"Aum" attacks U.S., not Tokyo

Picture this. Suppose, for whatever reason, the cult "Aum" of Japan gets a collective epiphany sometime before OTL's Tokyo subway attacks and decides that the United States is some kind of "great satan", blocking the way for the people of the world in their respective quests for enlightenment.

Now "Aum" up until this point was a Japanese cult. But the U.S. is certainly no stranger to weird cults. So lets say "Aum" heads stateside, and by about 2001, has set up enough shop to acquire comparable amounts of Sarin gas powder to approximate OTL's attacks.

Everything goes according to plan, and the Metrorail system on the U.S. east coast is attacked with the gas on an approximate level to that of what happened in Tokyo OTL. Perhaps slightly worse.

Now let's say (concidentally?) that the attacks take place about one or two days before, or after, the 9/11 terror attacks.

How does all this change the face of the war on terror? How about the American psyche immediately post 9/11?
 

HueyLong

Banned
There might be less identification of the entire War on Terror as being against radical Islam.

Wouldn't a West Coast attack be a little more likely though?
 
Wouldn't a West Coast attack be a little more likely though?

From the point of view of Aum, New York might be the best target. The subway system has relativly little security even today, and is fairly crowded. Terrorists go for shock and effect, and I can't think of any single west coast city which presents a comparable opprotunity from their point of view.

A problem with this, however, is that if the attacks are scheduled for around the same time, whichever one happens first derails the latter. If they both happen on 9/11, then the conspiracy nuts... well, go nuts.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Terrorism has bred strange allies (IRA with Gaddafi, Christian extremists with Arab extremists, etc....) so perhaps Aum and al-Qaeda coordinate the attacks together......

Which makes either plot more likely to come to light.
 
I'm going to agree with Atreus. If it happens so soon after 9/11 it will probably fail, but if it does work then you won't be able to scratch your ass without everyone thinking your triggering a bomb.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Well, we had the anthrax scares right after 9/11 and a few mail bombs, IIRC, and those weren't sent by al-Qaeda (domestic terrorism, from what they could tell).

So really, jumping on the 9/11 scare isn't too unlikely a thing.
 
Okay so a hundred tons of sarin are released into the DC metro system, lets say a few days before 9/11. How does this change the face of the "war on terror"?
 
If the attacks are linked together (the anthrax letters weren't) and since WMD were used, wouldn't that open the option to use nukes in Afganistan?
 
I dubt the Aums could have waited that long. Cults have thir inner dynamic and for whatever reason, Aum headed toward violence and violence at this particular time. The guru couldn't just say wait ten years. They could have the US in the same time frame though.
 
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