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Individual Activity-Seatwork

Instructions:

1. Read the excerpt below, and answer the questions that follow.
2. Encode your answer in essay format. Submit in Word or PDF file.
3. If you have lifted some sources of your answers, acknowledge/write the sources.
4. Refer to the excerpt below for your answer.

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

from 1981.

“A search for a missing son... and a toxic mystery that threatens the
globe…a gripping thriller, a journey that unlocks the deadliest of secrets.”

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 center in Wuhan. If that made the hair
on the back of your neck stand up, read this passage from the book: “It was

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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 epicenter of
the current coronavirus outbreak. The opening of the maximum-security lab was
covered in a 2017 story in the journal Nature, which warned of safety risks in a
culture where hierarchy trumps an open culture.

Questions:

1. Did the 1981 novel “Eyes of Darkness” of Dean Koontz predict the Coronavirus
outbreak in 2020?
2. Whether your answer is YES or NO, make sure that you will be able to provide
proofs or evidences of your stand.

WARNING:

NO COPYING AND PASTING of your classmates’ work. Those who will copy
and will let other’s copy their work will get the same ZERO score.