LOOK: Dean Koontz novel from 1981 talks about 'Wuhan-400' virus outbreak in 2020

A creepy Dean Koontz novel from 1981 is going viral in 2020, after it supposedly predicted this year’s virus outbreak with its biochemical agent called “Wuhan-400”. Just a coincidence or a prediction?

The 2019 novel coronavirus (officially named as coronavirus disease or COVID-19) is a real virus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019 and continues to affect tens of thousands of people in 2020. As of press time, the virus has already claimed the lives of over 2,000 people, most of whom are in China or had traveled to affected areas during the outbreak.

As China scrambles to save its citizens from the outbreak, even putting Wuhan and several areas on lockdown, the rest of the world also lives in fear that the virus will continue to spread throughout the globe.

And people are drawing parallels with the COVID-19 and the Wuhan-400 from Koontz’s novel, “The Eyes of Darkness”.

“They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that center,” Carl Dombey said.

“If I understand you, the Chinese could use Wuhan-400 to wipe out a city or country, and then there wouldn't be any need for them to conduct a tricky and expensive decontamination before they moved in and took over the conquered territory,” Elliot replied.

The novel, a thriller set sometime in 2020, followed a mother’s quest to find out if her son truly did die 1 year ago or if he is still alive.

While the novel is a good read, more netizens were concerned about so many similar things the Wuhan-400 had with the COVID-19. A lot believe that Koontz must have “seen” something in the future that made him create this book, “disguised” as fiction.

Similarities and differences

Published in 1981, the book featured a virus, eerily named as “Wuhan-400” which figured in an outbreak that supposedly happened in 2020. This predicted the COVID-19 outbreak with amazing accuracy! And though the virus was not named as “Wuhan-400”, it originated from Wuhan.

Moreover, the old Dean Koontz novel tells of a virus lab located in the outskirts of Wuhan as the source of Wuhan-400. Quite amazingly, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is set just a few kilometers away from Wuhan City. However, the lab was established in 1956; thus, this could have really been just a coincidence.

But the virus from the novel is far deadlier and scarier than COVID-19 which appears “mild” in comparison. In the novel, Wuhan-400 has a fast incubation period of just 4 hours, easily spreads from one person to another, and has a 100% mortality rate. That means that anyone who gets exposed to the virus will die.

Thankfully, despite the over 2,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19, it actually has a low mortality rate of 2%. Moreover, the incubation period is not just a matter of hours but 2 to 14 days after exposure. Also, it could be spread to animals and is believed to have come from either bats or snakes.

Original version

As scarily accurate as it might still appear, despite the differences between Wuhan-400 and COVID-19, the original version of the book did not actually mention Wuhan at all! The version published in 1981 actually talked about “Gorki-400” as a biological weapon made in Russia.

It was only sometime in the 1990s that the Wuhan-400 version appeared, with the setting moved to China. The author or the editors had, somehow, made these changes that would later match the recent outbreak with some degree of accuracy.

Still, netizens think that the book remains rather creepy…

Image credits: Second Hand Books Philippines / Facebook 

— Joy Adalia, The Summit Express