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    Hot Zone
    Hot Zone
    Hot Zone
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    Hot Zone

    Written by Richard Preston

    Narrated by Howard McGillin

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The virus kills nine out of ten of its victims. Its effects are so quick and so gruesome that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and it is about to burn through the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Is there any way to stop it?

    This doomsday scenario confronted a biohazard SWAT team struggling in secret to stop the outbreak of an exotic "hot" virus at an Army research facility outside Washington. The Hot Zone tells the dramatic story of their dangerous race against time, along with an alarming account of how previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are now entering human populations.

    From the airlocked confines of a biosafety level 4 military lab, to an airliner over Kenya carrying a passenger dissolving into a human virus bomb, to a deserted jungle cave alive with deadly virus, THE HOT ZONE is a non-fiction thriller like no other. The Andromeda Strain was fiction---this is real!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 1, 1994
    ISBN9780743548380
    Hot Zone
    Author

    Richard Preston

    Richard Preston is an internationally acclaimed bestselling author of eight books, including The Hot Zone and The Wild Trees. He has won numerous awards, including the American Institute of Physics Award and the National Magazine Award, and he is the only person not a medical doctor ever to receive the Centers for Disease Control’s Champion of Prevention Award for public health. He lives with his wife and three children near Princeton, New Jersey.

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    Reviews for Hot Zone

    4.5/5

    96 ratings57 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I was hooked from the first page I never thought I would like a book about a virus as my preconceived notion is that it would be too technical and too detailed. I also don't read a lot of strictly non-fiction. However, Preston has done a great job into making it into a mystery/novel form. I've read it twice!
    • 3/5
      This was an interesting book. It was a little disconcerting jumping around between events, but the reasoning was clear and the flow relatively seamless. The descriptions of the virus were fascinating, though a little scary. I sure would not want to ba around if the human strain becomes airborne! This is a little dry at times but very interesting and well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Great book!! Rather frightening, as far as germs and disease are concerned. I read this in 2 days and washed my hands... A LOT!!! Caution: Book does not include HazMat suit.

      "The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling[1] 1994 non-fiction bio-thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebola viruses and Marburg viruses. The basis of the book was Preston's 1992 New Yorker article 'Crisis in the Hot Zone'."

      ^ "Best Sellers: June 4, 1995". The New York Times Book Review (New York: The New York Times). 1995-06-04. Retrieved 2008-09-29.








