'The nonfiction roots of this book run deep,' writes Preston while introducing his much anticipated first novel, a kind of fictional sequel to The Hot Zone. The Cobra Event is a dramatic, heart-stopping account of a very real threat, told with the skill and authority that made Preston's The Hot Zone an internationally acclaimed bestseller. The accounts of what they have seen and what they expect to happen are chilling. Richard Preston's sources include members of the FBI and the United States military, public health officials, intelligence officers in foreign governments, and scientists who have been involved in the testing of strategic bioweapons. The details of this story are fictional, but they are based on a scrupulously thorough inquiry into the history of biological weapons and their use by civilian and military terrorists. What she finds precipitates a federal crisis. Soon, other gruesome deaths of a similar nature have been discovered, and the Centers for Disease Control sends a forensic pathologist to investigate. Hours later she is having violent seizures, blood is pouring out of her nose, and she has begun a hideous process of self-cannibalization.

The Cobra Event is set in motion one spring morning in New York City, when a seventeen-year-old student wakes up feeling vaguely ill.

The cobra event book