Word: aum
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...serious are any of these threats? Almost anyone with undergraduate training in biology can raise colonies of dangerous microbes. Delivering them is much harder, as the technologically savvy extremist Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo learned in the early 1990s when it tried to spread botulism in the streets of Tokyo before finally settling on sarin gas. Moreover, germ weapons have a tendency to boomerang, as gas attacks often did during World War I when winds suddenly shifted. Highly infectious agents also are difficult to handle, a risk underscored by at least one major anthrax accident in the Soviet biowarfare program that...
...that regard, the experience of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult is instructive. The group, which carried out an infamous nerve-gas attack in the Tokyo subways in 1995, had tried to work up an anthrax weapon. Aum had plenty of cash, recruited scientists into its ranks and cultivated biological-warfare experts in the former Soviet Union. But in the end, it never could pull off a successful assault using anthrax...
...manufacturing sufficient quantities of any bacteria in a stable form is a technical and scientific challenge; plague bugs, for example, degrade within hours when exposed to the sun, and anthrax spores tend to clump together in humid conditions. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo sprayed anthrax and botulism eight times over parts of Tokyo without effect...
Indeed, the most devastating nonmilitary chemical attack ever, by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo in 1995, killed only a dozen people. One reason is that the delivery method was crude: cultists dropped plastic bags of sarin (smuggled in lunch boxes and soft-drink containers) on a subway platform and pierced them with umbrella tips. Also the amounts were relatively small. Says Smithson: "Any bozo can make a chemical agent in a beaker, but producing tons and tons is difficult." Aum Shinrikyo tried to make the stuff in bulk, recruiting scientists and spending at least $10 million, but it failed...
...Indeed, the most devastating nonmilitary chemical attack ever, by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo in 1995, killed only a dozen people. One reason is that the delivery method was crude: cultists dropped plastic bags of sarin (smuggled in lunch boxes and soft-drink containers) on a subway platform and pierced them with umbrella tips. Also the amounts were relatively small. Says Smithson: "Any bozo can make a chemical agent in a beaker, but producing tons and tons is difficult." Aum Shinrikyo tried to make the stuff in bulk, recruiting scientists and spending at least $10 million, but it failed...