Hot Zone
Imagine walking into a tiny village in Africa, suffering and dying from some unknown virus. As you approach the huts you hear the wails of pure agony from the afflicted tribe members. Coming closer, you smell the stench of vomit mixed with the bitter smell of warm blood. People inside lay dying in pools of their own vital fluids, coughing and vomiting up their own liquefied internal organs; their faces emotionless masks loosely hanging from their skulls, the connective tissue and collagen in their bodies turned to mush. Their skin bubbled up into a sea of tiny white blisters and spontaneous rips occurring at the slightest touch, pouring blood that refuses to coagulate. Hemmorging and massive clotting underneath the skin causing black and blue bruises all over the body. Their mouths bleeding around their teeth from hemorrhaging saliva glands and the sloughing off of their own tongues, throat lining, and wind pipe, crying tears of pure blood from hemorrhaging tear ducts and the disintegration of the eyeball lining and bleeding from every opening on the body. You see the blood spattered room and pools of black vomit, expelled during the epileptic convulsions that accompany the last stages of death. Their hearts have
Gene Johnson, the civilian virus hunter working for the army who specialized in Ebola, perhaps showed the most fear and total respect for its destructive capabilities and unpredictable nature. Having visited Africa, researching, studying, and actually staring the virus in the face, Gene knew the virus all to well. In the winter of 1989, the foreigner made its first appearance on the North American continent via an infected monkey who been shipped here from the Philippines. An "unknown virus" was sweeping through a monkey house in West Virginia, first noticed by some runny noses and loss of appetite, ending a few days later with death; bloody noses, swollen livers, and enlarged spleens. First perceived to be Marburg, one of the filovirus sisters, it was later revealed to actually be the more lethal Ebola. An operation was organized to nuke the monkey house, to destroy the virus, along with every living thing inside; every monkey was assumed a carrier. Of all the people involved in the Reston operation, Gene Johnson was actually the most fearful; due to his in depth knowledge of the killer. He knew the possibilities if the virus were to escape the monkey house, through an air duct or walk out inside the body of one of the animal caretakers. He knew that if the virus was airborne, which was what they were finding evidence of, the virus could circle the whole entire earth, wiping out large populations in a matter of days. He didn't sleep for days during the operation, perhaps out of sheer terror of the idea of an outbreak right here in our own homeland (or in the human race at all for that matter). The effects could rival those of the Bubonic plague if the virus were to go airborne. Another character, however, who had had close contact (almost too close at one point) was Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax. She, along with Peter Jharling (the codiscoverer of the new strain of Ebola in the Reston monkey house, which was actually found not to be damaging to humans) and Gene Johnson had worked in Level 4 labs at the Institute on numerous occasions. Nancy, at first, seemed to be enthralled by the idea of holding a deadly agent in the palm of her hand. Only a few layers of rubber and latex separated the hot zone of the lab from the inner safety of her space suit. However, it wasn't until the Reston incident that Nancy fully understood the potential biological disaster that unseen agent could cause. Nancy, and her husband Jerry, head o
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1655
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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