The Hot Zone

Folks, c'mon. What happened to watching a show for entertainment value? It's "based on," not a documentary.

Stop getting bent out of shape and just watch it. Or don't. I liked it. Especially coming from a book, there is always going to be a high level creative license involved to create the drama, suspense and fear.

Read the book when it came out and it scared me pretty badly. The series started out well but as we got to the last few episodes everything that could go wrong did for overly dramatic effect. The situation with Ebola is scary enough without the overly contrived situation. Additionally Liam Cunningham as Wade Carter started out doing American accent but by the end of the series sounded like he just got off the ship from Ireland.

It is ridiculous that they don't where general personal protective equipment in the BL1 lab! Also real scientists would open unknown animal samples in a biosafety cabinet to ensure that neither they or the sample get contaminated. Contact me if you need a technical consultant that knows about lab safety!

I have not read the book, but I will now. Having worked in a Virology lab with someone who eventually was doing research at USAMRIID made this very personal for me. I realized right off that there were inaccuracies, starting with the man with pustulent sores on the airplane, right up to Julianna's character doing viral cultures, which would be done by a virologist, not a veterinary pathophysiologist. However, having loved the movie "Outbreak", my first comment about this to a friend was that it was like "Outbreak" turned into a series. We are truly only one airplane passenger away from such an outbreak, and if the show did nothing but make people aware of that fact, then it has served its purpose. If everyone can remember, Ebola did make it to the US, via air travel, and also was communicated to a nurse caring for a patient once hospitalized. I cannot even begin to imagine the terror of being. In a Biolevel 4 and realizing you had a tear in your suit.

Accuracy. No. Does it serve a purpose? Absolutely. Thank you, National Geographic. I wish it were lasting longer than 6 episodes.

Hot Zone: Anthrax explores aspects of the 2001 anthrax scares in ways I never heard at the time. I felt they gave away the conclusion a tad too early, and the timing feels weird (it apoears the investigation is happening weeks or months after 9/11, but in reality the investigation didn't conclude for 7 years). However, most of the acting is wonderful! A few anachronisms were distracting, like a Keurig, wall-mounted flat screen, and center-parted hairstyles were big misses for a 2001 setting, whereas Hot Zone series 1 was better about time period accuracy.