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'The Andromeda Strain': Causes and effects
The Andromeda Strain summary
Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' book
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The book I read "The Andromeda Strain was written by the author Michael Chrichton. It is approximately 286 pages long. This book should be categorized as a science fiction book.
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The book, The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Chrichton starts out with two men going to investigate a satellite that crashed in Piedmont, Arizona. This satellite was sent out to collect alien organisms or bacteria. When the two men drove into town to collect the satellite they noticed that everyone was dead and within a few moments so were they.
Because they were army personnel working directly for the government, several doctors and scientists were contacted secretly to deal with the issue. Once all the men were contacted, they were set to meet at the "Wildfire Project Installation", which was a top-secret government installation intended to study and correct any alien virus. When the men arrived, they immediately began studying and trying to understand what exactly happened in piedmont and why.
This building was set to five levels, the first of these five was clean however not sterile the second slightly cleaner, as was the third, and fourth, the fifth was as sterile as physically possible. During the experiments they tested two people they brought back from the town, which were the only two survivors of the virus, one being an old man and the other an infant baby. They could find no similarities in them, So they tested the disease on animals and then did autopsies on their dead bodies.
However they did not find anything until during one of the autopsies, Burton, one of the group of scientists, had torn his glove, meaning he was contaminated with the virus. And the automatic detonation button was turned on and set to go off within three minutes. Hall another one of the scientists was the only person able to turn it off, forcing him to crawl through the air shaft to another floor while darts filled with poison were being shot at him.
Mark Hall was a surgeon who was easily angered, Jeremy Stone was a well disciplined bacteriologist, Peter Leavitt was microbiologist and epidemiologist and also a little nerdy and finally Charles Burton was a pathologist and the complete opposite of Jeremy Stone. One of them was chosen to be the odd man that was pretty much the only alternative to life or death as soon as the super lab decided it had been contaminated. The lab had a nuclear bomb under it so if the lab had been contaminated with the virus it would blow up attempting to potentially destroy the virus. Hall was chosen to be the odd man. If the lab started to count down to self destruction he would have to put a key in a lock and turn it to shut it off, and only he had the key and he was the only one that could do it. He was chosen to be the odd man because he was an unmarried young man, and studies have shown that unmarried males are better at rational
The Northwest Regular Crew number six was the first to be on the scene, there objective was
The medical field is a vast land of beauty, but with great beauty comes immense horror. There are many deadly viruses and diseases found in the medical field. In the novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the author discusses the many deadly viruses found in the field. The viruses are widespread due to the errors that occur when the viruses are in the presence of human beings. The effects of the errors performed by the human race include a decrease in population and wildlife.
The hope was that undiscovered biological agents could be found for potential use as biological weapons of war. Overall, the Scoop program had been somewhat of a dissapointment until the seventh launch. It reentered the earth's atmosphere over small town in Arizona, where a team of two men were sent to retrieve it. Upon entering the town they found no signs of life and suddenly and unexplicably died themselves. This occurence set in motion something the government had secretly planned for ca... ...
In Michael Crichton’s book, The Andromeda Strain, an unknown bacteria was found on a satellite sent by the military to space. This bacteria invaded the town of Piedmont, Arizona and killed all but two: a baby and an old man. A team of four men: Dr. Jeremy Stone, a scientist and the leader of Wildlife; Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon; Dr. Charles Burton, a pathologist and professor at Baylor Medical School; and Dr. Peter Leavitt, a microbiologist that treats infectious diseases, worked at a secret government facility in Nevada called Project Wildfire to study the “Andromeda Strain,” and figure out what is killing the people in Piedmont. This story took place over a five day period.
This is what happened to two Army recovery personnel in the town of Piedmont, Arizona (population 48). They set off to retrieve SCOOP VII, a military satellite sent to bring back alien microorganisms. The satellite did its’ job, it brought back a microorganism; something its six predecessors were not able to do. The microorganism SCOOP VII brought back was lethal, killing almost everybody in its’ path, except an old anemic man and a crying infant.
This lab would be built under the ruse of a logging camp and seemed rather harmless at the time. Little did the occupants know that the lab was made for testing biological weapons of war. The lab was divided into 8 different divisions, each hiding their own disgusting secret. Due to the experiments occurring secrecy was highly needed so the facility was surrounded by huge walls protected by high voltage wires. The first big test to occur by unit 731 was infecting fleas and water with disease and testing how effective they were at killing by using them on innocent Chinese citizens. These citizens were then eviscerated without anesthesia to see how the disease affected our
Samples of tissue from patients infected with the mysterious disease were sent to the CDC Special Pathogens Branch for analysis. After a few weeks and several tests, the virologists linked the disease with an unknown type of hantavirus. Because other hantaviruses were known to be transmitted to people by inhalation or ingestion of rodent feces or urine, our next task was to collect as many species of rodent in the area as possible in order to pinpoint the source of the virus (AMNH). While trapping rodents, we decided that it was worth the risk to not wear protective clothing or masks so as to avoid alarming residents of "The Four Corners" region (CDC). After testing approximately 1,700 rodents we had found a link--the prevalent deer mouse carried the unknown type of hantavirus. But why was this mouse suddenly infecting people in this region? I was becoming frustrated, my years of work in medicine were failing me and I couldn't figure out why these people kept getting sick.
