The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story Of The Origins Of The Ebola Virus (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
Since March 2014 an epidemic of Ebola virus—specifically the Ebola Zaire strain—has been ravaging West Africa. More than 800 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have died so far. Here’s what Richard Preston has to say about Ebola Zaire in The Hot Zone: It attacks connective tissue with particular ferocity; it multiples in collagen, the chief constituent protein of the tissue that holds the organs together. In this way, collagen in the body turns to mush, and the underlayers of the skin die and liquefy. The skin bubbles up into a sea of tiny white blisters mixed with red spots known as a maculopapular rash. Spontaneous rips appear in the skin, and hemorrhagic blood pours from the rips. The red spots on the skin grow and spread and merge to become huge, spontaneous bruises, and the skin goes soft and pulpy, and can tear off if it is touched with any kind of pressure. Your mouth bleeds, and you bleed around your teeth, and you may have hemorrhages from the salivary glands—literally every opening in the body bleeds, no matter how small. The surface of the tongue turns brilliant red and then sloughs off, and is swallowed or spat out. It is said to be extraordinarily painful to lose the surface of one’s tongue. The tongue’s skin may be torn off during rushes of the black vomit. The back of the throat and the lining of the windpipe may also slough off, and the dead tissue slides down the windpipe into the lungs or is coughed up with sputum. Your heart bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a condition known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate… Preston continues in this manner for two more pages, describing clinically and carefully the devastation of a body wracked with Ebola. I will spare you most of the gory details but in The Hot Zone Preston doesn’t, so now I know this: Ebola Zaire ends with complete body liquefaction. I also know this: in one hospital room where a patient died from the virus, every surface in the room—walls, bed, floor—was covered with blood, which, of course, was covered in hundreds of millions of festering Ebola virus, waiting to hop to the next living host. This detailed look into Ebola inspires extreme reactions. I was awed. Terrified, undoubtedly. And, strangely, impressed, intoxicated by the beauty of such a deadly thing. Preston and some of the medical researchers he profiles are entranced by Ebola, obsessed by the “gorgeous” threadlike structure of the virus, its incredible simplicity and single-minded destruction. Can something that rips the skin, sludges the brain, sloughs off the intestines and tongues, hardens the spleen, mashes the liver, and stops the heart truly be beautiful? I guess it depends on whether you’re reading about it or whether you’re suffering from it. Preston loses his way at the midpoint of the book when he leaves Africa for Washington D.C., where a facility of lab monkeys start dying from another strain of the Ebola virus. The second half of the book is devoted to the military mission to contain this virus. It’s not terribly exciting. The strain found near D.C. is the Ebola Reston virus, which is a boring or “ugly” strain, being non-pathological in humans. Preventing an outbreak of Ebola Reston involves a lot of businesslike meetings discussing mission protocol and a lot of Hazmat suits. Preston also breaks the rules of nonfiction writing in this section, opting to write it like a piece of horror fiction instead of reporting the facts. Several times he includes pages of exposition where a scientist accidentally exposes himself to the virus, only to…not contract the virus. Here, it’s almost as if he realizes the staunched possibility of an American Ebola outbreak is rather dull, so he must create storylines even where there are none.Regardless, The Hot Zone is impressive mostly because Ebola itself is so impressive. Beautiful or not, it is a single strand of RNA that codes for a mere seven proteins that can, in the worst ever outbreak, kill 90% of those infected. We are fairly powerless against it. There is no vaccine. We’re not even sure where it comes from, though fruit bats are suspected to be the natural host. I think that in a cruel, sadomasochistic way, we humans—only those safely away from the African rainforest, curled up reading on their couches—like to be reminded that for all our complexity, for all our medicines and computers and precautions, there are still things that we cannot control, things that, rather, can possess our cells to control and destroy us.
Buddy read with James. Re-read with myself.Preston's The Hot Zone is a book that perfectly suits for an audio book format, if the execution is done right.I am quite happy to say this to be the case. Narrator Howard McGillin was the right man to turn this horrifyingly suspenseful book to an audio treat with even more of the nail-biting atmosphere attached to it.Preston's style to tell a story of Ebola, written in -93, was quite fascinating. It is always some way fresh to read a non fiction book that follows the rules of action packed, fictional thrillers. It is a great change for a person who has spend most of her life by reading good, but very much fact filled and dry text books made out of "everything important".I could go as far as to say that many fiction writers lack the ability to come up with a style as gripping as the style this book carries out.I could say The Hot Zone is too dramatized. I could say it to be too gory and even in some cases, a bit disrespectful.But then again, remembering all the footage and video material that is out there of this current outbreak, it would make my thoughts questionable. There is a great amount of official material including things such as bloody bodies lying around the streets while people are circling them like carrion flies. Ambulances being full of sick people, not all them having Ebola, but most likely getting infected while their group drive.People turned down from the hospitals because they are too full to treat all the infected. People kissing and touching dead Ebola infected patients. Hospital rooms being full of human excreta such as blood, faeces and vomit. Ebola infected people attacking healthcare personalities by biting and scratching. Hospitals being robbed and infected patients making a run for it as this is just a scam of the white, western people. Dirty, blood spattered sheets and clothes lying around the streets.And this list could go on and on and on. On and on. If that's not dramatic, I am not sure what is.As the book is written as early as -93, it is a bit outdated in some parts. We have a better knowledge of the filoviruses, and are learning more and more during its newest, and so far the widest, outbreak. Human history is full of examples of the nature taking the upper hand, but the history is full of examples how the humans took a win, despite of their underdog status, too.Only time will tell how we will eventually manage with Ebola, and how much of an little fucker it wants to become. But in the meanwhile, this works as a pretty good spooky book of the subject, but is a book to be avoided if there is a possibility of it to activate the mass hysteria gene inside of an individual.Know your genes, I say.Also posted at: http://hfk.booklikes.com/
What do You think about The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story Of The Origins Of The Ebola Virus (1999)?
