The Andromeda Strain Sparknotes

The Andromeda Strain In Michael Crichton’s book, The Andromeda Strain, an unknown bacteria was found on a satellite sent by the military to space. This bacteria invaded the town of Piedmont, Arizona and killed all but two: a baby and an old man. A team of four men: Dr. Jeremy Stone, a scientist and the leader of Wildlife; Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon; Dr. Charles Burton, a pathologist and professor at Baylor Medical School; and Dr. Peter Leavitt, a microbiologist that treats infectious diseases, worked at a secret government facility in Nevada called Project Wildfire to study the “Andromeda Strain,” and figure out what is killing the people in Piedmont. This story took place over a five day period. The military sent a satellite to space to study

The bacteria that he discovered did not have a cell nucleus and its reproduction process was unknown. Though Karp’s work was destroyed in a lab explosion and no longer pursued, Stone and Leavitt were interested in how it could relate to the bacteria at Piedmont. Stone and Leavitt believed that bacteria could come from three sources: an organism from another planet or galaxy, bacteria that left Earth’s surface eons ago but remains in the upper atmosphere, and bacteria created by an Earth organism going to space and mutating into a different organism. The first source is improbable because though the bacteria could live in extreme conditions, it was not likely for bacteria to travel to another planet. Humans would have no immunity to bacteria in the second source and the bacteria would not be able to live with humans. The third source is the most probable because if bacteria did mutate in space, there is no way of knowing what it could do when it

The people in Piedmont died due to blood clotting beginning at the lungs. Dr. Hall examines the two patients and finds that the baby is perfectly healthy. The older man, Jackson, remained unconscious for the duration of the exam, but he soon woke up vomiting blood due to gastrointestinal bleeding. Upon further examination when Jackson is awake, Dr. Hall discovers that Jackson was anemic, which means that there is a decrease in the amount of red blood cells in the body. Jackson had been hospitalized the previous summer for stomach bleeding due to an ulcer. Jackson was advised to change his diet, but he refuses and takes aspirin for the pain, which increases the amount of bleeding from the ulcer. Jackson is also an alcoholic and overdosed on Sterno, which made his condition worse. Officer Willis in Utah suffered from a condition similar to Jackson’s and overdosed on aspirin and Sterno. Soon after, he went insane and killed several in a diner before killing himself. Hall studied the autopsies of the rats and after talking with Jackson, he discovered that first blood coagulation occurs and causes a hemorrhage, which kills the person. If blood clotting did not kill the person, the bacteria attacked the brain, which caused hemorrhage and insanity causing them to kill themselves. The organism can live in a variety of conditions and that CO2 and ultraviolet radiation help it grow the most; it also converts