Richard Preston's "The Cobra Event"
03-14-03, 04:44 PM
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Richard Preston's "The Cobra Event"
I'm just back from a week in the sunny tropics. While down there, I bought a first edition of this book for $1 at a used bookstore, figuring that the guy who wrote "The Hot Zone" should prove reliable. I figured I'd read it on the beach or while sitting by the pool.
Long story short: I read it in one night and this book scared the **** out of me. Sure, the book was a typical Preston paranoia-fest with paper-thin characters, unnecesary gore and many, many slow spots. However, I was completely unprepared for just how plausible the book is. After reading this book, you become convinced that biological weapons are:
1. strategic weapons that are probably worse than nuclear weapons.
2. easily assembled using mail-order parts on a semi-shoestring budget.
3. limitlessly destructive, these weapons are slate-clearers.
The book provides several terrifying facts. For example, I was unaware that biological weapons are on a different tier from chemical weapons, they are far worse. I was unaware that the US had conducted field trials of biological agents in the Johnston atoll in the sixties that resulted in a 100% fatality rate in monkeys miles from the initial "laydown". I was unaware that biological weapons are so terrifying and so effective that the US (under Nixon!) formally banned them in 1970.
Making the book even more plausible, the book was written in 1997, but Preston predicted mobile biological weapons labs built inside trucks in Iraq. Colin Powell presented of real world evidence of just such labs to the UN last month. Also, the virus Preston outlines in the book does in fact exist and is commonly available to research labs. I looked up all of the equipment and materials needed for Preston's weaponization prcess and, while he does obscure some of the underlying technology, it all can be had through the mail on the internet. All it really takes is a few hundred thousand dollars and the will to do it and you've got an undetectable WMD that could level NYC is a matter of weeks. The book makes it seem possible. Yikes.
Yes the book succumbs to needless action-movie cliches and simplistic moralizing, but it makes a terrific read and is even more plausible in the current world climate. Read with the light on.
PS: looking forward to reading "Demon in the Freezer" by Preston, all about smallpox.
Long story short: I read it in one night and this book scared the **** out of me. Sure, the book was a typical Preston paranoia-fest with paper-thin characters, unnecesary gore and many, many slow spots. However, I was completely unprepared for just how plausible the book is. After reading this book, you become convinced that biological weapons are:
1. strategic weapons that are probably worse than nuclear weapons.
2. easily assembled using mail-order parts on a semi-shoestring budget.
3. limitlessly destructive, these weapons are slate-clearers.
The book provides several terrifying facts. For example, I was unaware that biological weapons are on a different tier from chemical weapons, they are far worse. I was unaware that the US had conducted field trials of biological agents in the Johnston atoll in the sixties that resulted in a 100% fatality rate in monkeys miles from the initial "laydown". I was unaware that biological weapons are so terrifying and so effective that the US (under Nixon!) formally banned them in 1970.
Making the book even more plausible, the book was written in 1997, but Preston predicted mobile biological weapons labs built inside trucks in Iraq. Colin Powell presented of real world evidence of just such labs to the UN last month. Also, the virus Preston outlines in the book does in fact exist and is commonly available to research labs. I looked up all of the equipment and materials needed for Preston's weaponization prcess and, while he does obscure some of the underlying technology, it all can be had through the mail on the internet. All it really takes is a few hundred thousand dollars and the will to do it and you've got an undetectable WMD that could level NYC is a matter of weeks. The book makes it seem possible. Yikes.
Yes the book succumbs to needless action-movie cliches and simplistic moralizing, but it makes a terrific read and is even more plausible in the current world climate. Read with the light on.
PS: looking forward to reading "Demon in the Freezer" by Preston, all about smallpox.
03-14-03, 04:52 PM
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Oh yeah....terrific book. "Wet-your-pants scary" is how I described it. Preston really does his research and it makes his fiction that much more alarming. He can write his ass off.
