The Andromeda Strain follows Stone and rest of the scientific team mobilized to react to the Scoop crash as they scramble to understand and contain a strange and deadly outbreak. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, the Army ends up getting more than it asked for. Army initiates the 'Scoop' satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the U.S. That's the scientific supposition that Michael Crichton formulates and follows out to its conclusion in his excellent debut novel, The Andromeda Strain.Ī Nobel-Prize-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility to sterilize returning astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft that might carry an 'unknown biologic agent.' The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top-secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. And even though such organisms would not likely be able to harm humans, the possibility exists that first contact might be our last. Some biologists speculate that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrials, those life forms are likely to be-like most life on earth-one-celled or smaller creatures, more comparable to bacteria than little green men. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. But the Andromeda Strain proves different from anything they’ve ever seen-and what they don’t know could not only hurt them, but lead to unprecedented worldwide catastrophe.

Under conditions of total news blackout and the utmost urgency, the scientists race to understand and contain the crisis. Four of the nation’s most elite biophysicists are summoned to a clandestine underground laboratory located five stories beneath the desert and fitted with an automated atomic self-destruction mechanism for cases of irremediable contamination. The United States government is forced to mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency response protocol. Twelve miles from the crash site, an inexplicable and deadly phenomenon terrorizes the residents of a sleepy desert town in Arizona, leaving only two survivors: an elderly addict and a newborn infant. 'I love anything Michael Crichton writes.'-Stephen KingĪ military space probe, sent to collect extraterrestrial organisms from the upper atmosphere, is knocked out of orbit and falls to Earth. First published fifty years ago, The Andromeda Strain redefined the science fiction genre, and immediately established Michael Crichton as one of the brightest voices in contemporary literature worldwide.

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