It is still "out there'. In fact, Soviet defectors confessed in the 's that the USSR had developed and was testing weaponized smallpox and anthrax. Undocumented reserves of smallpox not only sit dormant in hidden freezers but are probably secretly researched and held as possible bio-weapons.
Scientists continue to debate funding new smallpox research to develop a new vaccine as a defense. What if one of these smallpox samples falls into the hands of terrorists?
What makes smallpox unique is that it is highly contagious. Smallpox floats and travels easily, quickly and far distances through the air. One single virus particle can drift along in the air for over nine miles before a person unknowingly inhales it and becomes infected.
During that time incubation period, you will feel normal and have no idea you have smallpox. Then, the illness hits you with full force. You will come down with a fever, sore throat, fatigue, splitting headache and eventually vomiting. You will assume you have a very nasty case of the flu. No doctor will be able to tell that you have smallpox, until it is too late.
Then, a few days later the more severe symptoms of smallpox will emerge. Three kinds of smallpox and their symptoms 1. Normal Smallpox. After the flu like symptoms are in full force, painful blisters will form all over your body, like a cobblestone road. The blisters eventually turn into scabs which tear away from your skin. The tearing away from the skin is extremely painful. Your eyes swell shut with blisters and pus which can cause blindness in some people.
It is too painful to eat, drink or talk as blisters form in your mouth and throat. If you survive you will have ugly scars all over your body from the blisters. The skin darkens until it looks charred, mottled and silky to the touch. The skin begins to slip off the body in sheets.
Black pox is close to a hundred per cent fatal. If any sign of it appears in the body, the victim will almost certainly die. The virus destroys the linings of the throat, mouth, stomach, intestines, rectum, and vagina as these membranes disintegrate. It destroys the body's entire skin -- both exterior skin and interior. The whites of the eyes turn red with blood and continue to fill with blood until they look black. The virus attacks the immune system so the body cannot produce pus.
For some reason, the victims remain conscious and acutely aware of what is happening to them until death. With accessible air travel all over the globe now, it would only take about six weeks for a smallpox epidemic to spread throughout the entire world. I understand that these are distressing, gruesome matters that a lot of us prefer to avoid, but sometimes it is better to uncomfortable and informed than to remain in ignorance bliss. Bt the way, how's that cold of yours doing? View all 4 comments.
Shelves: science , non-fiction , ebook. If you're looking to become bugfuck paranoid about smallpox, then this is the book for you.
Act now and you'll receive a heightened awareness of anthrax at no additional cost! An in-depth look at the history of smallpox, the enormous international effort undertaken to eradicate the virus, and just how vulnerable we are to it now. Also the many ways Russia, North Korea, and Iraq are probably going to kill us with genetically engineered bioweapons.
Basically after reading this you're ne Non-Fiction. Basically after reading this you're never going to want to leave the house again, or let anyone else into it. Because who knows where they've been. This takes place over decades, which makes it a little hard to keep track of all the players. Plus at no time does Preston explain why this book starts out with the anthrax attacks, then moves on to smallpox. There was supposedly some unfounded fear that the anthrax was laced with smallpox, but that never went anywhere, so it's a weak connection to build an entire book around.
Some of the same agencies and people were involved in both matters, but the two threads weren't tied together as well as I would have liked. Four stars. It's like true crime, but with viruses. Don't read it if you're sensitive to blood, descriptions of the complete failure of the human body, or animal testing.
View all 8 comments. Mar 29, Cynthia rated it liked it. We're all going to die from smallpox! No, wait Or is it mousepox?
This is the second book I've read from Richard Preston. You'd have thought that I'd have run screaming from his writing after reading The Hot Zone. But, no. I had to read more. Granted, it has been many years since the mere thought of recycled air on a plane gave me th Ack!
Granted, it has been many years since the mere thought of recycled air on a plane gave me the heebie jeebies, but still You thought that smallpox had been eradicated and that the remaining seeds of the virus had been destroyed.
You would be wrong. You thought that the smallpox vaccination that you got 50 years ago is still protecting you. Not only is smallpox still around, but our friendly neighborhood scientists have experimented with the damned virus for so long, it's possible that if there is an outbreak, the world might have to deal with a super-virus.
Oh, joy. Richard Preston goes into fairly graphic detail when he writes about pox, what it does and how it does what it does. Wait, there's more. The author veers from variola our pox's true name after the anthrax attacks in He revisits the anthrax laced letters that were mailed to two senators and several news agencies. He reminds us about the postal workers who died from anthrax, the elderly woman who died from anthrax because she inhaled a few spores that were clinging to a letter that was processed in the same facility as the anthrax letters.
