“The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston is a famous nonfiction thriller detailing the vivid history of the Ebola virus and the terrifying consequences of its infections. Using a rich vocabulary to add as much imagery as possible, the novel immerses you in Ebola’s history and keeps you glued to the edge of your seat with suspenseful chapters that fill you with dreadful expectation. The novel is mostly well executed in it’s aim at keeping the reader engaged while still remaining true to science though it achieves most of its power by using what seems to be cheap scare tactics and over dramatization. To a reader without a scientific background “The Hot Zone” will be an exhilarating ride, but to others, it may be a slightly overwritten drama that tries
In his book The Hot Zone, Richard Preston accounts the journey of the hemorrhagic fevers from their first modern appearances in 1967 to 1993. Preston follows twelve characters along their journey working with or against Ebola. “Charles Monet” was a Frenchman who explored Kitum Cave on New Years eve 1980 and violently dies of Marburg 2 days later. He is the first case since the original outbreak in Germany in 1967, which was believed to be caused by the shipment of monkeys from West Africa. LTC Nancy Jaax was an Army veterinary pathologist who begins working with the Ebola virus in 1983, and then becomes chief of Pathology at USAMRIID in 1989, as such she is heavily involved in the Reston monkey house disaster. COL Jerry Jaax, husband to Nancy was chief of the veterinary division as USAMRIID. He also lead the SWAT team that took over the Reston monkey house. “Peter Cardinal” was a Danish boy who died of Marburg in 1987 after visiting Kitum Cave. Eugene Johnson was a civilian virus hunter, specializing in Ebola. In 1988 he lead an Army expedition to Kitum Cave following the death of “Peter Cardinal”. Dan Dalgard was lead veterinarian at the
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is an exploration of the discovery and evolution of the three filovirus “sisters”: Marburg, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Zaire. The book begins by introducing Charles Monet, a factory-maintenance worker in Western Kenya. He decides to go on an expedition up Mount Elgon with a woman in search of animals and birds to watch. They come across Kitmur cave, explore it, and trek back down the mountain. A few days later, Monet begins to feel sick, so he goes to the hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong, and send him on an airplane to the much larger Nairobi hospital. This is important, because it brings the (then unidentified) Marburg virus aboard the commercial air system, exposing possible thousands of
The novel, The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston is a nonfiction book based on Ebola. The author uses many ways to keep the readers to make the novel suspenseful. Preston stares the stories from the first people known to have the virus to go more into detail. He utilizes literary techniques such as imagery, foreshadowing, and personification.
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a non-fiction story about the deadly virus (Ebola) spreading throughout the world. Certain strains of this virus are 90% fatal, and cause horrible symptoms, such as facial drooping, muscle aches, reddened eyes, and puking. The Ebola virus was traced back to a man named Charles Monet. After Monet, the virus spread rapidly, and it was leaving no survivors.
Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone, was based on a true story about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, mainly the Ebola and Marburg viruses. It primarily focuses on the Ebola virus’ first documented outbreak during the 1980s. As you read The Hot Zone, you will notice that it has been divided into four individual segments. The first segment looks into the history of filoviruses, and how AIDS emerged. The novel begins with Charles Monet, an elderly man who travels to Kitum Cave in Kenya. After coming in contact with an odd liquid substance, he begins to experience symptoms of the Marburg Virus (abbreviated as “MARV”), which includes; headaches, backaches, internal organs failing, and excessive bleeding. Monet travels to the Nairobi Hospital and ends up infecting the young Doctor that treated him. Years after Monet’s passing, a young pathologist named Nancy Jaax is introduced. Her story was told in her point of view as she describes the Introduction to Viruses, Biosafety Levels, and
Published in 1992, “The Hot Zone”, written by Richard Preston, describes the Ebola outbreak during the 1980’s in Reston, Virginia. The novel effectively describes the African outbreaks and the research behind them as well as the quarantine of the monkey facility in Virginia. The book begins by introducing Charles Monet, who was the first person infected in the African outbreak. Charles and his girlfriend traveled to Mount Elgon, located in West Kenya.
