Om Shinrico, a Japanese doomsday cult led by a psychotic madman, Shoko Asahara, a man

who's been nicknamed the Japanese Charles Manson.

But a much more dangerous cult leader than Manson ever was actually.

He pulled tens of thousands into his dark insanity, not just a handful.

He had thousands of followers willing to help him violently bring about the end times.

This doomsday cult's name means supreme truth, but Asahara preached nothing but lies.

Om started in the 1980s as a small spiritual group based on tenets of Buddhism.

And then he soon incorporated elements of Hinduism, Nostradamus doomsday prophecies, Christian

apocalyptic prophecies, and more all woven into a message focused largely on bringing about

armageddon.

Asahara claimed to be both Christ and the first enlightened once since Buddha to walk the

earth.

He claimed his purpose was to help rid the earth of its most wicked people, so Shiva could

then bring forth a utopian society, the fabled Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala, or something

like that.

Like a lot of cult leaders' overall message and theological focus is hard to explain,

because he kept changing and it never made a lot of sense.

Despite a crazy, syncretic message that meshed together teachings from multiple religions

with his own made up gibberish, Asahara gained a global following, spoke universities, and

wrote numerous books.

At the peak of the cult's power, Om had close to 50,000 members worldwide.

But the last five or six years of his cult leadership, Asahara predicted and preached

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