Second Edition

On the 26th of March 1995, sarin gas was released in a Tokyo subway station crammed with morning rush hour commuters and all hell broke loose. In the aftermath of anguish, death, painful injuries and broken lives, the deadly action was traced back to a cult called Aum Shinrikyo. What lay behind this ferocious lashing the cult had given to the orderly, uncluttered society Japan was so proud of? What dark sinister secrets lay behind the walls of the Aum Shinrikyo compound in Kamikuishiki at the peaceful foothills of Mount Fuji? Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a Yokohama lawyer took up the challenge of finding answers to these questions and one cold, gray November morning in 1995, the young attorney, his wife and ten month old son disappeared without a trace. This is the chilling story of how a young lawyer sacrificed his life and that of his poignantly young family to stem the reign of terror of the cult's guru, Shoko Asahara. The investigation into the cult that followed uncovered a chilling trail of murders, disappearances and evil plans to destroy mankind with nerve gas and other weapons of mass destruction. For six long years, Tsutsumi Sakamoto called out from his lonely hillside grave and on September the 6th, 1995 he was heard at last. His body was discovered and the crab shells strewn all around told a chilling tale of how his killers had coldly feasted on crabs as they threw his body into that lonely unmarked grave he did not deserve. Sakamoto and his family had died to right a social wrong and to expose the evil plans of deadly terrorists crouching dangerously behind the cloak of religion, the rest was up to the living.

Takes a chronological approach to provide a history of modern rebel or non-state terror. In addition to articles in academic journals the collection includes discussions, statements and government documents.

This volume encompasses an array of material exploring the millennium phenomenon and the violent excitement it provokes. Consisting of three core parts, the book combines pertinent documents with insightful commentary and discussion.

In this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons, chronicles the lethal history of chemical warfare from World War I to the present. At the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of synthetic chemistry made the large-scale use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield both feasible and cheap. Tucker explores the long debate over the military utility and morality of chemical warfare, from the first chlorine gas attack at Ypres in 1915 to Hitler’s reluctance to use nerve agents (he believed, incorrectly, that the U.S. could retaliate in kind) to Saddam Hussein’s gassing of his own people, and concludes with the emergent threat of chemical terrorism. Moving beyond history to the twenty-first century, War of Nerves makes clear that we are at a crossroads that could lead either to the further spread of these weapons or to their ultimate abolition.