Ooooooh it is one of the SCARIEST books I've ever read. Not scary like Stephen-King-psychotic-killer scary. I mean, it's a dramatized TRUE STORY, and the implications are incredible.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston tells the true story of government agencies rushing to contain a possible outbreak of the deadliest virus alive, in the United States, barely miles from Washington D.C. It goes into very gruesome detail concerning the effects of Ebola and Marburg on the bodies of its victims. It's just a million times worse than a horror story about psychotic murderers because psychotic murderers can't multiply up to a point where there are a hundred million in a single drop of blood, rupture your cells, cause massive internal hemorrhaging, turn your liver into a giant blood clot... oh, it's just disgusting.

Yellow Fever is considered a very deadly virus. It kills one in twenty people.

The Black Death was one of the worst plagues in history. It is estimated to have killed between one in four or two in three people in Europe.

Marburg and Ebola are the only two kinds of filovirus thus far discovered (there are several strains of Ebola).

Marburg kills one in four people.

And the Ebola Zaire strain of Ebola kills NINE IN TEN of its victims.

That. Is. Scary.

And it nearly broke out. In the USA. Right next to the capital of the nation.

I mean, this is completely different. You read about some psycho guy with a knife, and when you finish the book you go, "Wow, that was scary. But, of course, it's all made up. That could never really happen."

But this book, while some dialogue and thought processes have been invented (most of the dialogue was taken from people's recollections during interviews), all happened.

And it could happen again. And we might not contain it that time. We might not get lucky.

I mean, I'm reading about all the beauracracy and I'm like, screaming in my head! Does it really matter whether it's strictly legal for the army to contain the virus because some legal technicallity may put that under another department's jurisdiction? They have the skilled personnel and the right equpiment, they're close enough to the epicenter, and if they don't stop it, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE COULD DIE.

If I were in that situation I'd go, "Okay, forget this, this is time for drastic action!"

And when the doctors are performing surgery on victims, WITHOUT WEARING GLOVES, you just want to go, I mean, AUUUGH...

Well, that was a summary of and my reaction to the book. I'm nearing the end.

I was assigned to read it for Bio, but it really is a great book. I mean, from what I've been saying you may think I didn't like it, but I'm just saying, I really reacted to the hindsight irony, but the book itself was pretty good.

I might go ahead and check out Demon in the Freezer, by the same author about something similar.