The cult at the end of the world

At the height of morning rush hour on March 20th, 1995, the deadly nerve gas sarin poured into the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and injuring 6,000 more. This horrifying attack on the public was carried out by the Aum Supreme Truth cult, a high-tech billion-dollar empire of New Age zealots led by Shoko Asahara, a charismatic charlatan. The story of Aum reads like science fiction or horror, but it is shockingly true.

The cult recruited some of Japan's brightest students and scientists, indoctrinated them with a paranoid combination of Eastern beliefs and the Judeo-Christian idea of Armageddon, and manipulated them with designer drugs and mind control. Asahara sent cult members to Russia in the confusion following the fall of the Soviet Union in order to gain new converts among the Russian scientific community and to acquire nuclear weapons for the cult. Others were dispatched to Zaire to collect the deadly Ebola virus from the heart of the hot zone.

All these activities had one purpose: to realize Asahara's vision of the end of the world. Asahara and many of his followers are now in jail, the cult disbanded, but questions remain: Could Asahara have brought the world to an end, and could another Aum succeed where he failed? In this penetrating expose, David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall reveal the frightening truth about just how close Aum - and the world - came to the brink of the Apocalypse.