The Hot Zone Summary

When I came across the description for The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, I suddenly became interested in the lethality of certain diseases. Imagine a highly infectious virus with a mortality rate from anywhere between fifty to ninety percent and that its victims suffer from liquefying flesh, melting organs, and massive hemorrhaging, essentially bleeding from every orifice of the body. The thought intrigued me, how a particular virus has the frightening potential to wipe out the human race. After reading the summary, I had a desire to learn more, so I chose this book. As for taking AP World History, I needed a viewpoint on exactly what an AP course is like. Additionally, starting off with a challenging class will help make me more responsible for future classes in high school and hopefully for the rest of my academic career. The story unfolds in a plantation in western Kenya, specifically the Zaire region, which is home to a man named Charles Monet. He contracts what is later revealed as the Marburg virus disease and dies. This virus is considered very lethal with a mortality

I discovered that only a few decades ago, East Africa was plagued with an alien filovirus that eventually manifested itself in the U.S. capital. As a result, federal forces had to handle the delicate monkey house situation without attracting much attention from the media and in the process courageous soldiers and scientists had risked their lives attempting to quarantine it. Their mission was successful and in the end the monkeys were all brought to the USAMRIID labs for further research on Ebola and its cousins. In addition, Preston’s analytical comparison between the origins of AIDS and Ebola unveiled a potential connection that could explain the diseases’ outbreaks in modern society. The majority, if not all, of the information I learned about the history of fatal viruses has come from reading The Hot