    • 5/5
      The Hot Zone By:Richard Preston The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is about the Ebola virus. For many years the Ebola virus has been lurking in the shadows. Now it is coming out. Throughout the book there have been many cases of Ebola found in Africa. This is the place where the virus first became known. Soon, the virus spreads to the United States of America. Undetected by many civilians, only a few people from the CDC and USAMRIID know about the cases of Ebola. In a monkey house in Virginia monkeys are starting to become sick. Doctors working with the monkeys find out that they tested positive for Ebola. The whole entire monkey house then goes into quarantine. People still today do not realise how close we were to an Ebola outbreak in America. Richard Preston did an unbelievable job in making this non-fiction novel a thriller. It is a true page turner. As you get into the book you start to realise how deadly Ebola can be and how close we were to getting it. Richard Preston did a great job in his vocabulary use by making the novel not to hard to understand, but by still keeping it interesting. Usually some non-fiction books could be boring and filled to the brim with facts, but this was just in the middle and just right. Overall, it was an exciting adventure and learning experience. Although this book was incredible, there was some downsides to it. During the book I thought there became too many short stories that intertwined with each other. It became a little confusing. Another downside to the book was that there was way too many characters. Some characters were in completely different short stories making it become confusing while reading. At times it became hard to follow. Still even with the downsides this was a great book to read.
    • 4/5
      Totally interesting, very gripping, great writer, great language, heldme close all the way through..until it got to a point where it was more of a rescue operation rather than the virus. at that point it kinda died.
    • 4/5
      Riveting and terrifying book about the spread of fatal infectious diseases, such as ebola. Ebola kills 9 out of 10 victims and might be spread through the air. If it is, we could be looking at another world-wide epidemic.
    • 2/5
      Pretty much a waste of time.
    • 4/5
      Stephen King said it best: "The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I've ever read in my whole life..."
    • 1/5
      It sucks do not read warming just do not read
    • 5/5
      A classic thriller that is all the more gripping because it is non-fiction.
    • 5/5
      This book made me want to major in biochemistry and find a cure to ebola when I was like 10 years old. Unfortunately, I almost failed college chem, but it was an incredibly good book, very gory and detailed. I think I should re-read it soon...
    • 3/5
      I read this book many years ago and remembered being captivated by the subject, which was very topical at the time. I grabbed it off the shelf on the way to a hunting trip, looking for an easy read. I must say that it hasn?t aged particularly well.First, I found much of the descriptive imagery laughably florid. On several occasions, the author tries a little bit too hard to ?paint a picture? of the various landscapes which form the basis for this non-fiction work. Second, with what seems to be near constant news of killer viruses and HIV/AIDS epidemic, the subject matter doesn?t conjure near the fear and apprehension that it did when first published.SPOILERS (though this is non-fiction. If everyone died from Ebola, you?d probably know it.)The basic storyline of the book is discovery of the various Ebola strains and the ultimate appearance of one such strain in the United States (Reston, Virginia). The Ebola virus arrives in a shipment of monkeys. The monkey house is isolated and neutralized by the U.S. Army. Throughout the book, the author introduces numerous foreboding fact situations, leading the reader to suspect that a pandemic is just around the corner. Not only does no one die, ultimately it is discovered that the Ebola Reston strain is not even damaging to humans.At the time of its publication, it might have been a four star work. As it is, I can barely muster up three.
    • 4/5
      Scared the heck out of me.
    • 4/5
      We humans like to think we are at the top of the food chain. We are the ultimate predators capable of dispensing with anything that gets in our way. Our biggest threat is really only to each other. Right? In a word?wrong. There are predators that have been around since long before we came out of the trees ? predators that we can?t fight, can?t stop ? can?t even see. And they have been right on our doorstep and we didn?t even know it.?In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.?The Hot Zone reads like a fiction thriller. In fact, Richard Preston is a best-selling fiction writer. He is also a journalist who has traveled to where the nastiest viruses on earth have originated. However, The Hot Zone isn?t fiction. It is an unnerving account of how one of the deadliest viruses on earth ? Ebola ? which kills up to 90% of the individuals infected with it, in a unimaginably gruesome way, ended up finding its way in to a monkey house in a suburb of Washington D.C.The Hot Zone is very well written and chilling in how it relates two things. First, how viruses such as Ebola and Marburg can evolve and mutate entirely on their own, disappear from view and reappear when we least expect it. The second ? and most unsettling to me ? is how powerless and ill-prepared we are to deal with something like this. It can be spread around the world in a day and infect large numbers of people killing most and there is no cure. In this era of jet travel, something like this represents nature?s ultimate doomsday device.Any nonfiction book that can make Stephen King call it ?one of the most horrifying things I?ve ever read,? and Suzanne Collins say ?I just read it a few weeks ago. Still recovering,? is something that needs to be read. It will certainly give you pause ? if not the creepy-crawlies ? after reading it.
    • 5/5
      Hands-down, THE most frightening non-fiction I've ever read. An absolute thilling, page-turner. I still have no clue where they got the story for that horrible movie based on this book!
    • 4/5
      I read the book first and then listen to the audio book. Even after both of these I'm not certain if it was a fiction or nonfiction. I also saw the movie very scary. It's what I call a page-turner I enjoy the book and recommend it
    • 3/5
      Richard Preston has taken a technically difficult subject and made it accessible to the masses.
    • 4/5
      Wow, what an experience it was reading this piece of non-fiction. My field is in environmental health and this really is like the type of thing that epidemiologists prepare for yet hope never happens. It's frightening and real and a very good read.
    • 5/5
      Preston's history about the ebola virus reads like science fiction, and that makes it frightening. Very accessible, very interesting, very gripping, very timely with the current news. I enjoyed it a lot.
    • 4/5
      My 14-year old niece was assigned this book for summer reading and didn't want to read it, so I told her I would read along. Good timing, considering the current Ebola outbreak (2014). It's a fast read and quite gruesome in places; the biggest impression it made on me was not the effects on humans but the use humans made of lab primates to gauge transmission routes and effectiveness of drugs. Inexcusable. So yes, I'd say this book had a huge impact on me, although not necessarily the one the author intended.
    • 5/5
      Read at a very poignant time, so had a very powerful effects. The reviews are right: this is an absolutely terrifying book. This work shows why we should not grow too comfortable with not knowing about these extremely lethal and contagious viruses.
    • 5/5
      We're doomed. This book truly is scary. I had heard of Ebola many times but this really brought to home just how horrifying and deadly it really is. The day that virus mutates into an airborne pathogen is the day the human race faces extinction.

