Book Review: Brainpox

This riveting fiction based book took place in New York, the perfect place for a bioterrorist to drop his new engineered virus. The virus “Brainpox”-code name Cobra- was a mixture of a moth virus, smallpox, and Lesch-Nyhan disease (rare birth disorder). What this engineered microscopic monster did to people was horrific. Just to name a couple of effects of Cobra: violent seizures, blood blisters (mainly back of the throat), victims brains were basically turned to near liquid, and the grimmest of them all self-cannibalism (bite off lips, tongue, etc during seizure). This gruesome bioterrorist goes by the name of Archimedes; later to be found out as Tom Cope. A former worker of His intention was to decrease the world’s population, wipe out a majority of the human population. His arch nemeses: the FBI that are hot on his tail and doctors providing vaccines. As the top FBI agents, expert scientists, and just about everyone in between were put on this case. The team put together was called Reachdeep. Archimedes also had a “test run” in Washington D.C.. In this book, a total of 32 people died due to cobra and 19 more infected.
At first, the book starts off somewhat slow and jumps from place to place.
It’s sort of confusing but, all ties together eventually and picks up the pace. To be specific it really took off during Kate’s very descriptive death; the first case of cobra. Throughout the book, it also gives off facts giving reason to events or things described in a chapter/part. It’s also very good at showing and proving that bioterrorism attacks can happen at any given time and/or place. Also with technology progressively getting more capable of creating, storing, and as well as detecting a threat. A similar event that actually happened in 2001 was anthrax- sent in the mail. Thankfully, it didn’t claim too many lives but unfortunately, 5 people
died.
We all have to keep in mind that bioterrorism isn’t new to the face of the earth.The earliest form on record dates all the way back to 600 B.C. (Solon- Greece). I truly believe that the attack in the book could happen. Maybe not the same disease(s) but, releasing a cold like disease in the middle of New York would be chaotic; almost as disastrous as the anthrax mail attack (could have been). A possible reason as to why Cobra worked so well is that it wasn’t straight up Smallpox. Before anyone goes jumping in and giving people vaccines, they had to identify and confirm what the disease was -but stumped nearly everyone. The longer it takes to determine what it is, the longer the perpetrator has to run; as long as investigators don’t have a hunch of the whereabouts of the terrorist(s).