Hot Zone Post 5

  I read pages 273-400.  This portion of the novel goes further into the nuking of the monkey facility in Reston, VA.  The monkey situation becomes a little dicey.  The operation in full is to put the monkeys to sleep with Ketamine, and then to kill them with concentrated doses of sedative.  The monkeys of course do not want to be trapped and killed, so many of them put up a fight.  Some of the monkeys awaken after being injected with Ketamine, and others simply resist being dominated.  Many of the monkeys are too sick to fight back however.  They would have ended up dying anyways.  One monkey even escapes from his cage and leads a chase on for about an hour.  It is hard for the scientists to catch him because they are in literally space suits.  This book actually makes me think of PETA a bunch, because of the caged animals.  PETA is always advocating animal freedom, and is criticizing capturing them.  Several years back, a group of activists actually broke into a mink farm designed to create mink coats.  They released hundreds and hundreds of minks in an effort to save them from their misery.  Unfortunately, most of the minks died or were killed soon after the incident, because they had no survival skills in winter.  Some of the workers in the monkey facility facility had desires to save the monkeys as well.  Unfortunately, not all good ideas in theory are good ideas in practice.  If the disease would have escaped the Reston facility, millions of civilians would have been at risk for the worst death known to the human race.