Just watched the scariest program on TV: National Geographic The Hot Zone

[question everything]

Fiction, at that stage, but with the world getting smaller, with millions of people moving around the globe, with, no doubt, this administration has cut funds for national labs - scary.

And there are two more nights of this.

[CottonBear]

1. I read the book & attended a lecture by the US Army veterinarians in the book.

Fascinating and terrifying stuff.

Get the book {The Hot Zone).

[Blue_playwright]

2. I second that Rec.

It’s not they type of book you’d expect to reread but I find myself pulling it off the shelf every couple of years.

[CottonBear]

3. I've read it over and over. It is excellent. NT

[Brother Buzz]

4. I read that book decades ago and made a lasting and chilling impression on me

This cable challenged individual will start snooping around to find the series on the internet

[question everything]

7. Spouse read it some 20 years ago and I remember how scare I was

when described the progression of Ebola.

Cannot find it now. On occasions we remove many books from the bookshelves.

[pansypoo53219]

5. i read the non fiction-the coming plague.

[MFM008]

6. The book

Scared the crap out of me.

[YOHABLO]

8. Well someone could also rent a crop duster and spray a city with anthrax

Not much we can do about it. With this administration I don't feel any safer.

[Laffy Kat]

9. The book, "The Hot Zone" is non-fiction.

I didn't see but a little of the TV series premiere last night but it did seem to follow the book so far. In the book, it was not Ebola but another filovirus, Marburg.

If you want to be "pee-your-pants" horrifying, I'd recommend Preston's novel "The Cobra Event". It is about a lunatic biochem-ish scientist/terrorist who tries to infect the population with a hybrid virus made by splicing human and insect viruses. The resulting disease is beyond terrifying. I couldn't put the novel down as much as I wanted to. As I said, it is fiction, but it's not "way out there" fiction.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/p/richard-preston/cobra-event.htm

[Ilsa]

10. I read The Hot Zone and The Coming Plague 20 years ago.

Scared me. I thought I had it set to record last night, but it didn't. Fortunately, it will all record tonight.

[Hortensis]

11. At least we now have an effective vaccine for ebola, which

they didn't in 1989. It's only nearly approval, but courtesy of the emergency in DR Congo it's been tested on a real epidemic.

Btw, I remember, back in...2007, 2009? I think, that our government censored news coverage of a major flu outbreak that might have been the big one. We had had the usual flu coverage, then when I wondered and searched for an update after a period of not "thinking about it" I discovered no lay-level coverage at all on the internet. Media blackout. Some technical communications presumably too arcane to get people excited were being allowed.

I've read that the practice of withholding information to keep people from "panicking" is being questioned with better understanding of how people do react and the value of information, but today's Republican politicians aren't exactly forward thinkers or respectful of citizen rights. So the first indication we could have of a development of a dangerous pandemic here might be discovering a black hole on the net where everything else is discussed.