Analysis Of The Hot Zone

Thomas Clontz

1st Period

1/14/14

The Hot Zone Summary

I acknowledge this is the final copy of my own original work and all resources have been cited appropriately.

The novel, “The Hot Zone”, by Richard Preston, is an extraordinary tale about a virus called the Ebola virus. The author interviews a number of different people that all had encounters with the virus and records their stories. He is very interested by what they tell him and throughout the novel he is always seeking to find more information about it. There were many different encounters in this book but in my summary I am going to explain the ones that interested me the most.

The story begins with a man by the name of Charles Monet. He is in Kenya working on a sugar plantation. One of his friends and him decide to take a trip to Mount Elgon and visit the Kitum Cave. A couple of days after he returns from his trip he becomes very ill. He experiences headaches and backaches for several days before spiking a fever and violently vomiting for a long time. His eyes change to a bloodshot red color and he loses all expressions from his face. His personality also dramatically changed. Doctors try to treat him but with no success so he was put on a plane to go to the Nairobi Hospital. During the flight he gets so sick that he throws up huge amounts of red puke with black specks in it. He begins to bleed from his nose and eventually from almost every opening in his body. By the time he reaches the hospital he “crashes” and falls to the floor in a pool of his virus infected blood.

Another aspect of the story is associated with Major Nancy Jaax. She is a member of USAMRIID or United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. USAMRIID does research on different w...

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...animal was sedated before it could hurt her.

On Friday, December 7, the last monkey was finally put down. After this the decon team arrives. They seal off the building and heat these special crystals that kill everything that is living. Also, the team learns that Milton Frantig, the employee who had fallen ill, had recovered from what seemed to be the flu.

Ending this story the author, Richard Preston travels to Africa on his own to see the Kitum Cave and other sites that were mentioned throughout the novel. Finally, the author visits the monkey house in Reston which is now abandoned.

This novel was an incredible journey of a virus from its origin and to what it became as it was passed from host to host. I learned how a virus can adapt and form different strands which can cause it to become more deadly. This was an extraordinary story and incredibly informative.