The Hot Zone is an action packed page turner that leaves you feeling that you actually learned a fairly decent chunk of biology (and you did!). It can be understood from a layman's perspective, which is a beautiful effort in itself given how complex some of the information is. I am giving this book a high rating because of this and how well written it is. However, there are a few small points that I'm not overly fond of. It is written in a fairly confusing style I wanted at first to liken it to the writing of "The Pushcart War", a newspaper-y summative. But it's not. The best way I can explain it is that it has an extremely military feel. The details and facts are clearly laid out, but not journalistically as in "The Pushcart War". This brief yet thoroughness to the novelization of such a scenario does not lend itself to reading ease, or "flow". There is an abruptness which suits the the content, but does not give me a good impression of the writer's capabilities. Secondly, and this is what makes it the best thriller Stephen King has ever read, is the extreme brutal graphic quality of the writing. No details are spared in the description of the capabilities of the viruses described here. To give you an idea: dying in a pool of blood, being liquified from the inside out, itemization of the contents of a victim's vomit. This is not a pretty book. Lending itself to the unattractiveness is the American military conversation. Four letter words, God's name in vain and other profanities are scattered throughout the conversations of those who have to deal with outbreak control.My biology teacher recommended this as extra reading. When I got through the first few chapters I wondered why on earth he did. After finishing the book...yes, I consider this to be a quality use of your time and I would even read it again.
—J
Terror at the personal level.Very personal for me...I read this book while on night watch in the Army. I was eating cheap red licorice at a frenzied pace while I read from sheer nerves. The idea of bleeding out through every bodily opening was terrifying. The next morning I went to the bathroom and discovered that cheep red licorice passes nearly untouched through the human digestive system. It goes in red and comes out red - blood red. I very nearly screamed before I realized what I was seeing.I will NEVER forget this book.
—Oddmix
Let me be clear about one thing before I get into my full review. The writing in this book is absolutely atrocious. Ideas and paragraphs seem to fly out of nowhere while sentences seem disconnected. The ebook version of this book has numerous grammar and spelling mistakes and punctuation seems to have been an afterthought. With all that in mind, The Hot Zone is one of the most compelling, interesting, and fascinating non-fiction books around. It is absolutely worth reading and considering, especially in light of recent outbreaks of diseases like the swine flu.In The Hot Zone, Richard Preston introduces his readers to the history and horrors (and history of horrors) of Ebola; its variants Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan; and its cousin, Marburg Virus. He relates in vivid, engaging detail the means by which Ebola decimates the human body. Squeamish readers had best skip these chapters because they are absolutely graphic. Ebola is a killer (Ebola Zaire kills about 90% of its victims) and it attacks the human body in such as way that its victims are essentially left as hot bags of rotten blood. It makes for one of the most gruesome and horrifying deaths imaginable. And for those who keep reading these portions of the book, the real terror sets in: Preston's descriptions are not from the fevered mind of a horror writer, but are of actual outbreaks of the virus and its cousins in Africa and Europe.Preston spends most of the work focused on the outbreak of Ebola Reston in Washington, DC. He details the efforts of the Army response team and how they worked to contain its spread to a small monkey import business. Suffice it to say that animal lovers will mourn the hundreds of monkeys that wind up dead, but everyone should be glad to hear that the virus did not jump harmfully to the human population. Instead, while Ebola Reston infect humans, it proved to be harmful only to monkeys. With regard to the other, more deadly strains of Ebola, the human race has been protected by the fact that it is not nearly as infectious as diseases like influenza or the common cold. However, Preston leaves his readers with some chilling facts. Ebola Reston is closely related to Ebola Zaire, but unlike its sister virus it found a way to spread itself through the air. This means there is potentially some mutation Ebola could undergo that would make it both airborne and deadly. Preston's work is absolutely enthralling. Its descriptions are graphic and the writing is a tad convoluted, but it reads like a thriller novel. I highly recommend it to just about anybody but the overly sensitive (also, it might be best to avoid reading the book right before bed). As graphic as the book is, it is highly pertinent in a day when humanity faces the prospect of dangerous infections diseases rising from the jungle and striking ruthlessly. Wash your hands.
—Ben
