ITT: we discuss ways a crazy mass-murderer person might go about killing lots and lots of people. For informational purposes of course.

I've always wondered why terrorists would bother to fuck around with bombs and machine guns and airplanes, when they could kill just as many people with a super-soaker full of water.

The bacteria that causes botulism, Clostridium botulinum, is very deadly, something like a 10%-20% mortality rate, which is pretty high among bacteria and viruses. It can also live for a long time out of the body. It's also relatively common, and wouldn't be too hard to find a sample of.

Once a sample had been gotten, and a few microbiology textbooks had been read, it wouldn't be hard to culture a lot of it, maybe ten litres/2 gallons if you had the time.

Then the person, or persons might get some super-soakers, or garden sprayers, or maybe even an electric pump sprayer, and go to the top of an apartment building during a large parade or gathering, and spray the botulism liquid off the building into the crowd. It's pretty likely that breathing in the mist would cause an infection.

Botulism has an incubation period of 12-40 hours, which means you can happily spray away for a whole day before anybody even notices they are sick. You could even go spraying the next day, as the sickest individuals would probably not bother going to a hospital until the second evening.

The thanksgiving day parade normally has around a million spectators. The new york city marathon has 40 000 competitors and several hundred spectators. Then, of course you have the Hajj pilgrimage to mecca, with 3.5 million Muslims in close proximity. The ideal way to target that event would be with a water bomber firefighting aircraft, a considerably more difficult thing to accomplish. I'm sure several other high value targets could be found easily. It's a pretty scary possibility if you ask me.

Aside from bacteria, there is always the old "park a heavily loaded truck on a railway crossing just before a passenger train gets there" idea, that's much simpler than backpacks loaded with bombs, and probably would have a larger yield of victims.

tl;dr: Most victims with least effort. My ideas were mass-poisoning with botulism and parking a truck in front of a train. Okay, now you go.

Don't be an asshole. Let them live.

Haha, you're kidding, right?

Pickup truck through a shopping mall would be a pretty excellent method.

Plant claymores in a street during a parade.

You're right.

Letting them live is crueler.

fav idea

I heard about this idea once, and would never, ever recommend it.

If you don't care who you're killing:

1) acquire several gallons of gasoline, several feet of heavy chain cut into manageable lengths, and several heavy padlocks.

2) find a large building that is likely to be heavily occupied at night, such as a hotel or a dormitory. Call ahead of time to see whether the building contains a sprinkler system (in the US, all buildings over 75 feet or four stories are required to have them, but not all of them do). Just say that you're concerned about the proper safety measures before you or your loved ones stay there.

3) Once you have a building without a sprinkler system, set up the gasoline container(s) on the ground floor in a janitorial closet or mechanical room. Spread a little of the gasoline on the floor to get the fire going.

4) Chain and lock any double doors leading to the outside. If there are single doors, chain the panic bar (the bar you push down on to open it) to a nearby stair railing or other attached surface.

5) When it comes to detonation, you can leave a trail of gasoline to the "fire room" or throw a molotov or other improvised device into the room through a window (if applicable). Or, if you're mechanically inclined, rig up a timer that sets off a spark in a pool of gasoline.

6) The end result should be that the fire is lit, it spreads quickly, and the people are trapped inside, burning and suffocating to death while you videotape it and masturbate furiously.

If you want to adapt this to a political agenda, pick a building like a community center or school gym on a night when they are having a rally for your intended target (commies, Obama voters or what-have-you). You could even set up the event yourself; just distribute flyers saying that there will be free snacks, watermelon, etc.