Is There a Anecdote for Anthrax?

[Wildest Bill]

If yes, how much is there. Is there enought to say help a average size city? If not, how long does it take to produce it? And should the Gov't start producing it now? Man, I could deal with Nuclear explosion type death(if it is quick) but suffering through biological weapons scare me to death.

[lieu]

Might you mean "antidote"?




D 'ohp!

[Bricker]

Well, I'll try to help.

One day, a guy I heard of got anthrax. Luckily, he caught it in time, took some antibiotics, and got better. Another guy I heard of didn't catch it time and died. Antibiotics cure anthrax effectively if caught early.

Hope that helps.

- Rick

[tiny ham]

Yes, actually. I was working at a concert once, and the lead singer of Anthrax tried to hit on me. Unfortunately, Rammstein was playing the same concert, so his advances were futile. When he saw me staring at Till across the way, the lead singer of Anthrax said: "Why do you like those guys? I hear they're all gay" It was such a typical, nervous, upset guy comment. I had to laugh.



















or do you mean an ANTIDOTE?

jarbaby

[lieu]

Whadda you think, jar...

did he mean antidope?

Apparently there's not.

[Olentzero]

Two anthrax viri walk into a bar...

[Gyrate]

An anecdote for anthrax? Sure, here ya go:

So there I was, walking down the street, when suddenly I bumped into this virus. "Hey, aren't you Anthrax?" I said. "I prefer to be called 'Annie'," it said....

Oh wait, you meant "antidote". Off the top of my head, I believe that there is treatment for it, but the type you take in through your lungs is much worse than the type you catch through other means.

And in conclusion: HYTG?*

_{*Have You Tried Google?}

[A Monkey With a Gun]

This is from an imperfect memory, so cut me some slack if if I am slightly off the mark.

First off, I doubt anthrax could be used for a large size city. To catch it, someone has to breath in a large number of spores and it is not able to be transmitted person to person. It is conceivable that a crop duster could fly over a sporting event and infect a large number of people, however, the disease just wouldn't spread from there. It doesn't like humans all that much.

The vaccine could be administered within 48 hours to prevent onset of symptoms of after that it is useless. Flu like symptoms should start in about a week and the disease can be controlled if antibiotics are given within about a week and a half of exposure. The government does have large stockpiles of both, but the logistics of distrubution could be a problem.

After two weeks, you're pretty much screwed. Death is caused by respiratory failure. Mortality rate is about 40% and many of those who survive have severe scaring and/or blindness.

[lucwarm]

I like the way you asked a question that's been beaten to death, but with a glaring error that's sure to be noticed. The only problem I see is that the error is more likely to amuse people than inflame them. For that, I can give you only 6.0 on the troll-o-meter.

|-----x----|

[tiny ham]

I must say luc, that WB is a lot of things, but he isn't a troll

[lieu]

Originally posted by jr8
And in conclusion: HYTG?*

_{*Have You Tried Google?}

Thanks for the clarification. I'd assumed you'd meant

Have Your Testicles, Gump?

[Fiver]

Ah, the dilemma, the dilemma:
[list=A][*]Should one repond to the OP Wildest Bill intends?[*]Or the one he actually wrote?[/list=A]
The first is more in the spirit of this forum. The second is much more fun.

I'll do both, yet in each case still try to adhere to the spirit of GD:
[list=A][*]Yes.[*]Here's one: Did you know anthrax is a bacterium, not a virus?[/list=A]

[DAVEW0071]

But I'd like to know if there's an antidote for Anthrax (the band)?

[tiny ham]

Yes, I believe it's Air Supply

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

I have a friend from Michigan, who had once lived in the same city where they make the anthrax vaccine.

He told me--and he was really serious about this--that if there were ever an anthrax outbreak in the facility, there were "orders" that the entire complex was to be sealed shut, and not re-opened until authorities were sure that everyone had had enough time to starve to death.

I thought he was full of it, but I didn't argue with him. Musta watched "Andromeda Strain" too many times as a kid.

