Cult goes Atomic

What do a runaway cult and an atomic bomb have in common? Perhaps more than one might think at first glance.

One of the most creative cults in recent decades, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, famous for numerous murders and suicides and of course their "five minutes of fame", the Sarin nerve agent attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995 that claimed at least 12 lives and injured over 6,000.

Their theology consisted of a toxic mix consisting of Christian Revelation, dubious early Buddhist interpretations, the inevitable Shiva and a few passages from Nostradamus, all combined with the charisma of the leader and the expectation of the end of the world around the end of the Millennium.

However, the most shocking thing is the realization that they also experimented with a nuclear option.

The mysterious seismic event when seismometers registered a tremor as a result of an explosion in the Australian outback at the Banjawarn location on May 28, 1993, which would be the equivalent of a 2 kT detonation, together with the testimonies of Aborigines and farmers about a large explosion - suggests the possibility that the sect's scientific team created some kind of device that would place them in the nuclear club as the only non-governmental organization with nuclear potential in the world. Or that they brought a ready-made bomb from somewhere. Witnesses confirmed that the sect acquired protective suits, machinery, laboratory equipment, mechanical diggers, chemicals and mysterious boxes with unknown contents declared as `hydrochloric acid`...

t has been confirmed that the sect, which had a huge fan base in Russia at the time, was trying to acquire tactical nuclear weapons from the arsenal of the zombified Russian state. Whether they actually acquired and test-detonated such a weapon is difficult to say, but there are serious indications that point to such a conclusion.

The authorities did not react to the event because the sect did not yet have the reputation that it would gain with the attack in Tokyo, and the sect sold the 200,000-hectare ranch before it was ``celebrated`` with nerve gas. It was later discovered that, among other escapist activities, the sect members mined uranium ore on the ranch...One would think that such a creative cult would quickly disappear from the scene after the Japanese authorities' showdown with it and the death sentence of its leader Shoko Asahara - and they would be exposed.

The sect members are still as hardworking as ants and have rebranded themselves under the new name "Aleph", so they probably continue to dream of a new end of the world triggered by their atomic bomb, which would be the third to be detonated on Japanese soil.

(By Roger Mortis, 042)