that they, or someone in their family, would be a victim of a terrorist attack. This is a phenomenal overestimation of the actual risk.....
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