The Hot Zone
Authors: Richard Preston
RICHARD PRESTON and
THE HOT ZONE
“One of the year’s ten best books.”
—
PEOPLE
“A riveting nonfiction thriller … swashbuckling reading.”
—NEW YORK TIMES
“No movie will match the real-life horror described in Richard Preston’s
The Hot Zone
.”
—TIME
“A bone-chilling account of a close encounter with a lethal virus … a totally convincing page-turner, proving that truth is scarier than fiction.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Mesmerizing.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
“This work of nonfiction is more terrifying than any sci-fi nightmare.”
—USA TODAY
“Horrifying and riveting … Preston exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton’s
The Andromeda Strain
.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Utterly engrossing … will make your blood curdle.”
—WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
“As spine-chilling a narrative as I’ve read in recent years … vivid and cinematic.”
—CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
“Fascinating—and frightening.”
—THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Petrifying … guaranteed to make the world you live in a more frightening place … a stunning wake-up call.”
—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“A fast-paced, gripping medical thriller.”
—NEWSDAY
“Riveting from page one … [an] infectious tale.”
—WIRED
“A medical cliffhanger.”
—BOSTON GLOBE
“Preston’s great skill is in turning interviews and scientific data into a compelling human story.”
—SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
“More chilling than fiction.”
—SCIENCE NEWS
BY RICHARD PRESTON
First Light
American Steel
The Hot Zone
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 1995
Copyright © Richard M. Preston
Map copyright © David Lindroth
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, Inc., in 1994. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this work were originally published in
The New Yorker
.
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS MADE TO THE FOLLOWING FOR PERMISSION TO USE BOTH PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL:
D
AN
W. D
ALGARD
: Brief excerpts from “Chronology of Events” by Dan W. Dalgard. Copyright © 1989, 1994 by Dan W. Dalgard. Reprinted by permission.
K
ARL
M. J
OHNSON
: Excerpt from a letter by Karl M. Johnson to Richard Preston. Reprinted by permission.
T
HE
W
ASHINGTON
P
OST
: Excerpt from “Deadly Ebola Virus Found in Va. Laboratory” by D’Vera Cohn (12/1/89). Copyright © 1989 by The Washington Post. Reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Preston, Richard, 1954–
The hot zone / Richard Preston. — 1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Random House, 1994.
1. Ebola virus disease—Virginia—Reston. 2. Ebola virus disease—Africa. 3. Primates as laboratory animals. I. Title.
RC140.5.P74 1995b
614.5’7—dc20 95-5751
eISBN: 978-0-307-81765-5
v3.1
TO FREDERIC DELANO GRANT, JR.
,
ADMIRED BY ALL WHO KNOW HIM
THE AUTHOR GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES A RESEARCH GRANT FROM
THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION
.
This book describes events between 1967 and 1993. The incubation period of the viruses in this book is less than twenty-four days. No one who suffered from any of the viruses or who was in contact with anyone suffering from them can catch or spread the viruses outside of the incubation period. None of the living people referred to in this book suffer from a contagious disease. The viruses cannot survive independently for more than ten days unless the viruses are preserved and frozen with special procedures and laboratory equipment. Thus none of the locations in Reston or the Washington, D.C., area described in this book is infective or dangerous.
The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a dead man
.
—APOCALYPSE
This book is nonfiction. The story is true, and the people are real. I have occasionally changed the names of characters, including “Charles Monet” and “Peter Cardinal.” When I have changed a name, I state so in the text.
The dialogue comes from the recollections of the participants, and has been extensively crosschecked. At certain moments in the story, I describe the stream of a person’s thoughts. In such instances, I am basing my narrative on interviews with the subjects in which they have recalled their thoughts often repeatedly, followed by fact-checking sessions in which the subjects confirmed their recollections. If you ask a person, “What were you thinking?” you may get an answer that is richer and more revealing of the human condition than any stream of thoughts a novelist could invent. I try to see through people’s faces into their minds and listen through their words into their lives, and what I find there is beyond imagining.
RICHARD PRESTON
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