Remembering the Tokyo Subway Attacks
By Aaron Mannes
A few years ago I wrote a short post about it on my old blog, which I re-post below. (The old blog is now defunct, but I am slowly posting it into The TerrorWonk.) At the time, this was seen as the future of terrorism. In retrospect, there are enormous barries to terrorist groups producing and delivering WMD in major quantities. In a chapter of the Stimson Institute's October 2000 publication Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the US Response, Amy Smithson shows how little Aum accomplished relative to its massive investment in chemical and biological weapons. The sarin attacks killed 12 on crowded Tokyo subways. Supposedly 5500 were injured by the sarin attacks, but the vast majority experienced minor symptoms and or were merely scared - there were 54 serious injuries. While these injuries and deaths were tragic, conventional attacks on subways have wreaked much more terrible damage. Suicide bombers on London's subway in July 2005 killed 52, bombs planted on the Mumbai trains killed 209 in 2006, and the Madrid train bombings killed 191 people.
Relative to the investment (and Aum Shinrikyo had far more resources and expertise than most terrorist groups are likely to acquire - including a number of qualified scientists) WMD production does not pay off.
Read the complete post here.
