Richard Preston's The Hot Zone is an excellent nonfiction account of a deadly virus from the central rain forests of Africa that suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington DC. The Virus is highly contagious and has no cure. This book describes many frightening encounters with this virus and the effects it has on the human body, getting more and more graphic as the book continues. It also attempts to explain where and why the viruses originated.
             From reading The Hot Zone one can interpret two main themes, the first of which involves the idea that the Ebola virus could spread very rapidly if airborne. In today's society, with the worldwide use of airplanes, an airborne virus could travel from country to another in a matter of hours. Many of the outbreaks occurred as a result of infected people traveling to other areas and infecting people there. With the use of airplanes a virus such as an airborne strand of Ebola could destroy the world. Another major theme in this book is Preston's idea that disease is nature's defense. Preston says,
             In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not 'like' the idea of five billion humans. Or it could also be said that the extreme amplification of the human race, which has occurred only in the past hundred years or so, has suddenly produced a very large quantity of meat, which is sitting everywhere in the biosphere and may not be able to defend itself against a life form that might want to consume it. Nature has interesting ways of balancing itself. The rain forest has its own defens...