      And if you thought descriptions of the Black Plague were bad you ain't seen nothing yet. Death by filovirus would have to be one of the worst ways to go. Your body literally liquifies while you are still alive. Blood pours from every orifice. Every organ fails and half of them pass out of your body before you're gone. You end up a mess of slime and bone.

      We have close many times and it's getting more likely that we will soon face a serious pandemic. Let's just hope it's not something with a mortality rate like Ebola Zaire.
    • 3/5
      The opening chapters of this book are utterly revolting. In a good way. Seriously. After about page 40, I set the book down and went and washed my hands nine times in a vat of boiling Purell. Afterwards, I returned to the book, only to find it settling into the groove of a pretty standard, maybe better than average, "true medical thriller." Still a good, creepy read, though.
    • 4/5
      The first non-fiction book I read that wasn't assigned by a professor. Scared the daylights out of me. The movie stunk.
    • 5/5
      This is the bestselling non-fiction account of the mysterious history of the Ebola virus and of an outbreak of what appeared to be an airborne variant among monkeys in a facility outside Washington DC, which scared the pants off pretty much everybody when it was first published back in the early 90s. Everybody but me, that is, because for some reason it took me this long to finally get around to reading the thing. Well, I can report that it's still really freaking scary. It is, in fact, terrifying and horrific and deeply fascinating, and so gripping that I truly had difficulty putting it down to go to bed (and not just because I was mildly worried that it might give me nightmares). And now I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look at any of those plague-wipes-out-humanity post-apocalyptic science fiction stories the same way again. That scenario is way, way more plausible than I really want to think about.
    • 4/5
      This book follows the story of the origin of a few different Ebola and Ebola-type viruses. Might not sound fascinating, but Preston makes the book read like fiction, but scarily enough, it's not. These are some nasty viruses! The book follows both the origin of these viruses, plus the outbreak of one of the viruses in a laboratory monkey facility and the elaborate steps that had to be followed to stop it from spreading. I hate animal testing... those poor monkeys that should never have been in that situation to begin with, but at the same time, this nonfiction story really is fascinating.
    • 5/5
      WOW - Ebola and other killer viruses and the scientists who study them. Did you know there was an outbreak of Ebola virus among monkeys kept in a suburban Washington DC laboratory? Neither did I, until I read this book. Nonfiction that reads like the best medical thriller.
    • 4/5
      Terrifying, disgusting, unsettling...and completely fascinating. Not for the squeamish or those who are not interested in this type of subject. Written in a very entertaining style that reads like fiction without any dry, scientific information that would put the non-scientist to sleep.
    • 4/5
      Frightening stuff.
    • 3/5
      As seems to be the usual with these books, a bit on the alarmist side. BUT lots and lots of great stories of outbreaks, near outbreaks, scientific triumphs and scientific infighting from all over the world.