[Wildest Bill]

You know what is so bad. I actually looked up the word for the spelling so I wouldn't get something wrong like this. And I found it the way I thought in my mind it was spelled(that's why I hate looking up words in the dictionary I mean if you don't know how to spell it, how can you use spelling to look it up) But I didn't bother to look at the definition to make sure it was the right word. Stupid English language with dual meaning sounding words. So have fun with it I deserve it. ::wildest bill walking off muttering to himself look at the definition look at the definition look at the definition::

[A Monkey With a Gun]

I knew my memory was imperfect, but sheesh. Allow me to correct myself.

Immunization after exposure might not do anything. Antibiotics must be administered before symptoms appear. Anthrax has a 90% mortality rate.

Here is a good article:

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/news_feature.html

[Olentzero]

Originally posted by Fiver
Here's one: Did you know anthrax is a bacterium, not a virus?[/b]

OK, OK, fine!

Two anthrax bacteria walk into a bar.

You happy now?

[labradorian]

Originally posted by jr8
An anecdote for anthrax? Sure, here ya go:

And in conclusion: HYTG?*

_{*Have You Tried Google?}

Every new internet account ought to come with little wristbands made that read "WWGS?"*

Not that I'm accusing the OP-er of being a newbie, of course.












_{*What Would Google Say?} [/b][/quote]

[Mersavets]

Wildest Bill is one of the few people who I know of only through the internet that I would really like to meet. There's not much else I can say really.t

[epeepunk]

According to the latest issue of Time Magazine:

Cipro is the only drug approved for biological attacks--specifically for inhaled anthrax--although it's never been directly tested in humans. Doxycycline and penicillin may help as well, if given over a long term.

[Thrasybulus]

Originally posted by Beeblebrox
Anthrax has a 90% mortality rate.

Actually, Inhaled Anthrax (sometimes referred to as Pulmonary Anthrax) has a 90% mortality rate. It is extremely rare. Cutaneous (about 95% of all cases are cutaneous anthrax) and Intestinal Anthrax have much lower mortality rates (about 20% of untreated cases and about 35%, respectively).

[Wildest Bill]

Originally posted by Mersavets
Wildest Bill is one of the few people who I know of only through the internet that I would really like to meet. There's not much else I can say really.t

You don't want to hit me or anything do ya?

[k.os]

This will answer most questions on Anthrax as a Biological Weapon.

[Mersavets]

No, of course not. I'd need a better reason to hit someone than any you could provide via a message board. I just think it is a scream when some of the more pretentious people here correct you on your 'errors'. I could swear some people believe irony is a n adjective describing things that tend to rust. Keep up the good work Bill, you have at least one fan (and I suspect many more quiet ones as well) (

[bagkitty]

Originally posted by jarbabyj
Yes, I believe it's Air Supply

Nope, 10CCs ROTFLMAO

[coosa]

BTW, the anthrax victim in FL died today: Anthrax victim dies

[wring]

Originally posted by Mjollnir
I have a friend from Michigan, who had once lived in the same city where they make the anthrax vaccine.

\
That would be Lansing Michigan. Name of company BioPort, was developed by the State of Michigan IIRC, prior to our Gov selling the division to BioPort who contracted w/the Defense Dept to manufacture it for the armed forces.

[DoctorJ]

Ciprofloxacin (aka Cipro) is the drug of choice. My understanding is that the government has about two million doses of it stashed around the country, which should be enough to cover whatever attack we might face. There is an elaborate plan in place to get it where it needs to go. (I was involved with some drills earlier this year.)

Pulmonary anthrax, IIRC, is also known as woolsorter's disease, as the B. anthracis spores are found in wool and the disease used to show up occasionally in people who worked with wool. (I'm guessing that those people wear masks now.)

It doesn't transmit from person to person, which makes it, IMHO, a lousy biological weapon. I think the most likely bioterroristic threat is pneumonic plague--it's more infectious than anthrax, more virulent than tularemia, and it wouldn't be that hard for a terrorist to get his hands on, unlike smallpox. Fortunately, it responds well to antibiotics, if you catch it early--which is tough, since the symptoms are fairly nonspecific.

Dr. J

[Yue Han]

Yes, I believe it's Air Supply

Are you familiar with the phrase, "The cure was worse than the disease?"

500 pun bonus points to the person who capitalizes the c.

--John

[Mersavets]

Originally posted by DoctorJ
It doesn't transmit from person to person, which makes it, IMHO, a lousy biological weapon.

