Japan terrorist attacks with

In Japan, a number of years ago, a terrorist attack with sarin killed a dozen individuals confined to a subway car out of roughly a thousand people in the nearby vicinity. Sarin has little effect on the skin, due to rapid evaporation. It is true that the Iraqis killed many Kurds with nerve gas, but the victims were unprepared, had no training, no detection devices, no masks or other protection, no antidote and no practical way to avoid the gas. None of these vulnerabilities would be the case in a conflict with American troops. 

Morita et /. (1995) Mild or low-grade fever reported in a number of subjects lasting up to ] month following terrorist attack with sarin nerve gas in Matsumoio, Japan... 

The only reported incidents of nerve agent poisoning, where biomedical samples have been obtained, are those resulting from terrorist dissemination of sarin in Matsumoto (1994) and the Tokyo subway (1995), plus an assassination using VX, also in Japan (60). In contrast to the CW incidents involving sulfur mustard, many of the biomedical samples associated with these terrorist attacks were collected within hours of the event. 

Nevertheless, the Tokyo incident certainly changed the way the world viewed terrorism—the prospect of true mass casualty events was brought home to many for the first time. Japan found itself ill-equipped to deal with a large-scale terrorist attack using chemical agents. Furthermore, some analysts concluded the Tokyo attack removed the taboo against the use of WMD by terrorists. 

Following the toxic attack in Japan in 1995, many countries around the world considered planning options in case further terrorist attacks should take place. In France, detailed planning (Plan Piratox) had been put in place in 1987 as a special modification of the red plan to deal with chemical releases (see Figure 7). 

The challenge of security is at the forefront of everyone s attention today as it has been every day in the United States since the horrific event of September 11,2001. That terrible tragedy as well as the 2004 terrorist attacks in Beslan in Russia [3], the bombing of trains in Madrid [4] on March 11, 2004 and many other terrorist attacks in Japan, Indonesia, the Middle east, other parts of Europe and elsewhere have all driven home the fact that we are not adequately prepared to deal with new threats. But better preparation may surest a different kind of thinking or approach, not the traditional thinking from the past. This may be especially true for the profession of engineering. 

In the civil setting, the deliberate release of chemicals has also occurred. The series of deliberate chemical releases in Japan in the 1990s, most notably the sarin attacks in Matsumoto in 1994 and on the Tokyo subway network in 1995, showed that even relatively small terrorist groups have the capabiUly to produce and deploy chemical weapons. In addition, the targeting of a road chlorine tanker in Iraq in 2006 by terrorists has emphasised that improvised explosive devices may be used by terrorists to disseminate toxic agents explosively and thus create casualties with both physical and toxic traimia. 

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