A virus called Wuhan-400 causes outbreak … in a Dean Koontz thriller from 1981.

From the South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts...han-400-makes-people-terribly-ill-dean-koontz

A book of fiction from 1981 isn't a 'current event', but the Coronavirus is... so I offer this interesting story that has been making the rounds for a couple of days, here and there.

This disclaimer first -- I have no use for most sensational 'conspiracy theories'. All the tiresome stories about 'Big Foot', UFO's and Alien-abductions, Secret Nazi bases in the Antarctic, etc., are just a big load of crap as far as I'm concerned.

But, there's "too many clues in this room"....

From the link:

"
In bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz’s 1981 thriller The Eyes of Darkness, a virus to be used as a biological weapon is developed in Wuhan, China, but humans end up contracting it. Photo: Shutterstock

The Eyes of Darkness, a 1981 thriller by bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz, tells of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons programme. The lab is located in Wuhan, which lends the virus its name, Wuhan-400. A chilling literary coincidence or a case of writer as unwitting prophet?

In The Eyes of Darkness, a grieving mother, Christina Evans, sets out to discover whether her son Danny died on a camping trip or if – as suspicious messages suggest – he is still alive. She eventually tracks him down to a military facility where he is being held after being accidentally contaminated with man-made microorganisms created at the research centre in Wuhan.

If that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, read this passage from the book: 'It was around that time that a Chinese scientist named Li Chen moved to the United States while carrying a floppy disk of data from China’s most important and dangerous new biological weapon of the past decade. They call it Wuhan-400 because it was developed in their RDNA laboratory just outside the city of Wuhan.'

In another strange coincidence, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which houses China’s only level four biosafety laboratory, the highest-level classification of labs that study the deadliest viruses, is just 32km from the epicentre of the current coronavirus outbreak."

1981 was a hell of a long time ago... is this just a coincidence...?

 

This is a long way from over said the black Cambode.

 

Is it possible that Dean Koontz is a Modern Day Nostradamus?



Has he predicted the outcome of the fall election yet?

 

Gosh, a Dean Koontz novel that I can't remember reading? I was a fan of his for years. Read everything in hardback as they came out. The coincidence here is astonishing.

 

Bull! This is just as sensationalist and there is zero moral justification for even bringing it up. Someone writing a work for fiction 40 years ago means literally nothing in relation to today. Sure there are biochemistry labs in Wuhan and it's perfectly possible they had something to do with the coronavirus outbreak but it's also perfectly possible that they didn't and nobody has provided any kind of evidence even hinting that could be the case. If there was any kind of evidence, they wouldn't need to spin up this trash.

 

Life imitates art.

 

Why the clumsy deflection...?

OK, how do you jokers theorize that Koontz came up with a plot in 1981, involving a weaponized virus in a Chinese military research laboratory, 32 kilometers outside WUHAN, described as "Wuhan 400"...?

Based on what we know today there is exactly one (ONE) biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory in China -- located just a short distance outside WUHAN, and it wasn't even BUILT until 2015!

Got any insights, or haven't you got anything but irrelevant snipes that haven't got anything to do with anything...? BTW, what the hell is a "Cambode"?

I probably never should have started this thread... there are too many posters around who write simple-minded drivel merely to exercise their fingers....

 

You would be right, Joe, except that the sheer coincidence of Koontz' fictional story and the place and the location and the virus itself (regardless of how it actually was born) is stunning! You say it has "nothing in relation to today"...?

1. A virus,
2. In Wuhan,
3. Which is the only city in China with a Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory,
4. And the virus gets loose and KILLS people,
5. In a book of fiction written in 1981, about a virus that behaves like Coronavirus, starting in December 2019...?!

And you say it has "nothing in relation to today"...?! Get back to us after you have thought about this for a while....

 

Frankly, my first though was that Koontz read "The Stand" (197 at some point and took it international..

Never been a huge fan, and I do recall liking some stuff from the 80's, but don't recall this..

 

It's a coincidence but I don't see it as all that stunning. Loads of stories are written about dangerous viruses and the fact Wuhan was and still is a place with a major lab doesn't make it an entirely coincidental choice of location for the story. Nothing else described in the article matches - someone disappearing on a camping trip or a scientist taking data to the US - and I suspect there are no "smoking gun" coincidences in the book or they article would have led with that.

