This is despite the fact that it illustrates the chilling lengths powerful actors can and will go to for an advantage. It is frequently used as an example of the dangers if terrorists with apocalyptic motivations are well-funded and scientifically-literate. The story of Aum Shinrikyo is well known and discussed among scholars who study global catastrophe and human extinction.

In exchange for avoiding prosecution for war crimes, they handed over data from human experimentation and bioweapons research to the US (although not its allies). Unit 731 engaged in some of the worst atrocities imaginable, including the live vivisection of prisoners.Īfter WW2 came to an end and Japan surrendered, the scientists of Unit 731 were granted immunity by the US. New deployment methods were trialed, including the dropping of plague-infected fleas onto Chinese cities. The programme experimented with weaponising a host of biological agents, from botulism and bubonic plague to syphilis and smallpox. Over more than a decade, Unit 731 was responsible for perhaps 300,000 or more deaths. The corpses are purported to have been the grisly result of the actions of Unit 731: Japan’s infamous World War Two biological weapons programme. Shinjuku is home to numerous sites where the Japanese government allegedly buried the bodies of the victims of wartime experiments. One of the metro lines attacked on that day (the Marunouchi Line) leads to Shinjuku Station.

Afterwards, 13 of the perpetrators were tried and executed. They were the victims of a Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway committed during rush hour by the apocalyptic terrorist group known as Aleph (at the time called Aum Shinrikyo). In 1995, a doomsday cult in Japan killed 13 people and injured more than 6,000 others.

Could a modern tank destroy a castle