The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story (1994)

Panicky sort of doomsday fare that passes for popular information today. True tales of prospective [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] [b:The Stand|149267|The Stand|Stephen King|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1213131305s/149267.jpg|1742269]-like plagues. Journalistic writing tries to pass off as scientifically based but anecdotes are the main fare here and there is precious little science. The various plagues enumerated within: Anthrax, Ebola, West Nile, Bird Flu, etc. just have not shown an ability, in the 16 years since the book was written, to jump to a form that is going to become more epidemic for humans. In the process journalists like Mr. Preston red-herring us into taking our eyes off the real, largely preventable, Third World killers: good ol' Malaria, Cholera, HIV. The total fatal cases of all the diseases enumerated in The Hot Zone in 10 years only add up to a fraction of the Malaria deaths each year.

The danger in this kind of reportage is it takes our eye off the real problems of things like breast cancer, HIV, car crashes, gun violence, substance abuse, diabetes, and other various things that need work to prevent the far more numerous fatalities. ( )

Well researched, terrifyingly true facts about the origin of the Ebola virus. ( )

In 1989 I worked for a medical lab in BalTimOre in the electrical engineering department. I've written about some aspects of this in a RATicle called "Chemical & Biological Warfare Research at what was formerly known as Maryland Medical" in the 4th issue of a magazine called "Street Rat Bag". In this environment I had exposure to info that made me realize more vividly than I had already how vulnerable society-at-large is to possible lab disasters.

"The Hot Zone" addresses a situation that came close - the possibility of an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus caused by moving infected monkeys from Africa to a facility in Reston, Virginia. What even the authors of this bk don't know is that that particular facility is rumored to have been casually burglarized around that time by someone out of curiousity w/o ever getting caught. The eco-disaster was even closer to happening than they realized. This is a sensational(ist) bk but it's also an even more dire threat than many people realize. & these threats are in an urban environment nearer YOU than you may realize. ( )

It started off promising, but the last 60% (hah!) of the book petered off and was kind of disappointing. No useful conclusions were drawn in the end.

So the first section of the book has a lot of really horrible descriptions of what it's like to come down with and die of Ebola. Somebody described the descriptions as King-like, which I think is apt. Stephen King's visceral descriptions are why I don't read him, because I get physically nauseous. You could think this is a good thing, and that's fair. I just don't enjoy literally fighting the need to throw up.

Anyway, Preston covers a lot of outbreaks in a relatively short amount of time, compared to how much time he spends on the ultimate anticlimax of Reston. And then his journey to Kitum Cave, where he didn't learn anything either.

Preston was also obviously way more fond of USAMRIID than the CDC, and the bias showed. ( )

"The Hot Zone" was written years before the ebola cases in the US in 2015, but a lot of people were thinking about an outbreak. This book weaves a collection of personal journeys that come together at the Reston [ebola] virus discovery. I believe the US government took some of the advice of the Army scientists and some advice of the CDC during the 2015 or things would have been A LOT worse. Read the book and think it over. ( )