NEW DELHI: An excerpt from the Novel ‘The Eyes of Darkness’, a 1981 thriller by bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz is revolving around the social media which tells of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons program.
In chapter 39 of his book, Koontz writes about a virus developed in military labs near the city of Wuhan by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a biological weapon which lends the virus its name, Wuhan-400.
The scientist leading the Wuhan-400 research is called Li Chen, who defects to the U.S. with information about China’s most dangerous chemical weapons. Wuhan-400 affects people rather than animals and cannot survive outside the human body or in environments colder than 30 degrees Celsius.
The similarities between the made-up virus and the Wuhan virus has got Twitter users struggling to comprehend the improbable coincidence. One big difference: Wuhan-400 has a 100 percent kill-rate, while the Wuhan virus does not.
Some people were skeptical about Koontz’s prediction 39 years ago, however, pointing out that earlier editions of the book refer to the virus as Gorki-400, a production of the Soviet Union.
Well this is interesting.
Dean Koontz
The Eyes of Darkness
1981
Highlighted in green pic.twitter.com/SrI9RgQsWy— l E T 17 (@Inevitable_ET) February 10, 2020
In response, several netizens have posted pictures of the book’s newer editions to explain the name of the virus was indeed altered, possibly due to the end of the Cold War in 1991, reported SET News.
“Is Coranavirus a biological Weapon developed by the Chinese called Wuhan -400? This book was published in 1981. Do read the excerpt,” Congress leader Manish Tewari tweeted.
Tewari highlighted a paragraph that read: “They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that center.”
As the post went viral, Twitterati flooded social media with their reactions.
A user wrote, “Haha Infinite monkey theorem. Pick any event and chances are that some books written at some would have a similar plot. A conspiracy theory has no end.”
Another wrote, “Sensational … No doubt China had replaced Russia and USSR as a rogue country in Hollywood films and later James Bond movies.”
(with inputs from Agencies)
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