Three days ago I woke up in the middle of the night in the Lesch-Nyhan position – my one leg and its opposite hand folded, almost like a criss-cross position. A cold sweat ran over me, and I immediately switched on the bed lights; First I checked myself whether I had bit off my fingers (I am known to bite my nails), and then checked if my lips were still all right and not tethered. Five minutes later I realized that I was probably seeing a nightmare; – no, I didn’t see a dream, I just enacted a nightmare and it was downright took me out of myself.
Such was the effect of this book – The Cobra Event by Richard Preston on me after reading this brilliant novel on bio terror. Even Prey with all its technical geek didn’t give me the shivers as this book did; its not a horror novel, but simply a possibility of a horror affecting our lives. A horror more powerful than a nuclear bomb; a horror which really threatens humanity as a whole. And to think it all begins with one little DNA strand; a strand of A, T, C, and G all in different formations, different structures, from different diseases. All it takes is a strand of 100,000 or more or less A, T, C and Gs to make up a DNA of the virus strand which only electron microscopes have had the ability to see. And to imagine, humanity may simply be challenged by it.
Witness a shockingly descriptive narration of a school girl dying in the prologue. It takes ten pages to imagine the symptoms – and when you do it, a picture emerges in your mind of horrifying impact a single genetically modified molecule can have on a human body. The chilling start only begins to expose a thrilling novel, on the possibilities and the reality of bio terrorism in our lives
The Cobra Event is story of a mysterious virus in New York which begins to take people’s lives in a matter of few hours. The unexplained deaths became a basis for exploration for a group of people who must delve into the deeper aspects of biology to uncover exactly what was the virus made up. You as a reader join them on their pursuit of not only finding out exactly what the virus is all about, but also about finding ‘who’ exactly leaked it out. You travel through forensic sciences, the symptoms decision, and the pursuit of that elusive strand of the virus. You are thrilled some exciting moments and some tense moments good enough to keep your midnight oil burning. One notices how damn realistically it all could be possible – and we are never as safe as we had always imagined ourselves to be.
The next day after I got up, the day went smoothly at the office. As I climbed the shuttle I was going to take back home, I noticed there was a pungent smell in the bus and I couldn’t figure it. The bus was packed, and I had to sit at the far end where the smell was the strongest – it was kind of medical smell, as if someone was putting on a Vicks on their face. And yet, I thought what if some one had caught a ‘different’ kind of cold? The cold is contagious, has 100 different strands of its own and one of those which does not have a vaccine. What if someone had sprayed something in the bus – nearly three people seemed to be running a nose. How was I sure that some idiotic insane decided to run a bio test on live humans right in this bus? Could it be possible? Well, very truly yes – after all how many would actually notice in 5 billion people on earth about such a measly group of people in a bus. I told myself, I was again enacting a nightmare and all is still definitely well with world.
The Cobra Event itself is a work of fiction, however the background isn’t. The background research is not a self thought of situations, but rather an extension of what has already been achieved in bio terror research and what is being pursued currently. The story is fictional, and yet the historical rupture is not. The historical notes on different important events of bio terror weapons being tested in the world secretly makes for a quite a shocking read, which not only thrills you, but leaves you cold. The authenticity of the research only makes it a more compelling read.
Allow yourself to ask questions – ‘Is AIDS an experiment gone horribly wrong?’ – ‘Why is Anthrax so powerful?’ – ‘Is man creating the ultimate weapon against himself?’ – ‘Do animals spread virus to human bodies?’
In an era where thrillers have ceased to become movie scripts, this book comes a welcome change. Here is a thriller written as a book and not as a trashy script – thereby increasing the thrill element. The author uses a lot jumbo vocabulary in biology enough to split your head. Unless with a preliminary knowledge of biology, it would not be very easy to follow the book – however anybody with a secondary degree though should understand the concept of the book.
All in all, this one is a must read books on the real terror behind biological weapons and how in itself man seems to be creating the ultimate weapon against himself.
For the past weeks I have been hearing about the spread of Bird-Flu amongst people in Thailand. Inherently a chicken disease, there are cases of people being affected and dying rather too quickly. The virus spread across a few more countries by this week; the WHO is worried about the virus and its possible mutation with a common cold. The results could be ghastly – what started as a dangerous disease in chickens might just turn out be a nasty mutated virus affecting humans rather too quickly and become a highly infectious disease. A fully functional vaccine against the virus is still nearly six months away; hopefully that’s not too late.
Now comes the point – is this yet another experiment gone horribly wrong? Or am I just enacting another nightmare?