Incidents like what? Helping demonstrate to the world why chemical/biological weapons in criminal/irregular/"terrorist" hands are not a meaningful threat?

~J

Yes. They did this with a quantity of (quite potent, hard-to-produce) toxin that should have killed thousands. They had 11 litres between them, IIRC, and released it in perfect conditions—widely distributed, and insanely high human density. In many cases, there was a significant length of exposure. Twelve people died. A lot of people got "sick", but only about fifty had anything more serious than minor vision issues.

Compare to a single backpack explosive. Easier, cheaper, and a fuckton more effective.

~J

Don't you ever get sick of arguing with people? You really aren't helping.

On topic: I like the idea of an evil free spirit claiming to be the ghost of the executed leader, but I'm pretty sure Gaf is a horror. Maybe Shoko Asahara was raised by a master shedim, thus gaining his memories and experiences, and he's posing as Dr. Nickson. Perhaps Gaf is group of free spirits, all those Aum Shinrikyo members executed by the Japanese government.
If you want to make a tie between the two it wouldn't be difficult.

I have come to be unhappy with seeing that accusation flung about.

People are going to have disagreements. Public message boards on the Internet are not the place to come to in order to avoid coming into contact with such disagreements.

Derogatorily labeling all disagreements as arguments is not helpful.

It seemed like he was being helpful to me.

---------------------------------------------

I understood Kagetenshi's statement perfectly.

It must be read in the correct context.

The ordinary man on the street would have found the 1995 nerve gas attack horrifying and "effective".

Military/security professionals, after the disaster cleared, would have breathed a collective sigh of relief that there were so few casualties given the quantity of toxin used in the attack. (The fact that the sarin was dropped to the ground, in packets that were punctured by sharpened umbrella tips, might have had something to do with the ineffectiveness of the attack. To be more effective, aerosol dispersion would have been necessary.)

Kagetenshi, undoubtedly, wasn't attempting to assert that sarin was useless or harmless, but that simple explosives, easier to manufacture and deploy than sarin, are more cost/effort effective from the viewpoint of a terrorist whose aim is to kill.

Yep. I'm pretty much thoroughly sick of arguing with people right now. I do it because sometimes it needs to be done.

Except about the rules. That part's purely personal enjoyment.

Ish. The thing about aerosol dispersion is they'd either have had to rig up complicated automated sprayers (and only hit the people in the initial distribution anyway) or carry it themselves (and pretty much guarantee exposure—this wasn't a suicide attack) and still only hit a few dozen extra people (people generally try to avoid getting sprayed with things, even if they aren't dangerous). They could have gotten a higher death toll, but nothing that a backpack with a bomb in it each couldn't have accomplished for a fraction of the cost and effort. The point isn't that chemical weapons won't kill people, it's that only real armies have the facilities to make chemical weapons kill people any better or more horribly than ordinary explosives. Sure it's a so-called "weapon of mass destruction", but pretty much only nuclear weapons will scale down to the level where a small organization can still use that mass destructiveness more effectively than a build-with-material-from-Home-Despot bomb.

So yeah. Basic take-home message: sarin in the hands of an army = bad news. Sarin in the hands of a "terrorist" organization = about the same as $200 in currency and a hardware/garden supply store available in the hands of a "terrorist" organization. Don't fear the chemicals.

This has been your friendly local soapbox for the past two days, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

~J

And AFAIK the Sarin attack was in fact meant to prevent a planned police raid on the cult's HQ (that Aum had somehow gotten wind of) by keeping the police busy elsewhere.

You obviously haven't read too many of Kagetenshi's posts then.

While I have been digging into various topics as far back as they go, I readily admit that I have looked at a little less than a hundred out of the many thousands since I started monitoring this board consistently a couple of weeks ago. Kagetenshi's posts in those topics were only a fraction of what I read, so yes, "obviously" I have not read a great many of this user's posts.

However, I have monitored and posted more extensively to other RPG message boards that, how to say it, on occasion are somewhat fractious.

I have seen the accusation in question before on those boards, and that is why I put my two cents in.

I've found Kagetenshi's posts here and elsewhere to be quite interesting. And in so far as he provides me with more information than I had before and things to think about, I'd say he is helping.

Dumpshock frequently has a sub-topic running through a thread. Given that we're a community of sorts, it's interesting to see how we all feel about things other than Recoil Modifiers, etc.

Don't you ever get tired of arguing with people?

He He, good one.

Don't you ever get tired of staying on topic?