Andromeda Strain

William John

Andromeda Strain-Response Ranger

The part of the text that I chose to respond to was when Jaggers, Comroe, Mancheck, and Wilson were reviewing the footage that Lieutenant Wilson captured during his flybys. The footage captured an old man walking amongst the dead bodies. My first reaction was of shock about the horror of the grisly scene, but then I thought “Why does that guy seem to create the deaths?” “Isn’t the bacteria supposed to be the cause of so many deaths?”. When I thought of these questions, I pondered about the chapters more and I inferred that there was a bacterium brought from outer space by a satellite. The old man was probably a survivor of the bacteria either he was immune or he took lots of meds. I contemplated that if the bacterium spread then the military could use what the old man had that prevented him from dying to help make a cure. I think I had this response because I watched a movie in biology like this, but in the movie a group of scientists wanted to get a cure before the government went to bomb the town. In the book the government was going to bomb the town anyway. In the movie, the president wanted to contain the disease, so he was going to bomb a town with lots of people who had interacted with the disease. The group of scientists was racing to find a cure. When they found one, the military officers tried to stop them because the virus was a potential biological weapon. I wanted to know if the government would bomb the town in the book then find a cure or find a cure before bombing. I think that the government would just bomb before because nobody was alive. I still don’t understand why the author said the disease causing pathogen was a bacterium because bacterium can be eliminated with