In the frenzy of trying to find out more about the mystical Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), social media dug up a book titled, The Eyes of Darkness, written by Dean Koontz and published in 1981, that may have predicted the pandemic that’s already claimed more than 169 000 lives.
The Eyes of Darkness: Did this 1981 book predict the coronavirus?
As reported by ABS-CBN, social media has looked into Koontz’ The Eyes of Darkness for answers on coronavirus. This is because, in the novel, a man-made virus called the “Wuhan-400” bizarrely mimics the characteristics of the coronavirus.
Even stranger is the fact that in reality, the COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, a city situated in mainland China’s Hubei province.
“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 the way anthrax and other virulent microorganisms can. “And when the host expires, the Wuhan-400 within him perishes a short while later, as soon as the temperature of the corpse drops below eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit.”
Excerpt from The Eyes of Darkness
In the book, the coronavirus is described as the perfect man-made weapon, designed and developed at RDNA labs, outside of Wuhan.
Inconsistencies found in Koontz’ ‘prediction’
However, there have been some inconsistencies found that have cast doubt on the book’s prediction of the virus. The Eyes of Darkness is a fictional tale that follows a mother, Christina Evans, who grieves the loss of her son Danny.
Danny is reported dead, along with a group of campers, under suspicious circumstances. However, the novel takes a dark turn when Christina finds out that Danny may be alive and she stumbles on the breakout of a man-made virus on her quest to find out what really happened to her son.
Koontz, who has published more than 120 novels, 17 of which were adapted into movies, authored The Eyes of Darkness under his pseudonym, Leigh Nichols.
While the similarities between the Wuhan-400 and COVID-19 are there, some fans are not wholly convinced about the conspiracy. For one, in the original book, the pandemic was called the “Gorki-400”, a virus that broke out in Russia.
Later editions of the book saw the name changed to ‘Wuhan-400’ and people have speculated that an editor may have changed this to drive away the demonisation of Russia from literature.
The stages of the viruses are starkly different too. The Wuhan-400 has a fatality rate of 100% with the fictional virus able to kill its host in about four hours.
However, based on the latest updates from the World Health Organisation, we know that the coronavirus has a growing mortality rate and the ability to incubate in a human body for as long as two weeks,
Koontz has yet to offer an explanation for this coincidence. However, most people have debunked this as a baseless conspiracy.