What It Gets Wrong:
Too many things to list here. Even when you look past how inconsistently dangerous the virus is (at one point it turns a guy’s bones into jelly, but later we hear all it does is cause sterility), we all know how rates of transmission work now, and how much is down to your immune system. The idea that you could specially make a virus that would work on a specific fraction of the population is literally saying “60 percent of the time, it works every time.”
DreamWorks
“No, he too has a 33% chance of dying.”
“Ok, suspension of disbelief shattered.”
To make things sillier, we’re told that the 1/3 figure happens because it infects everyone, but has been engineered to “randomly activate” in 33% of people, which is basically saying that it gets people sick using blockchain.
Does It Get Anything Right?
Funny story: The end of this one is the bad guy winning and the virus getting out into the world and ravaging humanity, much like blockchain. Points for realism and not having a happy ending in such a basic potboiler story, though we probably have to deduct those points because the movie actually has a physical Tom Hanks stop the evil plan in time and keep everyone safe.
Columbia Pictures
The Andromeda Strain: My House Is Sick Too!
While we’re on airport bookshelves, let’s go to the next rack over from Dan Brown and take a peek into Michael Crichton. Before he was the Westworld and Jurassic Park guy, his first big hit was The Andromeda Strain, about a virus that scientists try and fail to contain, teaching them a lesson about hubris—otherwise known as the lesson of literally every Michael Crichton novel.
Vintage
Since this is Crichton we’re talking about, there’s a book, a movie and a TV show, but they all follow the theme of a virus that comes from space and mutates so fast that it starts to kill things, not just people, and a scientist who has to stop a nuclear bomb that’s meant to contain the virus but will just spread it wider.
What It Gets Wrong:
You could ask a virologist whether The Andromeda Strain could really happen, and it would be pretty much the same as asking a video game designer if we’re living in a simulation—the whole idea is just inventing too much for the question to be much clearer to an expert, and asking would just confirm how stupid you sound to them.
Everything about the spooky alien virus is theoretically possible, but the whole reason to make it an alien is so it can do stuff nothing on Earth—i.e. nothing known to science—can do. Theoretically a virus could mutate fast enough that it started to eat away at material like plastic and glass, so it could break out of containment like the virus does here, but it’s about as likely as you accomplishing everything you plan to get done today, and we both know how likely that is.
Does It Get Anything Right?
We haven’t seen anyone calling for old-timey A-bombs as a solution to our current woes, but after that “horse dewormer” news cycle, it’s only a matter of time.
Top image: Universal Pictures