Dean Koontz Thriller Predict the Coronavirus Outbreak?

By RodneyHatfieldJr for Creepy

Dean Koontz Thriller Predict the Coronavirus Outbreak?

Loyal fans of Dean Koontz are insisting that a novel he wrote in 1981 accurately predicted the coronavirus. Koontz's thriller The Eyes Of Darkness describes a killer virus appropriately named “Wuhan-400“ after the Chinese city it originated in; the corresponding city where COVID-19 was first reported. In the novel

“They call the stuff Wuhan-400 because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan."


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Although coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan, there is not yet scientific consensus about how and where it jumped to humans. Initial theories suggested it jumped to humans from exotic animals in a Wuhan wet market. Others have suggested, so far without proof, that the infectious pathogen may have escaped from the Wuhan Virology Lab, China's only biosafety-level four facility. Other than the principal city of origin, however, there is little similarity between the fictional Wuhan-400 and the real coronavirus. In The Eyes Of Darkness, Wuhan-400 is a bioweapon virus that has the fatality rate of 100% within 12 hours. Characters in the book explain the Chinese intended to utilize it “to wipe out a city or a country” without the need for expensive decontamination. Wuhan-400 is a perfect weapon. It afflicts only human beings. No other living creature can carry it. Plus Wuhan-400 can't survive outside a living human body for longer than a minute, which means it can't permanently contaminate objects or entire places the way other virulent microorganisms can.


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Coronavirus however has an estimated mortality rate of just 2-3% when you add in high mortality rate 3rd world countries. It can survive on exposed surfaces for much longer, possibly hours or days, though scientists are working presently to determine more precisely. In the Koontz novel, the Wuhan-400 invades the brain. The virus migrates to the brain stem, and there it begins secreting a toxin that literally eats away brain tissue like battery acid dissolving cheesecloth. It methodically destroys the part of the brain that controls all of the body's automatic functions.

Coronavirus, on the other hand, primarily affects the respiratory system, in severe cases resulting in pneumonia. The primary symptoms are fever, coughing, and shortness of breath. The Wuhan-400 is a engineered virus that has an incubation period of just four hours, whereas the coronavirus incubates for several days to two weeks.


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Finally, to the profound disappointment of conspiracy theorists, my first edition of The Eyes Of Darkness, the infectious virus is called 'Gorki-400', after the Russian city where Koontz initially wrote the bioweapons lab. After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Koontz changed later editions to make China the notable villain. Really with the amount of literature we posses you could pick any event and chances are that some book or story written at some time has a similar plot. It is just the Million Monkey Theorem.

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