Postmodern terrorism

Foreign Affairs

Volumn 75, Issue 5, 1996, Pages 24-32

  Laqueur, Walter ^a  

^a NONE

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Indexed keywords

EID: 0002408995     PISSN: 00157120     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20047741     Document Type: Article

References (2)

1. Science fiction writers produced chemical weapons even earlier. In Jules Verne's The Begum's Fortune, a (German) scientist aims to wipe out the 250,000 inhabitants of (French) Franceville with one grenade of what he calls carbon acid gas, shot from a supergun.
2. According to Nostradamus, a "great King of terror" will come from heaven in July 1999. Millenarians face a problem when it comes to fixing the date; the Gospel of St. Matthew says that "no one knows the day and the hour, not even the angels in heaven." As the year 1000 approached, educated people were fully aware that the Christian calendar was inexact and could not be corrected - hence the assumption that the world could end almost anytime between 960 and 1040. For a comparative review of apocalyptic influences at the end of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, see Walter Laqueur, "Fin de Siècle -Once More with Feeling," Journal of Contemporary History, January 1996, pp. 5-47.