The Cobra Event Summary

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a.) The Cobra Event is a 1998 thriller novel written by Richard Preston. It describes an attempted bioterrorism attack on the United States. The criminal, Tom Cope, of the attack has genetically engineered a virus, called "Cobra”, which is a mix of the highly contagious common cold with one of the world's most infectious diseases, smallpox. The disease that results from the virus, called brain-pox in the novel, has symptoms that mimic the common cold and the dangerous Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. The book is separated into descriptions, or sections of the virus, and the government's attempt to stop the imminent threat. The story begins one spring morning in New York City when a seventeen-year-old student wakes up feeling really ill. She seems to be coming down with a cold. Hours later she is having violent seizures and has begun a terrible process of self-cannibalization. She is soon dead. When other gruesome deaths of a similar nature are discovered, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta send epidemiologist, Dr. Alice Austen an expert in epidemiology, to investigate. Then she discovers a federal crisis. II.) Setting(s) a.) New York City b.) South America c.) Atlanta d.) East Africa III.) Characters a.)Kate Morgan -She was the first character to be introduced. Though she…show more content…
Alice Austen views the autopsy of Kate Morgan, it reveals that the dead girl's central nervous system was ravaged, and her brain turned into a ''glassy pudding,'' by some unknown but fast and replicating virus. When two other identical fatalities, a homeless man and an antiques dealers, are reported Austen turns into a medical sleuth, trying to trace the source of the infection to a couple of wooden novelty boxes, each containing a toy cobra that jumps out, spraying a little puff of contaminated dust at the touch of a spring mechanism. After this point of the story where the toy cobras are revealed, the manhunt is on. Dr. Austen begins to find who is doing this and

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