Interesting. I would have thought that would be preferable. I know some of these terrorists are suicida l, but I doubt they want to put their own people at even greater risk than they already do. If you use an agent that doesn't spread from person to person, then you have a greater degree of control over who your victims are.r

[Smeghead]

Originally posted by Mersavets

Interesting. I would have thought that would be preferable. I know some of these terrorists are suicida l, but I doubt they want to put their own people at even greater risk than they already do. If you use an agent that doesn't spread from person to person, then you have a greater degree of control over who your victims are.r

Yes, but it greatly limits your potential victims. With anthrax, you can only kill people you directly infect. With something more communicable, you only need to infect a few people, then they infect more, who in turn infect more, and more, and more, until you (theoretcially) have a huge epidemic.

[coosa]

It doesn't transmit from person to person, which makes it, IMHO, a lousy biological weapon.

I've been wondering myself why there is such a big to-do about anthrax. I think it is getting so much attention simply because it has been tried (unsuccessfully) on several occasions.

Either bin Laden's groups doesn't have anyone with the 'smarts' to use biological weapons, or the major intent was not to damage or destroy the US, but to make a big splash that would, hopefully, ignite WWIII. Heck, they missed their chance to very easily kill a lot of US citizens - there was a recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. Dead easy for a few suicidal volunteers to obtain blood samples, inject themselves, fly to the US, and wait on symptoms to develop. Pick a large crowded area - a major airport, a football game, a concert - especially places where a lot of people will be traveling some distance back home - and have Mr. Terrorist blow himself up, splattering everyone in the vicinity with Ebola-infected body fluids/parts. Voila! Major deadly, highly contagious disease outbreak in the US.

Let me scare you a little more: from the CDC site (you will need Adobe Acrobat to access this) Botulism as a Biological Weapon.

Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult.

On page two, read "HISTORY OF CURRENT THREAT" and see if that doesn't scare the shit out of you.

[AskNott]

According to a fellow at work, Amtraks is a terrible disease that makes you want to ride trains.

[BobT]

That Ebola scenario isn't that easy to pull off. First of all, you have to find someone who wants to get infected. There aren't that many cases of Ebola in the world and you have to work hard to pick up the disease (like getting blood on you.)
Then you would have to get from someplace like the jungles of Congo to a big metropolitan area without: 1) the people in the area noticing you leaving as they tend to quarantine these areas and 2) getting into the metropolitan area without dying of the disease first.
Ebola makes people very sick and they might not even be healthy enough to walk around to kill themselves. Monster fevers tend to make you feel your best, especially when you are hemorrhaging badly to boot.

And remember that when you blow yourself up, you create a lot of heat that can kill off a lot of nasty viruses.

[coosa]

My source for most of the following info is here: CDC report on Ebola outbreak in Uganda

That Ebola scenario isn't that easy to pull off. First of all, you have to find someone who wants to get infected

Terrorist suicide bombers/hijackers, remember? 19 of them were willing to die in airplane crashes - 19 Ebola carriers targeting several large cities could cause a lot more deaths than occurred on 9/11, and shut down travel much more effectively and for a longer period of time. While the economic impact would not be as bad, and the initial 'attack' would not be as spectacular, the lives lost and demoralizing effect would be tremendous.

There aren't that many cases of Ebola in the world

Ebola-Sudan (not quite as deadly as Ebola-Zaire) reared it's ugly head in Uganda in August 2000. The outbreak wasn't recognized until early October, wasn't diagnosed as Ebola until mid-October, and wasn't brought under control until January 2001. As of January 23, 425 cases had been identified; the death rate was 53% (Ebola-Zaire is supposed to have a fatality rate of nearly 90%). Opportunity knocked from mid-October (when the outbreak was identified) until January. Oh, and preventative measures were started in October, and it still took 3 months to get it under control.

you have to work hard to pick up the disease (like getting blood on you.)

No, you don't have to work very hard at all to contract Ebola, once it is in the human population. From the cited CDC report: "Epidemiologic investigations identified the three most important means of transmission as attending funerals of presumptive EHF case-patients where ritual contact with the deceased occurred, and intrafamilial or nosocomial transmission. Fourteen (64%) of 22 health-care workers in Gulu were infected after establishing the isolation wards; these incidenses led to the reinforcement of infection-control measures."

Please notice that health-care workers were infected after the disease had been identified and precautions taken - and the delay in identification and containment occurred in a country where Ebola outbreaks can be expected to occur.