He reminds us that five people altogether died from that attack. He also reminds us that no one was ever caught Scary and scarier. The book is fairly disjointed. It starts out as a warning about smallpox and then suddenly takes off in the direction of anthrax.
It jumps around fairly frequently. However, I found the whole thing fascinating. Preston uses a casual narrative style, which makes the book easy to read and easy to understand.
Fascinating and unsettling. Did you know that there is a pox for just about every living creature? Me either. But there is.
And you'll hear about them all in this book. One word of warning I tried taking the book with me to a restaurant. Bad move. Weeping pustules and pasta primavera do not mix.
Nov 25, Annie rated it liked it Shelves: science. Not quite as heart-pounding as Preston's The Hot Zone which had me seeing the world differently for a few weeks, but not a bad book at all.
For fans of The Hot Zone , we get to revisit some of our familiar characters and settings. The book seems like it's going to be about anthrax, based on the opening chapter, but in fact anthrax is but a tiny part of this book, which Not quite as heart-pounding as Preston's The Hot Zone which had me seeing the world differently for a few weeks, but not a bad book at all.
The book seems like it's going to be about anthrax, based on the opening chapter, but in fact anthrax is but a tiny part of this book, which is primarily devoted to smallpox which seems irrelevant post-Eradication, but isn't.
The meat of the book smallpox is bookended at the beginning and ending with anthrax. The book is memorable for the quote "This was not your mother's anthrax.
I didn't like this one at all This is my second and likely last from author Richard Preston. I was interested to hear a more in-depth take on the Anthrax attacks of The book's narrative jumps around quite a lot; talking about Ebola, AIDS, Smallpox, vaccinations, and other assorted topics. It only spends a fraction of its pages on the attacks, and even less on the anthrax bacillus I think his writing style is what grates on me the most; there's just something I find seriously lack I didn't like this one at all I think his writing style is what grates on me the most; there's just something I find seriously lacking in his pages.
Anyhow, I would not recommend this book to others. Dec 15, Jen rated it really liked it. By Richard Preston the author of The Hot Zone , this book provides a behind-the-scenes look at some true horrors: biological weapons. This non-fiction book discusses historical outbreaks, the public health responses that followed, discoveries that have been made, and plans for potential future attacks.
There are suspenseful stories where people missed the beginnings of an epidemic, tales of the fight against smallpox, and a day-by-day account of the anthrax letter attacks in , among many mo By Richard Preston the author of The Hot Zone , this book provides a behind-the-scenes look at some true horrors: biological weapons. There are suspenseful stories where people missed the beginnings of an epidemic, tales of the fight against smallpox, and a day-by-day account of the anthrax letter attacks in , among many more.
This book reads very much like a scientific thriller, and it is startling to remember that everything is a true story. I found this read to be informative, interesting, and full of rich material. Unfortunately, the author took the liberty of jumping around between diseases and timelines, which results in a disjointed read that is sometimes difficult to follow.
Overall, this book is a reminder that knowledge is power, and that knowing our past can help us prepare for the future. In the setting of a current pandemic, I feel that these reads are so important.
I recommend this book for anyone looking to better understand the history of smallpox eradication and the development of defenses against bioterrorism told in story format. Oct 20, Mauri rated it it was ok Shelves: non-fiction , epidemiology. Perhaps not the greatest book for the almost completely trained epidemiologist and maybe not for the general public too. The epidemiologist will likely be bored, unless they've been buried in cancer epi classes or something and miss their ID lectures.
If you're looking to read everything ever written on smallpox you might as well skim this, but there's nothing new or earth-shattering here. For the general public looking to bone up on ways you can die while drowning in your own blood, I ask you to Perhaps not the greatest book for the almost completely trained epidemiologist and maybe not for the general public too.
For the general public looking to bone up on ways you can die while drowning in your own blood, I ask you to take a quick glance at the publication date. Go find something written this decade. Preston's writing about how Russia, Iraq, and North Korea are all out to kill us sounds believable and scary, until you remember that we were told that we invaded Iraq partially because we thought they had WMDs including biowarfare capabilities or hopes , but turned up jack shit.
Want to be scared about something? Pandemic flu is coming for you and it isn't going to need terrorists to help it along. Look up dual use research of concern - the fact that we're getting ever closer to just being able to make smallpox whole cloth in a lab, forget stockpiles in Siberia. There are other annoyances - Preston makes out like the CDC was wasting thousands of dollars every year storing smallpox vaccine, then destroyed most of the stockpile "just to save a few thousand dollars a year".
