The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling 1994 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses.

In Reston, Virginia, less than fifteen miles (24 km) away from Washington, D.C., a company called Hazelton Research once operated a quarantine center for monkeys that were destined for laboratories.

In October 1989, when an unusually high number of their monkeys began to die, their veterinarian decided to send some samples to Fort Detrick (USAMRIID) for study.

The discovery of the Reston virus was made in November 1989 by Thomas W. Geisbert, an intern at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

[7] The Hot Zone was described in an academic journal covering research in the history of science as a "romantic account of environmental transgression".

By connecting international health to national security, this campaign used The Hot Zone to justify increased intervention in the global phenomena of disease.

[8] The Hot Zone elicited a major response by the World Health Organization (WHO) by shedding light on the Zaire ebolavirus.

[10] When asked whether any book "scared the pants off you" writer Suzanne Collins answered "The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston.

[citation needed] In an interview about his book Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus (2014), David Quammen claimed that The Hot Zone had "vivid, gruesome details" that gave an "exaggerated idea of Ebola over the years" causing "people to view this disease as though it was some sort of preternatural phenomenon".

[14] In January 1993, 20th Century Fox producer Lynda Obst won a bidding war for the film rights to Preston's 1992 New Yorker article, which was still being transitioned into book form.

This competing film, Outbreak, would ultimately be a factor in the collapse of Fox's planned production, Crisis in The Hot Zone.

[16] Directors considered for Crisis in The Hot Zone included Wolfgang Petersen (who would later direct Outbreak), Michael Mann, and Ridley Scott.

[20] On October 16, 2014, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Ridley Scott again planned to adapt the book, this time as a television miniseries for NatGeo.