The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

The Hot Zone is a book about the Ebola Outbreak that happened at a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia during the 80's. The book starts off with the author (Richard Preston) talking about other outbreaks that happened in Africa before the events of the actual story such as Charles Monet, a French expatriate who dies and infects the hospital staff working on him due to the Marburg virus which Originated in Marburg, Germany in the 60's. The Author then starts to describe the First Ebola Outbreak in Sudan that started with a man named Yu G then the author talks about an outbreak in Zaire which is caused due to the use of dirty medical equipment at a clinic, both causing hundreds of deaths.

In the second part of the book the author then starts to talk about scientists who work with deadly viruses, one of which is Nancy Jaxx, an army veterinarian who works with hot agents (transmittable,infective viruses) at Fort Detrick in Maryland. In the book Jaxx almost gets infected with the Ebola virus After her suit rips. Later on Jaxx is asked to examine samples from monkeys who are dying for unknown reasons. Jaxx then see's that its Ebola and the army and CDC get involved and try to contain the virus so that it won't spread to the human population. A swat team is given the task of killing off all the monkeys in the lab, but not without any complications such as a woman's suit starting to malfunction or the monkey who almost bites a scientist due to not being put to sleep properly. The team is successful in killing off the monkeys and later find out the type of Ebola the monkey's were infected with was not transmittable to humans.

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