The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

The Cobra Event by Richard Preston is a fictional novel taking place in New York City about biological weapons (bioweapons), a living infectious organism used as a weapon or a nonliving toxin derived from a living organism and used as a weapon usually in the form of tiny particles that would be released into the air, forensics, the science of looking at physical evidence to analyze a crime and identify it’s perpetrator, and the seriousness of biological weapons in general. In this book the events, characters, and the disease “Cobra” are fictional, but the historic background, government structures, and science are real or based on what is possible. The book is divided into six parts. Chapters within the parts develop the story more and more as you read on and some chapters contain real information about the use, development and thoughts about biological weapons. I will try to summarize the book as best as possible without giving away too much information on what happened in the book just in case you would like to read it yourselves.

In “Part One: Trial” the book begins with the horrible death of a teenage girl named Kate Moran who has an unknown virus. In “Part Two: 1969” the chapter “Forbidden Zone” contains fictional characters portraying a real event called the Johnston Atoll Field Trials. The Johnston Atoll trials were the large scale testing of biological weapons carried out by the U.S. military between 1964 and 1969 in areas of open sea downwind of Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The Johnston Atoll Field Trials let a biological agent out over the sea where ships were stationed with cages of monkeys, the test subjects. The weapon killed all monkeys who had inhaled enough of it. The chapter “Invisible History (I.)” in “Part Two: 1969” is an account of real history. In this chapter Preston writes about when President Nixon made a statement about biological weapons on November 25, 1969 saying “Germ warfare: this has massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences…Mankind already carries in it’s own hands too many of the seeds of it’s own destruction…” (page 24, paragraph 2). In 1972 the U.S., along with the Soviet Union and Great Britain, signed the Biological Weapons Convention which forbid the development, production, and stockpiling of bioweapons in their countries. Although all three countries signed the Convention hoping that other countries would follow the example vast advancements in bioweapons still occurred with no one knowing where or when.

In “Part Three: Diagnosis” Preston introduces one of the main characters Alice Austen M.D (who is also the protagonist). She is an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer who works for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The E.I.S. is a service where people enroll in a two year fellowship to investigate disease outbreaks all over the United States. The Centers for Disease Control is the premier United States federal agency for epidemiology, the study of epidemics of disease, disease control, and disease prevention. One day while at work Austen gets an opportunity from her boss to travel to New York and observe autopsies of two people. Throughout “Part Three: Diagnosis” Austen and other scientists and doctors try to diagnose a sickness that four people had contracted and died from in a matter of days, including Kate Moran. She goes around New York City looking for any possible clues that would link the deaths of the four people together so that it would be easier to find out the maker of the biological weapon.

In “Part Four: Decision” there is the first look at the antagonist Archimedes, later identified as Tom Cope who is the creator of the biological weapon Austen tries to identify. An operation called “Reachdeep” is also established fully committed to finding Tom Cope and to finding out the code behind the disease they named “Cobra” at their first SIOC meeting. SIOC stands for Strategic Information Operations Center which is located at the F.B.I. headquarters, and in the book during the SIOC meetings different branches of the U.S. government would hold video sessions concerning the “Cobra” virus, how it could possibly be stopped, who created it and so on. “Part Five: Reachdeep” is all about the criminal investigation behind the “Cobra” happenings. During “Part Five: Reachdeep” Austen and the “Reachdeep” members study the virus, find out what genes it has, and study forensic evidence. The reader also gets a look into Tom Cope’s house and the way he thinks.

The last part of the book “Part Six: The Operation” is the best part of the book, in my opinion. This part of the book is about finding out where the original virus that was used to produce “Cobra” came from and who was altering it. This part of the book is also the most suspenseful because “Reachdeep” finds where Tom Cope does his handy work with bioweapons, but while trying to capture him they are led into a wild goose chase through the subways and tunnels of New York City trying to find him.

This book relates to science concepts because even though the book is about weapons it has to do with biological weapons. Biological weapons can be very dangerous and threatening to the people who make them and to the people who could encounter them. People who work with bioweapons have to take very high standards of precaution. They must wear protective body gear and be very careful of how they handle it. Just one slip-up could mean the end for someone working with a fatal biological weapon. If an everyday person were exposed to a bioweapon then it would be even worse for them because they wouldn’t know it was there, how it works, or what it does. Even though countries said that they wouldn’t make, use, or practice with bioweapons work with them is going on all around the world. It is imperative that the people working with the bioweapons keep it a secret, though, even if they have no intention of using them because enforcement groups, people, and countries would take it as a threat to their well being. The fact that bioweapons can be living is very dangerous because if they were to get inside of your body they would act as a virus. Replicating themselves or changing the cells in in one’s body and spreading. “They were between one micron and five microns across, the ideal size for a weaponized bioparticle…To get an idea of the size of such a particle, you can think of it this way: about fifty particles lined up in a row would span the thickness of a human hair…One or two such particles trapped in the lung, if they are a weapon, can cause a fatal infection that kills in three days.” (page 17, paragraph 2). The bioweapon talked about in this quote is one in the book, but the information given about the weapon can be reality if a truly dangerous bioweapon were to be released into the air.

Another science concept in this book was forensics. Throughout the book the main character, Alice Austen, looks at other things that lead her and her partners to finding the person who was testing “Cobra” on people. On pages 142 to 145 the main character Austen looks at boxes which were pieces of forensic evidence that ultimately leads her team members on a trip to East Africa to find out where the boxes were made and who bought them, ultimately leading Austen and her colleagues to the perpetrator they were looking for.

The scenarios portrayed in the book could possibly happen in the real world. In the introduction of the book Richard Preston wrote that he did tons of research to make the happenings in the book as real as possible, meaning that he talked to enforcement workers, scientists, and many other people to make sure that the way the character do things in the book would be closely similar to how they do those same things in real life. If someone in the real world were as careful and precise as the antagonist I think it would be very possible for something like “The Cobra Event” to happen. If this book became reality it would turn our society upside down. In the book the government keeps the information about what was going on a secret from the public, which is something the real government does all the time, but if the situation got out of hand and the people had to be told then I think havoc would take place. Citizens would start to panic, protests would occur, violence would increase, criminal rates would rise, and people would try to find a way out even if it was too late. In the book, through all of the happenings, very few people died from “Cobra” because of where events happened and how they happened, but in general the virus was still very dangerous. If big amounts of “Cobra” were distributed in large cities in the real world then our society would be ruined. “Cobra” could kill someone in two or three days after the person became infected and if populations were to be infected with Cobra then thousands of people would die because the virus, as portrayed in the book, replicates in the body quickly which makes it fatal.

Overall, The Cobra Event by Richard Preston was an amazing and interesting book. It’s engaging, informational, and has great suspense. It really opens your eyes to how important it is to pay attention to biological weapons because they can be extremely dangerous as shown in this fictional book. When you read the last page you’ll be thinking “Is it over already?”