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.

[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.

[15] In response to being outbid, Warner Bros. producer Arnold Kopelson immediately began working on a similarly themed production.

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.