'Wuhan-400': Could this American author have predicted COVID in 1981?

What if everything was written on the walls? Dean Koontz, master of horror and suspense, is the author of many bestsellers like Demon Seed, The House of Thunder and Intensity. Several elements in his bookThe Eyes of Darkness are strangely similar to the coronavirus. And yet, the novel was written in... 1981.

'The Wuhan-400 is the perfect weapon'

In the second part of his work, Dean Koontz describes a lab-created biological weapon that is capable of wiping out mankind. Here's an excerpt:

They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research center.

So, in the book, the 'Wuhan-400' was created in a laboratory in Wuhan. A rather disturbing first element. He continues:

Wuhan-400 is a perfect weapon. It afflicts only human beings. No other living creature can carry it. And like syphilis, Wuhan-400 can't survive outside a living human body for longer than a minute, which means it can't permanently contaminate objects or entire places.

Disturbing commonalities

A biological weapon in the form of a virus created in Wuhan, which is transmitted between human beings. This already sounds wildly familiar, but the similarities don't t stop there. The symptoms described in Eyes of Darkness strangely resemble those of COVID-19.

He was also beginning to feel some of the early symptoms of Wuhan400. Dizziness. Mild nausea.

Like the coronavirus that is shaking the world today, 'Wuhan-400' spreads fast and can wipe out a population.

If I understand you, the Chinese could use Wuhan-400 to wipe out a city or a 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.

'No one is supposed to survive'

Fiction strangely resembles reality. But in Dean Koontz's story, the virus has far more serious effects than those caused by the current pandemic.

For one thing, you can become an infectious carrier only four hours after coming into contact with the virus. That's an incredibly short incubation period. Once infected, no one lives more than twenty-four hours. Most die in twelve. It's worse than the Ebola virus in Africa—infinitely worse. Wuhan-400's kill-rate is one hundred percent. No one is supposed to survive.

A catastrophic, chilling scenario. Fortunately, this shouldn't happen with the current coronavirus, which appears to be less dangerous. However, there are so many similarities between what the American writer described and what we have been witnessing over the last year, it's uncanny.