Aum’s obsession with nuclear weapons and with the atomic destruction of Hiroshima in particular connected with interview work I had done in that city in the early 1960s on the psychological effects of the atomic bomb and on the psychology of the survivor. In subsequent work I had explored the dangers of “nuclearism,” the embrace and even deification of nuclear weaponry so that potential agents of mass destruction become a source of security, life-power, and even at times salvation. My work in the early 1970s with Vietnam veterans who told of destroying a village—indeed, much of a country—in order to save it had reverberations in Aum, where the ambition was considerably greater: destroying a world in order to save it. There were striking parallels in Aum to behavior I encountered in the 1970s and 1980s while studying the Nazis’ utilization not only of professional killers but also of killing professionals—in this case, doctors. In Aum, too, doctors were central to the cult’s reversal of healing and killing. They participated in individual murders and had an important role, together with other scientists, in producing and releasing deadly chemical and biological weapons.