Also please note that I am talking about terrorist who want to become infected, hence the mention in my previous post of deliberately obtaining and injecting themselves with a patient's blood.

Then you would have to get from someplace like the jungles of Congo to a big metropolitan area without: 1) the people in the area noticing you leaving as they tend to quarantine these areas

Point 1: Do you think they actually quarantined the entire country for 3 months? No apparently healthy foreign nationals were allowed to enter or leave during that time?

Point 2: We are talking about terrorists with extensive international networks, training in covert operations, false passports/ids, and lots of money, in a part of the world where a little bit of money goes a looong way.

Point 3: Uganda is not exactly a 'developed' country, and seems to be a trifle . . . 'unsettled': http://travel.state.gov/uganda.html . I wouldn't be suprised if bin Laden's followers weren't already quite welcome there. And, gee, who is that on their northern border? Sudan, of course! Isn't that one of bin Laden's (former) buddies?

2) getting into the metropolitan area without dying of the disease first.

Incubation period ranges from 5 to 12 days: http://www.uct.ac.za/microbiology/ebolasho.html before onset of symptoms. In this case, mean time from onset of symptoms to death was 8 days (CDC cite). I don't think it is impossible, or even improbable, to travel from Uganda to Los Angeles in 5 days, especially if you are utilizing a well-established terrorist network. And you wouldn't necessarily have to wait until you started getting sick - the virus is going to be pretty widespread in the bloodstream before you start showing symptoms.

Ebola makes people very sick and they might not even be healthy enough to walk around to kill themselves. Monster fevers tend to make you feel your best, especially when you are hemorrhaging badly to boot.

See above about incubation periods. Plus, from the CDC report: "among 62 persons with laboratory-confirmed EHF admitted to Gulu Hospital, symptoms included diarrhea (66%), asthenia (64%), anorexia (61%), headache (63%), nausea and vomiting (60%), abdominal pain (55%), and chest pain (48%). Patients presented for care a mean of 8 days (range: 2--20 days) after symptom onset. Bleeding occurred in 12 (20%) patients and primarily involved the gastrointestinal tract."

And remember that when you blow yourself up, you create a lot of heat that can kill off a lot of nasty viruses

Well, that would depend on the method you chose, wouldn't it? A rather crude but effective method that I can think of would involve strapping hand grenades to various parts of your body. I'm sure someone who actually knows something about explosives could come up with a much better idea.

[LocalLoop]

Another point to the OP....
The Soviets (as well as the United States, I suppose) spent a lot of time and money creating multiple strains of extremely potent and durable anthrax samples. I.e. anthrax capable of surviving dispersion via an explosive , as well as being highly resistant to antibiotic treatments (read: Ciprofloxacin).
Even better, this site http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/ne...04/ixhome.html happily reports that enough anthrax to kill the world's population several times over sits unguarded on an island in the Aral Sea. With luck, it is no longer potent and/or stable enough to be used.

[BobT]

According to the World Health Organization Fact Sheet on Ebola http://www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact103.html
scientists don't even know where the Ebola virus resides. So, it's not like there's someone sitting on a stash of Ebola virus somewhere. So, a terrorist would seemingly have to wait for an outbreak to start, then go to that place, get infected and then put his plan into motion.

This seems like an awful lot of work when you could more easily just blow up a building or bridge.

Also, while you certainly don't wish to contract Ebola, the U.S. health care system is much better equipped to stop its spread than the countries where it has occurred before.

I'm still more worried about a 1919 flu-type outbreak than any sort of germ warfare.

[Ben]

http://www.defenselink.mil/other_info/agent.html

(I was studying anthrax recently, and this is one of the most informative of the non-technical websites.)

The long and short of it is that there are a lot of ways to get anthrax, and the severity of symptoms differ depending on how you're infected. The worst is inhalation anthrax, which is 90% fatal. It's easy for terrorists to spread, because it can be grown in bulk and freeze-dried. Freeze-drying causes the anthrax bacteria to enter a "spore" form which lets them sit dormant until they're sprayed on you with a crop duster.