So yes, it's a minor coincidence, the kind that comes up all the time. It would only be noteworthy if it wasn't a coincidence. Is that what you're alleging?

 

here is some more fun to add to the potential tin-foil

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/28/poli...chinese-nationals-arrest-espionage/index.html

Now, snopes has a good write up dispelling fact from fiction (based on news reports, so the conspiracy minded among us will likely dismiss said statements and news reports)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charles-lieber-arrested-coronavirus/

Still though. Lots of fun to wonder.

 

Dean did a ton of research to ensure realism in his story line. Tom Clancy had insight into the inner workings of OPSEC than most in the field.

 

we've been experimenting/developing bio weapons since wwI, and heavily so during wwII, so nothing new about it... same speculatory fiction based upon reality of the past/present...

btw, who says that lab was china's first? start there...

 

Not meaning to infer that Koontz is some kind of "Nostradamus", or has a 'crystal ball' or anything like that, to me it still seems like ONE HELL OF A COINCIDENCE that his fictional story would have all of those elements in it I described in my Post #8 above.

From the reactions this thread has attracted, I think that, even more than I even imagined, I seem to have TOUCHED A NERVE. Now, whose 'nerve' was that...? I don't know, but the reaction was swift and certain that 'there's no coincidence here... move along, move along....'

Oh, and yes, as Blaster mentioned above, there's nothing new about 'bioweapons'. Hell, the U. S. military had had a 'program' for years even back in the late '60's, which I remember fairly well.

And, also, through the years, I have developed a pretty cynical attitude toward nearly ALL conclusions developed by Snopes, frankly....

 

the powers that be have a morbid curiosity with the end of the world

 

Michael Creighton also wrote about biological warfare, it is not a new concept.

 

Interesting. China’s most advanced virus research laboratory is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

 

Sure, it's a coincidence (though still one you're overselling). You've still not explained the point in making such a big thing of it though, especially given the mess that we all know this kind of conspiracy theory can generate.

 

It's only a reference to now they have the coronavirus in Cambodia. Every day a li'l bit more and a li'l bit more. Chaos is in the air.

 

I'm not 'selling' anything, Joe. It merely struck me as being (as I said), "one hell of a coincidence". Because of the virus, and because it originated in Wuhan (not exactly one of the most-talked-about places in the world prior to this 'virus' outbreak). What were the odds that something like THIS would have happened...?

Might the coincidence 'factor' have had more 'curb-appeal' for you if it had happened in, say, Paris, or Tokyo, or Moscow, or Cairo, or San Francisco, instead of some 'back-water' place nobody heard of before, like WUHAN...?

-- "It's NOTHING, dammit! Forget about it!"

 

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the Chinese are hiding something here, the Russians did it with Chernobyl until the Norwegians detected extremely elevated radiation levels. I'm not completely convinced that this is a Man made Bio Weapon unleashed upon the world by accident, but the similarities to that book the Eyes of Darkness are extremely creepy. China has refused to allow the CDC or WHO to help in the Outbreak and that is incredibly suspicious and I believe they are hiding something, so it can't be ignored that there is something more nefarious to this outbreak than just a case of Spoiled Bat or Rat entree's in China.


Look at this Bat, he looks like he's in a Hot Tub, but it's actually a Bowl of Bat Soup, UMMM! Yummy! DISGUSTING! Culture

 

According to reliable sources at 4chan, based on a now-deleted Twitter Account, Koontz was the Patient Zero who caused the entire outbreak.

He just wanted his prediction to come true before the Election.

Not saying that I believe in Conspiracies.

But with that "standard of proof" (which would be considered Gospel at Breitbart), I figured that I would roll with it.

 

Yeah, it's a little disconcerting to think that the country that makes so much of damned near everything we buy (including pharmaceutical medicines and vitamin supplements) is one where a lot of people routinely eat snakes, bats, and anteaters, and, empty their bowels in 'squat-toilets'.... (BTW, the Coronavirus is currently thought to be able to spread through human feces....)

. Uh, DON'T try to sit....

 

Yang wins!

 

Amazing discovery from the near-omniscient radical-Left! And to think -- somehow Koontz planned it ALL out way back in 1981....

I wonder if we could get him to tell us where the stock market will finish in 2020!