Hot Zone Essay, Research Paper

Nature s Wrath

Nature is our host and we are the parasite. In the book, The Hot Zone, Mr. Preston has explained one of the most feared things known to mankind, the virus. Even though as small as a needle head, it can kill humans faster than any weapon ever made. The actual virus itself, the host, and the organizations that spent years trying to figure out a cure are all examples shown in both The Hot Zone and the film, Outbreak.

The actual virus itself went through multiple changes in the book, whereas in the movie, there was only one strain called Motaba. In the book, there were the Ebola viruses and the Marburg virus. Both of which were extremely deadly, although the Ebola viruses was the most deadly out of the two, killing nine out of ten people. In the film, Outbreak, the virus called Motaba was later found to be airborne, which in the book was not always a characteristic of some of the viruses. Symptoms were sometimes hard to notice, mostly relating to the flu. People infected with the virus would start out with headaches, normally on the seventh day after exposure to the agent. Slowly advancing into worse conditions, the affected patient will become nauseated and start escalating into a high fever. Finally, at the end of the pain and suffering, the patient will crash and bleed out which is the cause of severe hemorrhaging throughout the body. Doctors were mystified, what was this awful disease? And how does one come down with it?

The host, although unclear, was likely to originate from the jungles of Africa. In the film, the host was found out to be a monkey that had been transported to the states from Africa. In the book, there was no final conclusion as to who the host was. After raiding the monkey house, the scientists found that there was a new strain killing these monkeys. Luckily, this new strain could not be passed onto humans. So where did these monkeys get this virus?