abstract:The Cobra Event is a 1998 thriller novel by Richard Preston describing a terror attempt on the United States by a lone man, the creator of a virus, called "Cobra", that mixes the incurable common cold with one of the world's most deadly diseases, smallpox. The disease that results from the virus, called brain-pox in the novel, has effects that mimic those of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome and Nuclear Polyhedral Virus.