The Hot Zone By Richard Preston

1116 Words5 Pages

The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston is a nonfiction thriller focusing on Level Four hot virus, Ebola. The story is broken up into multiple “mini-passages” that depict the discovery of the extremely dangerous virus. The scientists mainly affiliated with Ebola were introduced and so were their efforts to educate themselves on its characteristics, prevention methods to avoid panic on national levels, and human catastrophe.

Charles Monet, a man with a French nationality residing in Africa, starts the book off as the first known case of Ebola. Monet decided to take a female guest on a trip with him to stave off his loneliness. He traveled to Kitum Cave, a cave on Mount Elgon. They stayed a couple of days on Mount Elgon, then returned to their normal …show more content…

Nancy worked in a Level 4 lab at USAMRIID. Nancy’s boss, Eugene Johnson, had been researching and searching for the origin of Ebola. During a routine dissection and experiment, both scientists had discovered that Ebola could be airborne. Not only could Ebola be spread through the air, but it could also be spread through the use of dirty needles. In 1976, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Zaire were both spread by dirty needles.

After the discovery of the spread of the two types of Ebola,, the story returns back to Kitum Cave, where it all started. Eugene “Gene” Johnson is sent blood sample from a young victim, a ten year old Danish boy, who had vacationed at Kitum Cave, like Charles Monet, and had perished. After testing the blood samples, Johnson concluded that the boy had contracted and died from marburg. He embarked on an expedition to try and source Ebola at Kitum Cave, but can not find any particles of Ebola in the cave …show more content…

I really enjoyed how the Dan Preston, made it into a flowing story by connecting different portions of the emergence, scientific analyzations, and control of Ebola by using the accounts of the scientist and personnel involved. I feel that the book was extremely descriptive(VERY detailed in the beginning) and enticing. It was not boring at all, and putting down the book was not an option for me. Overall, The Hot Zone was a very entertaining piece of literature that helped me educate myself on the “big and scary”, panic inducing virus called Ebola. Definitely a book I would

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