The Cobra Event

Infobox Book |
name = The Cobra Event


image_caption =
author = Richard Preston
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Thriller novel
publisher = Random House
release_date = 1998
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 432 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-345-40997-3

"The Cobra Event" is a 1998 bio-thriller novel by Richard Preston describing a terror attempt on the United States by a man known only as "Archimedes." Archimedes is the creator of a virus that mixes the incurable common cold with one of the world's most deadly diseases, smallpox. Its effects mimic that of the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome and Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus. The virus is a Biosafety Level 4 hot agent (because it is human lethal).

Plot summary

The book is divided into 6 sections. The first section, named "Trial", tells of teenage girl named Kate Moran who violently dies one day in school. The next section titled "1969", explains many tests done in the sixties by the U.S. government involving certain viruses. The third section, "Diagnosis", describes the autopsy of Kate Moran and also introduces many key characters such as Dr. Alice Austen, Mark Littleberry, and Will Hopkins. The book continues on the other three sections, "Decision", "Reachdeep", and "The Operation", describe these three characters' journey to discover the producer of the lethal virus Cobra.

Impact of the book

President Bill Clinton was reportedly sufficiently impressed by the terrorist scenarios recounted in the book that he asked aides and officials for closer study and suggested more funding for research into bioterror threats. However, there is some variation in the various accounts of this episode in his administration, about his degree of concern, who was asked to help, the depth of inquiry, the formal status of his orders, and the magnitude of expense involved. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EEDD1739F937A15752C1A9649C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all "Where Terrorism Meets Optimism", Margo Nash, New York Times, 24 Nov 2002] :"President Bill Clinton asked the F.B.I. to determine whether the events described in "The Cobra Event" could really happen."] [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=gmytM_-gwVkC&pg=PA117&dq=the.cobra.event&sig=-nupjC8QHL_d6Ikl5D_wCZTg5lQ "Fatal Future?: Transnational Terrorism and the New Global Disorder", p. 117, footnote 2] , which cites "U.S. Still Unprepared for Biological Attack", Dallas Morning News, April 26, 1998, and says:"...Clinton's reading of Preston's novel reportedly led Clinton to issue an executive order directing drastically increased funding for research on the threat of advanced biological terrorist weapons."] [ [http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-27173953_ITM "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War". (Political booknotes: plague upon us)"] , Washington Monthly, 1 Nov 2001; review of a book by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, 2001.:"Clinton began pushing the book on friends and fellow government officials, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and had Pentagon officials brief him on its plausibility. The response he got was not reassuring. From then on, in the words of one national security official, Clinton became "obsessed" with the threat of biological weapons."] [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=KQx97J4WMYAC&pg=PA157&vq=Clinton&dq=the.cobra.event&source=gbs_search_s&sig=Yg-0xKyVfgyySrYOPsYE_zKs4f8 "Our Cannibals, Ourselves", Priscilla L. Walton, p. 157, footnote 8] :"According to [Judith] Miller et al., President Clinton was so struck by the scenario depicted in "The Cobra Event" that he asked John Hamre, deputy secretary of defense, "whether he thought the novel's scenario was plausible. Could a terrorist unleash an unstoppable plague with designer pathogens?" (226). Subsequently, a committee was struck to investigate bioterrorist scenarios."] ["Terrorism: Critical Concepts in Political Science", David C. Rapoport, [http://books.google.com/books?id=kdGlbkQm5bgC&pg=PA186&dq=the.cobra.event+clinton&lr=&sig=dRzt13PvS9_8hNc9ZyRAxIWke6I p. 186] :"In April 1998, as a result of having read the Richard Preston novel, "The Cobra Event", the president held a meeting with a group of scientists and Cabinet members to discuss the threat of bioterrorism. The briefing impressed Clinton so much that he asked the experts to brief senior officials in DOD and HHS. On May 6 they delivered a follow-up report, calling for the stockpiling of vaccines (an idea that was soon dropped.) "The Washington Post" reported with regard to the stockpiling proposal that 'Some administration officials outside the White House expressed surprise at how fast the president and his National Security Council staff had moved on the initiative .... noting with some concern that it had not gone through the customary deliberative planning process.' [11] Critics noted that not all scientific experts were disinterested; some stood to gain financially if the government invested large sums in developing technology against bioterrrorism."Note 11, above, is to Washington Post, 21 May 1998, p. A1.] [Furedi, F. (2007). "Invitation to Terror. Expanding the Empire of the Unknown". London: Continuum.] .

References