The Hot Zone, written by Richard Preston is the true and dramatic story of the outbreaks of the frightening, unknown and incurable filoviruses; Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Reston. This book covers the first documented outbreak of the virus and continues to cover more outbreaks over the course of 23 years. These sisters viruses are highly infective and destroyed entire communities throughout Africa with the deaths of 50- 90% of their victims. The effects are similar and horrifying with the viruses penetrating every tissue and organ in the body of a person, primate or other animal. This book takes place in the late 1980s and is based on an outbreak of Ebola in a monkey house in the quaint town of Reston, Virginia. Richard Preston incorporates tales of several outbreaks that occurred in Africa years before to describe the potential destruction that the filoviruses could
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston can be summed up in just a few words; intriguing and captivating, yet extremely alarming and fairly terrifying. This story chronicles the various different cases of the Ebola virus throughout the world and its excursion from the rainforests of central Africa to our very own Washington D.C. The virus’s proliferation not only caused extreme terror, but it led to the recruitment of a SWAT team consisting of military personnel, researchers, and scientists set out to control the epidemic.
In The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, Preston writes about his research as he finds the origin of the Ebola Virus while also finding facts surrounding other viral outbreaks. In the beginning of the book, Preston writes about Charles Monet who died because he was exposed to the Marburg Virus. The Marburg virus and the death of Charles Monet was described in such a specific, gruesome way, which shows us how terrifying this virus actually was and what kind of damage it can do to our bodies. The first few chapters of the book mainly describes several different outbreaks that have happened four years before Charles Monet’s death. The first virus was the Ebola Virus is Sudan, which infected a local shopkeeper who unfortunately spread
The Hot Zone describes the true events in the 1980s surrounding an outburst of the Ebola virus at a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia. The author also gives a background of many other biological outbreaks, mainly in Africa in the 1970s to the 1980s. The book starts off in Kenya with a French colonist name Charles Monet planning to go on a trip up Mt Elgon. Monet starts up the mountain and finds a cave called Kitum Cave. He enters the cave and explores and later the reader figures out that the bats in the cave have been exposed to this unknown virus. Monet is taken to a hospital there called Nairobi Hospital were a doctor named Dr. Musoke operates on him and becomes infected from Monet’s blood. Next, Preston tells about the outbreak of the
In this thrilling novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston tells the story of a virus so notorious for its mysterious attacks that it is deemed a Bio-safety Level 4 virus. Richard Preston acquired his inspiration and insight first from his curiosity in his visit to Africa to study epidemiology and second from certain contacts, Dr. C.J. Peters and Nancy Jaax, whom have helped to further Preston’s knowledge of Bio-safety Level 4 agents. Preston incorporates historical facts, interview encounters, and scientific evidence in this nonfiction story of a virus known as Ebola infecting many people and displaying grotesque symptoms such as vomiting blood and pale blue skin. I recommend this book to young readers, epidemiologists, and those interested
McCormick is the Chief of the Special Pathogens Branch of the CDC. He tried to treat victims of Ebola in a village when he stuck himself with a dirty needle. Thinking that he was probably infected, he stayed in a hut full of dying people to try to care for them. When he didn't end up dying, he concluded that Ebola was not as easy to contract as everyone had thought. He came into conflict with C.J. Peters during the Reston situation.
The Hot Zone is all about the events that surrounded the outbreak of Ebola that occurred in the 1980s. The story begins when some personnel affiliated with a laboratory facility that conducts tests on monkeys mishandle the virus, in the process causing risk to the general population. In the process of containing the disease, Preston indulges in past similar knowledges in the wake of significant health risk. He (Preston) has adopted the tone of viral panic, vulnerability and regret to express the unimaginable suffering of victims that were directly and indirectly affected by Ebola.
The book “The Hot Zone” and the movie “Contagion” are both about pandemics, with one a possible pandemic and the other global. They are different because of how the media reacts to the prospect of a pandemic, as well as how they contain or treat the potential outbreak. Both works showed how panic can impact and contribute to the spread of the virus.
Ebola is caused by an infection with a virus. There are five identified Ebola virus species, four of which are known to cause disease in humans: Ebola virus, Sudan virus, Taï Forest virus, and Bundibugyo virus.The fifth, Reston virus, has caused disease in nonhuman primates, but not in humans. Ebola is a disease that spread extremely fast in Guinea and all over Africa it is killing off many Africans. The first case of Ebola was in December 2013 in Guinea. People deserted hospitals and went home, fueling the rapid spread of the virus. Lagos, a city with a population of 22 million people, experienced eight Ebola deaths. A village of about 1,000 people in Sierra Leone has been placed under quarantine following the death of 67-year-old woman from