Infection goes through two phases. In the first, you have no symptoms while the bacteria grow inside your body. In the second, enough bacterial toxins have accumulated in your bloodstream enough to cause symptoms, and nothing can flush out those toxins, so you're doomed. If you know (or suspect) you've been infected, you can take antibiotics to keep the bacterium in check during the first, asymptomatic phase until you can eradicate it from your body with a vaccination.

My understanding is that hospitals are currently stockpiling the appropriate antibiotics just in case, so distribution won't be quite so nightmarish as it could be.

Fun fact: Anthrax gets its name from the Latin word from "coal" (hence words like anthracite,) because when Anthrax infects an open wound, it causes a sore which becomes black in the center.

-Ben

[Ben]

Originally posted by epeepunk
According to the latest issue of Time Magazine:

I was a bit bothered by that Time report- it doesn't jibe with what I've read from other sources.

-Ben

[Bob Scene]

Am I the only one who read the subject line and jumped to the conclusion that Wildest Bill was actually George W. Bush and that he ought to be asking his advisers instead of us?

[coosa]

BobT, I think you are missing my point, so I must not be making it very well

A terrorist who had considered this possibility and made tentative plans to take advantage of such an outbreak had a 3-month long opportunity to put this sort of plan in action. Uganda would have been particularly convenient since it borders on Sudan, one of bin Laden's erstwhile 'supporters' - it is likely some of his followers were in Sudan at the time of this outbreak.

This seems like an awful lot of work when you could more easily just blow up a building or bridge.

It's easier to spend two or more years finding and training pilots capable of flying 747's that are also willing to crash them into buildings? And it's a lot easier to carry a virus or bacteria hidden invisibly inside your body than it is to find and transport explosive materials. Remember that we are talking about disrupting the country and killing bunches of people - a widespread Ebola outbreak would not only have shut down travel within the US, it most likely would have resulted in an international quarantine to avoid spreading the disease to the rest of the world.

the U.S. health care system is much better equipped to stop its spread than the countries where it has occurred before.

Yes, we are - once we identify the outbreak. How many hospitals and health care workers are going to assume that a seriously ill US citizen that has not traveled to any 'hot spots' recently is infected with something like Ebola? Especially if the initial cases are very widespread - it might take weeks to diagnose the disease and make a connection between a dead person in Miami and one in Chicago. Heck, rabies is a somewhat expected disease in the US, but it is seen so rarely by health care workers that diagnosis is usually made post-mortem. Do you expect better results with a disease that no one is expecting to see in the US?

Consider this scenario, which would have fit into the time frame of the Ebola outbreak in Uganda:

New Year's Eve, Times Square, NYC. Thousands of people are thronging the sidewalks and streets to celebrate the turning of the year. Two men suddenly climb on top of a car and blows themselves to smithereens, wounding the people nearby and splattering about 50 or so with blood and body parts. People are running and screaming, bumping into other people and smearing them with blood, etc. Others are grabbing and holding each other, also spreading the contamination further. Policemen, firefighters, and paramedics rush to the scene - more contamination. Injured people are transported to hospitals for emergency treatment; more are treated for shock - the disease is spread to the hospital workers because standard precautions (basically gloves and washed hands) aren't sufficient for Ebola. Within hours the exposure has spread to 300 or more people.

Many of the people at Times Square are from out-of-town so carry the virus back to their home towns when they leave. They go back to work, to parties, to movies; they interact with their family and friends. A week later a few of them - many now in widely-flung locations - begin developing symptoms of food poisoning or flu. More health care workers are exposed before definitely suspicious symptoms or the first autopsy results reveal the disease. All of the health care workers exposed will pass the disease on to many of the other patients they treat.

Now imagine that this same scenario is repeated in Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Chicago - or choose the cities of your choice. Or subsitute London, Paris, and Rome for a few of the US cities. To divert suspicion from their true motives, the 'bombers' have left consipuous messages saying they are members of a suicide cult like Heaven's Gate, so terrorist activity is not even suspected at first.

Something like Ebola scares me a lot more than anthrax, botulism, or plague. Anthrax is not contagious in person-to-person transmission, is treatable with antibiotics, and there is a vaccine available. Botulism, although very scary, is also not contagious, is treatable with botulism antitoxin, and is quickly and easily diagnosed because isolated infections occur frequently in the US. Plague is certainly contagious and often deadly, but is treatable with antibiotics, and infection through exposure for health care workers, for example, can be prevented by prophylactic antibiotics.