At no time was a search for the cure for influenza more frantic than after the devastating effects of the pandemic of 1918. The pandemic killed somewhere between twenty and a hundred million people, making it twenty five times more deadly than the ordinary cough and sneeze flu. The symptoms of this flu were like something straight out of a horror movie: the victim’s facial complexion changed to a dark, brownish purple, the feet turned black, and they began to cough up blood. Eventually, death was caused, literally by drowning, when the victim’s lungs filled with their own blood. The first scientist to claim to solve the enigma of influenza was Dr. Friedrich Johann Pfeiffer. He isolated a bacterium he named Hemophilus influenzae from the respiratory tract of those who had the flu in the pandemic of 1890. He was believed to be correct in his discovery until the pandemic of 1918, when scientists searched the respiratory tracts of influenza victims and only sometimes found his bacterium. Robert E. Shope and his mentor Paul Lewis were the next to attempt to crack the code of influenza. They chose to study the disease in pigs, a controversial choice because many people believed that the swine influenza pigs were contracting was not the same as the human flu. The first experiment they ran was ba...
Menace II Society, a film about a young Black man who has lived the “hustler” lifestyle and is struggling to leave it, is a perfect example of deviance as the main character, Caine Lawson, and the characters around him violate many of society’s norms. Throughout the film, the characters swear incessantly, carry around guns and drugs as most people would carry around cell phones, commit street crimes, especially burglary and mugging, on a regular basis, and beat and kill people unscrupulously. The following quote captures just how deviant Caine and the other characters in this film were, “[Caine] went into the store just to get a beer. Came out an accessory to murder and armed robbery. It's funny like that in the hood sometimes. You never knew what was gonna happen, or when” (Albert Hughes). Why would Caine consider these crimes “funny”, or rather, so insignificant? What caused Caine to become so deviant? The answers to such questions were woven into the plot of the film and will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
In the beginning the movie the scientist used many methods to identify the virus. One of the methods was when the character Dr. Dan Francis, compares the disease with a similar virus called Hepatitis B. Although they are similar, it doesn’t prove a lot. After that didn’t work, they realize that not only gay people could get it. Many people with donated blood, started to have it, including babies. The doctors and scientist decided to tell the blood banks to start checking their blood. This could show people that it was ant only gay men who could have it but also, anybody and it could be transferred by blood also. However the blood banks denied checking their blood. Later on scientist in France discovered the virus and told the scientist in America.
It is over in a matter of days. The victim staggers, disoriented and exhausted, and collapses in a fever. His eyes turn bright red, and he starts vomiting blood. Within a matter of hours, he "crashes" and "bleeds out" surcumming to agonizing death with blood seeping from his eyes, ears and other orifices. At autopsy, pathologists discover, aghast, that the patients internal organs have disintegrated into an indistinguishable mass of bloodied tissue. The killer: A "hot" virus, a highly contagious and deadly microbe that has never been seen before, and has no known cure. (Bib5, CQ Researcher, 495)
The building that was involved in the fire was one of three buildings involved in the Cleveland Clinic organization. This was the building of the clinic where all the x-rays were done and kept in storage. The other two buildings of the clinic were the hospital and the laboratory; neither building was involved in the fire. The x-ray building was said to be of fire resistant construction. The building had four stories and a basement. The building was constructed of reinforced concrete in the floors and walls; the outside of the building consists of brick. Inside the building the floors were tile and the ceilings are plaster, and at some points there are glass ceilings and skylights. The first floor contained the x-ray rooms and the rooms used for filing current x-ray films which was not involved in the fire. It did not have a sprinkler system and the films were stored in filing cabinets with no prevention of the poisonous gases leaking ou...
as having said, “something unusual had occurred” (Dudley 31). The debris was soon removed from Brazel’s ranch and a land and air search was conducted by the military.
In 1949, a wildfire overran 16 firefighters in Mann Gulch on the Helena National Forest in Montana. The firefighters were smokejumpers that were trying to get to a safe location because the fire had blocked their route. Only three survived, leaving everyone behind with questions about the actions of the crew. Problems t...