Then in the next section, it's revealed that the smallpox vaccine is kind of shitty and while having enough on hand to vaccinate the civilian population sounds like a great idea, a decision to vaccinate would be a decision to let a lot of people die from vaccine-related complications. Dude, make up your mind. Then there's the fact that the book opens with the anthrax mailings and then quickly segues into smallpox with no explanation.
I thought we'd eventually move back to anthrax which did eventually happen or onto other biowarfare possibilities, but I guess when Preston called the book "The Demon in the Freezer" he only had one demon on his mind. The book jumps around quite a bit and is a little hard to follow along, so I kept waiting to see how the author would connect all the dots, and was left a little disappointed in the story-telling overall.
It starts out discussing smallpox and its supposed eradication in the 70s. Then it switches to the various poxes that exist seriously, there's one for practically every creature roaming the planet , and about trans-species jumps some poxes take that can be a threat to humans, if not now, then possibly some point in the future.
Then it goes back to the smallpox eradication, and explains how some variations were kept, only later to be considered a threat and questions of destroying all stockpiles were then raised, except by then, it was too late, because it was feared that some may already be in the wrong hands, being engineered as a weapon and just fyi, that vaccine you may have gotten as a child was only protective for about years after you got it.
The author establishes it pretty well that for years prior to this event, scientists and the government have long been concerned about that possibility, but I was left overwhelmed and not entirely sure how all this information fit together, and he never quite spelled it out for me. So I guess this is a story about how no one was caught in the anthrax attacks, so it serves as a reminder to us all about how easy it would be for a bioterrorist attack to occur again.
Except next time, it might not be anthrax which isn't contagious , it might be smallpox which is highly contagious. Any country could have it this point, it's the most deadly virus known to us, and the global effects of an engineered or even accidental release would be catastrophic. It's fascinating and scary-as-hell subject matter, but the story here could have been told better.
This is a chilling account of the eradication of smallpox in the s, the Anthrax mailings in , and the possibility of future bioterrorism using genetically-modified strains of smallpox designed to infect even those vaccinated against the disease. Officially variola majora smallpox only exists in freezers in the Centers for Disease Control and in the Russian Vector lab.
Through interviews with those involved with the eradication and working to prevent bioterrorism a strong case is made fo This is a chilling account of the eradication of smallpox in the s, the Anthrax mailings in , and the possibility of future bioterrorism using genetically-modified strains of smallpox designed to infect even those vaccinated against the disease.
Through interviews with those involved with the eradication and working to prevent bioterrorism a strong case is made for the Soviet government creating genetically-modified smallpox by the ton into the s and how these virii might currently be in the possession of rogue nations. You'll also learn why smallpox is most-likely the worst virus ever inflicted upon humankind and is much more dangerous than Ebola, Avian Flu, or AIDS.
From is is estimated that smallpox is responsible for the death of over one billion humans worldwide. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. The book begins with a discussion of the lethal bioweapons attack that took place early in October of In this instance, letters containing anthrax were mailed to publications and Senate offices in the United States.
Preston then shifts his focus to the eradication of smallpox, an effort that consumed scientists and fieldworkers around the globe. Though a series of deadly smallpox cases erupted in Germany in the early s, smallpox eradicators succeeded in containing the damage from the disease and—under the guidance of D. Henderson—driving smallpox from its possible strongholds in Asia. The final naturally occurring case of the virus arose in Officially, smallpox traces are preserved in only two locations—one laboratory freezer facility in the United States and a second in Russia.
It is impossible to say, however, whether other countries have clandestine smallpox samples. Bioterror is now chillingly real. In his new, sleeker book, The Demon in the Freezer , Preston segues neatly from the genuine tragedy of the anthrax assault to the possible, deliberate spread of the highly contagious and deadly smallpox virus. This time, Preston explores a threat befitting his heated prose.
A once uncontrollable, tormenting disease affecting only humans, smallpox was officially wiped off the planet in , thanks to the extraordinary vaccination effort of the World Health Organization. But bioterror experts believe that rogue stocks must exist—including, Preston indicates, unaccounted tons of secretly cultured virus in the former Soviet Union. And these supplies may be within reach of the perniciously inclined. With aptly grim verbiage, Preston captures the closing wreckage of smallpox, a disease long forgotten or entirely unknown to most.
When he coughed or tried to move, it felt as if his skin were pulling off his body, that it would split or rupture. Smallpox is the supreme bioterror threat, because the disease is so agonizing, easily transmissible, and ultimately lethal.
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