Where were you. Tokyo sarin gas attacks

Description

There are some global events of such impact that they stay with us forever. They are so important that we sit up and pay attention as they are happening: we sit glued to the television we pour over newspapers we frantically search out more information to understand. This series looks at some of the most shocking events of the 20th and early 21st Century analyzing how the news of their occurrence spread across the globe and what impact they had on the modern world. This episode focuses on the Sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. The Tokyo subway system transports millions of passengers daily and is one of the busiest commuter transport systems in the world. It's easy to see why a disaster, accident or even the unthinkable, a deliberate attack would be catastrophic. Tragically, the unthinkable did happen. The attack came at the peak of the Monday morning rush-hour. At about eight am on March 20, 1995, a group of five teens from the Japanese Supreme Truth Sect punctured packages of liquid sarin, a lethal nerve gas, in subway cars on multiple lines. Each dropped his package and pierced it several times with sharpened tip of his umbrella, knowing that a single drop of sarin, the size of a pinhead was all that was required to kill an adult.

Runtime

24 min

Series

Subjects

Contributor

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

2011

Database

Alexander Street

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