Ebola Virus In Richard Preston's The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone is a New York Times best seller written by Richard Preston that was published in 1994. It is a non-fiction, thriller, was published in 1994. The component that makes The Hot Zone horrifying is provided by the true story of an outbreak of the Ebola virus that is caused by monkeys, near Washington D.C. in the 1980’s. The fear was that it could have spread to the surrounding human population in Washington D.C. It all begins with one man, one cave, and one host that could have wiped out the entire population of the planet one by one until there was no species left.

The first part of the book is about a man named Charles Monet that Preston gave the fictional name to. Monet was a French emigrant who began showing symptoms of Marburg

The first part of the book included the first known cases of Marburg disease. The Marburg disease became available in Marburg, Germany in 1967. Also, the well-known stories of Yu G. who was the first person to die from Ebola Sudan in 1976, and Mayinga N., a nurse who became infected with Ebola Zaire after helping treat a patient who dies of the disease. At first, Mayinga was in denial about her abnormal symptoms and spent two days in the city around thousands of civilians exposing her infection to everyone around her before going to the hospital, she ended up dying just like Monet. Another story consisted of a Lieutenant Colonel, Nancy Jaax. Jaax was a veterinarian and scientist for the U.S. Army during the 1980’s. She was working on an experiment involving Ebola. While she was at home making dinner she accidentally cut herself leaving a huge gash on her palm. Later that day when Jaax was working on an experiment that involved a contaminated dead monkey, the glove on her hazmat suite protecting the cut on her hand tore and Jaax was almost exposed to the contaminated monkey blood. However, Jaax made it safely through the incident. She was eventually promoted to chief of pathology for USAMRIID (US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) after convincing her worried husband that she was smart enough to deal with these deadly Biosafety Level 4