The Andromeda Strain Sparknotes

Human error and Technology failure are both possible things that occur frequently in life, yet the characters from Michael Crichton’s book “The Andromeda Strain” still depended on their state of the art technology with their lives. Andromeda Strain is a deadly virus that travels to Piedmont, Arizona by a satellite sent out of orbit and propelling back towards earth from space. After this occurrence, four male scientists that were previously selected for this specific occasion were gathered. Their names were Mark Hall, Jeremy Stone, Peter Leavitt and Charles Burton and they had a mission to accomplish. Their mission was to figure out what Andromeda Strain was and how to stop it from killing any more innocent people. The entire time while they

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

It’s okay, because humans design technology therefor technology is not perfect because humans are not perfect either. Throughout Michael Crichton’s book he progressively makes his characters go through a lot of events in which technology failure and human error occur probably to induce a thrill, also to continue to be realistic with his novel, since it is science fiction. It is realistic because human error and technology failure occur every day in the real world. Not usually do they decide life or death, unlike in The Andromeda Strain. Where the errors that occurred were putting many lives at a high risk of danger. The scientists are working with an extremely dangerous contaminant at first before the organism mutates into a different organism. The lab was not foolproof for that type of organism since the world had not even been exposed to it before and knew nothing about it. Therefor the reader almost comes in reading the novel knowing that some type of mechanical or technology failure will occur as well as human error. It was a first time for those scientists so it was very obvious that the mission would be extremely sloppy, and readers can just assume that because they know how often errors occur in everyday life for humans and