The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I like reading medical history books like And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic and The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria, so I pulled this book off the shelf. And could not. put. it. down. A true story that reads like a Michael Crichton thriller, I stayed up way past my bedtime because I was so heavily invested in the lives and well-being of some of the people in this book.

One of those books you can't stop talking about for weeks and keep telling other people to read.

The Ebola virus is one of the more frightening things you can imagine, an invisible pathogen that can jump between species and cause hemorrhagic fever with a fatality rate up to 90%, depending on the strain. Symptoms are initially similar to flu, with fever and aches and vomiting, and progress rapidly to internal and external bleeding; clots accumulate and stick to vessels, blood flows from every orifice including eyes, facial skin disconnects, intestinal membrane sloughs off, organs turn to mush as if in a decaying corpse, but the victim is alive and for some time aware.

The book is less about the Ebola virus itself, though a few incidents of its effects are described in extended detail, and more about a small set of people who study show more and track it, focusing on an outbreak in a monkey research facility in Reston VA, when the Army and the CDC were called to assist with containment. The style is thrilleresque, with terse sentences and step by step suspenseful action, as some very brave men and women don positive-pressure insulating space suits, pass through air locks into biohazard zones, dissect organs and tissue with extreme care to prevent cuts and punctures from tools, decontaminate in chemical showers, agonize when mistakes are made and exposure could mean death.

The period covered begins in 1980 and ends shortly before publication in 1994, so scientific specifics about virus strains are a bit outdated, but this is not central to the story. Recommended for its page-turner style and raising of awareness about what’s out (not far enough out) there. show less

Wow, what a fantastic book. Maybe because of recent events, maybe because of the writing style, but all things being equal this was one that I read in about 2 days. It was really that gripping.

Stephen King wrote one of the book blurbs on the back and he may have said it best: "The first chapter of "The Hot Zone" is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life . . . and then it gets worse." And really, he's not kidding. Richard Preston details the journey that Charles Monet makes from his home in Western Kenya where he was one of the managers of a sugar factory. A Frenchman by birth, he decided one Christmas week to explore Kitum Cave, an innocent enough adventure. Then he goes home, totally unknowing that he was carrying show more a very quick and lethal virus called Ebola. What makes the chapter that ends in his death so horrifying, as King writes, is the great amount of suffering he endured, his physical changes, and how quickly he succumbed to it. Preston writes this chapter like a good mystery, providing minute details on the physical suffering Monet endured drawn from victims of Ebola. He speculates on the mental anguish Monet must have suffered, not knowing what was wrong with him but knowing he was horribly sick.

As the Ebola virus is explored, starting with the Marburg strain and moving into the Reston strain that is the bulk of this story, Preston expands his storytelling abilities. He describes in a matter-of-fact manner the use of monkeys in medical research; the horror is in their capture from the wild and their imprisonment into cages to face certain death one way or another. The numbers are staggering. And whether or not their use is justified, theirs is a story that needs to be told.

In late 1989, a shipment of macaques from the Philippines came to a clearing house of research monkeys in Reston, VA, outside of Washington, DC. They were not injected with any virus, as they were destined to various simian research facilities throughout the US. However, a few succumbed to an illness whose virus had the same look under the microscope as the Ebola virus. And through a series of events, the humans who were caring for the monkeys or performing the necropsies carried this virus into the greater DC area by interacting with others over the Thanksgiving weekend. The only reason there was no mass outbreak was that this particular strain of Ebola does not jump from monkeys to humans. The Ebola vaccination was only licensed in November, 2019, ironically enough.

Having emerged from the COVID protocols and lockdown and masks, knowing what words like "super spreader event" mean, and finding out just how quickly a virus can jump from one person to another without either party knowing, adds another layer of realism to events from 30 years ago. It is extremely detailed and well-written and absolutely horrifying. show less

This is the bestselling non-fiction account of the mysterious history of the Ebola virus and of an outbreak of what appeared to be an airborne variant among monkeys in a facility outside Washington DC, which scared the pants off pretty much everybody when it was first published back in the early 90s. Everybody but me, that is, because for some reason it took me this long to finally get around to reading the thing.

Well, I can report that it's still really freaking scary. It is, in fact, terrifying and horrific and deeply fascinating, and so gripping that I truly had difficulty putting it down to go to bed (and not just because I was mildly worried that it might give me nightmares). And now I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look show more at any of those plague-wipes-out-humanity post-apocalyptic science fiction stories the same way again. That scenario is way, way more plausible than I really want to think about. show less

I've read this book four or five times, the first time when I was around 15 or so. It is intense, gripping, and a fantastic read from beginning to end. It left me with a lifelong fascination/fear of Ebola. Thanks to Mr. Preston I will never forget the image of someone bleeding from every orifice... but in a good way?

Holy shit this was a good book. Riveting tale of emerging diseases like Ebola and AIDS in the modern world. It's basically a cautionary tale of reproduction. If we keep reproducing and overpopulating the world, we will eventually destroy the places where dangerous organisms live. That's when they adapt. Most of what exists in nature are not a sentient beings. Most of these beings do not have reason or ethics. Those things simply find the best ways to survive. If that means killing humans, so be it. So, uh, yeah, I'm childfree and old. Good luck with that, people of the future!

Holy shit this was a good book. Riveting tale of emerging diseases like Ebola and AIDS in the modern world. It's basically a cautionary tale of reproduction. If we keep reproducing and overpopulating the world, we will eventually destroy the places where dangerous organisms live. That's when they adapt. Most of what exists in nature are not a sentient beings. Most of these beings do not have reason or ethics. Those things simply find the best ways to survive. If that means killing humans, so be it. So, uh, yeah, I'm childfree and old. Good luck with that, people of the future!