Ted Kaczynski: Difference between revisions

|alias = The Unabomber<br>The Junkyard Bomber

|crimes = Domestic [[terrorism]]<br>[[Murder]]

|origin = Chicago, Illinois, United States

{{Quote|Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness|Ted Kaczynski}}'''Theodore John Kaczynski''' (born May 22, 1942), also known as '''the Unabomber''' , is an American domestic terrorist, anarchist author, and former mathematics professor. He was a mathematics prodigy, but he abandoned an academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in an attempt to start a revolution by conducting a nationwide bombing campaign targeting people involved with modern technology. In conjunction with this effort, he issued a social critique opposing industrialization while advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism.

In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana where he lived as a recluse. His original goal was to become self-sufficient so that he could live autonomously. He taught himself survival skills such as tracking game, edible plant identification, organic farming, bow drilling and other primitive technologies. He used an old bicycle to get to town, and a volunteer at the local library said he visited frequently to read classic works in their original languages. Other Lincoln residents said later that such a lifestyle was not unusual in the area.

He witnessed the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin and concluded that living in nature was untenable; he began his bombing campaign in 1978.  

In 1995, he sent a letter to ''The New York Times'' and promised to "desist from [[terrorism]]" if ''The Times'' or ''The Washington Post'' published his essay ''Industrial Society and Its Future'', in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require large-scale organization.

In all, 16 bombs were attributed to Kaczynski. While the [[improvised explosive device]]s he created varied widely through the years, all but the first few contained the initials "FC", which Kaczynski later said stood for "Freedom Club", inscribed on parts inside. He purposely left misleading clues in the devices and took extreme care in preparing them to avoid leaving fingerprints; latent fingerprints on some of the devices did not match those found on letters attributed to Kaczynski