Tectonic cult

 

Not exactly reassuring, to put it mildly. In 1993, a minor earthquake (complete with strange lights in the sky) rocked a remote area of the Australian outback. The official explanation has always been that it was a meteorite impact. There is just one problem: the epicenter of the quake was at a piece of land owned by Aum Shinrikyo. Yes, the Japanese doomsday cult, which two years later would attack the Tokyo subway, literally owned the property hit by the "meteorite". In an infinite universe, given infinite possibilities, this could, of course, happen purely by chance. Unless the cult had detonated a nuclear weapon...

In the YouTube clip above, American journalist Scott Carney speculates that this may just have been the case. Aum Shinrikyo did use its Australian property to produce sarin, the nerve gas used in the 1995 attacks in Japan. They also mined uranium! As for nuclear weapons triggering earthquakes, this is known as "tectonic weapons", and while they supposedly don´t exist, both superpowers tried to develop them during the Cold War. Or at least looked into the possibility.

If there ever was a cult willing - and perhaps even ready - to use a literal doomsday weapon, it was Aum Shinrikyo...