Ebola is highly contagious, deadly (depending on the mutation causing the infection), and the only treatment is supportive care while the body tries to overcome the infection. Why do you think the various world health organizations rush to help cope with any Ebola outbreak? The only reason Ebola (or a similar virus) hasn't become a a serious worldwide health threat is because the natural reservoir (whatever it may be) exists in largely undeveloped nations where international travel is not easy or frequent.

You might want to read this document: Biological and Chemical Terrorism: Strategic Plan for Preparedness and Response

In contrast, attacks with biological agents are more likely to be covert. They present
different challenges and require an additional dimension of emergency planning that
involves the public health infrastructure (Box 1). Covert dissemination of a biological
agent in a public place will not have an immediate impact because of the delay between
exposure and onset of illness (i.e., the incubation period). Consequently, the first casual-ties
of a covert attack probably will be identified by physicians or other primary health-care
providers. For example, in the event of a covert release of the contagious variola
virus, patients will appear in doctors’ offices, clinics, and emergency rooms during the
first or second week, complaining of fever, back pain, headache, nausea, and other symp-toms
of what initially might appear to be an ordinary viral infection. As the disease
progresses, these persons will develop the papular rash characteristic of early-stage
smallpox, a rash that physicians might not recognize immediately. By the time the rash
becomes pustular and patients begin to die, the terrorists would be far away and the
disease disseminated through the population by person-to-person contact. Only a short
window of opportunity will exist between the time the first cases are identified and a
second wave of the population becomes ill. During that brief period, public health officials
will need to determine that an attack has occurred, identify the organism, and prevent
more casualties through prevention strategies (e.g., mass vaccination or prophylactic
treatment). As person-to-person contact continues, successive waves of transmission
could carry infection to other worldwide localities. These issues might also be relevant
for other person-to-person transmissible etiologic agents (e.g., plague or certain viral
hemorrhagic fevers).

and, to be more specific:

Category A
The U.S. public health system and primary health-care providers must be
prepared to address varied biological agents, including pathogens that are rarely
seen in the United States. High-priority agents include organisms that pose a risk
to national security because they

can be easily disseminated or transmitted person-to-person;

cause high mortality, with potential for major public health impact;

might cause public panic and social disruption; and

require special action for public health preparedness (Box 2).
Category A agents include

variola major (smallpox);

Bacillus anthracis (anthrax);

Yersinia pestis (plague);

Clostridium botulinum toxin (botulism);

Francisella tularensis (tularaemia);

filoviruses,
— Ebola hemorrhagic fever,
— Marburg hemorrhagic fever; and

arenaviruses,
— Lassa (Lassa fever),
— Junin (Argentine hemorrhagic fever) and related viruses.

[BobT]

OK coosa no more "Hot Zone" reading for you.

I will grant you that a plan you describe could work, but it still requires far more planning and technical skill than hijacking a plane.

I would still hope that the U.S. government works on protecting its citizens from the most likely scenario rather than trying to combat a worst case scenario that I still think is unlikely to occur.

[edwino]

My anthrax anecdote:

My grandfather got cutaneous anthrax once (he worked in the sheepskin business). It was in the 1960s in South Africa, and he was quarantined for a week or so. He got better.

[Cartooniverse]

Originally posted by jarbabyj
Yes, I believe it's Air Supply

I'd like to disagree slightly and perhaps, with your permission, or persimmon, re-arrange to suit my fancy, okay?
How about........

When on the air, you need a good supply of YES



Cartooniverse

[glass onion]

coosa...he asked for an ANECDOTE, not two twenty minute speeches.

[coosa]

Originally posted by BobT
OK coosa no more "Hot Zone" reading for you.

Forget "Hot Zone" - I read The White Plague, The Stand, and Outbreak!

[coosa]

Originally posted by glass onion
coosa...he asked for an ANECDOTE, not two twenty minute speeches.

You mean it took you twenty minutes to read each of my posts?

It didn't take me that long to write them!

[BobT]

Originally posted by coosa

Forget "Hot Zone" - I read The White Plague, The Stand, and Outbreak!

I'm surprise you even go outside without a biosuit after all that reading.

[tramp]

The Hot Zone was a horribly written book, it was like pulling teeth to get through it. In the end, it made me wish i had my $10 back.