Nathan Radke

He continued working at first, describing the symptoms from a professional's eye, like with a professional's eye, even as his own eyes are starting to bleed.

And he'd come in and out of fever-induced delirium and unconsciousness.

And even then he would sometimes come to and describe this disease progression and say, oh, this is what's happening to me now.

This is what's happening now.

And then finally his organs dissolved and he was killed.

And his corpse was dangerous.

It was a biohazard.

So they wrapped him up in plastic and put him in a metal box that was welded shut.

But before they did this, and this is the clever bit,

they performed an autopsy and they tested some of that Marburg virus that had infected them.

And when they tested it, they realized, wait a second,

While this virus, this particular one was killing Dr. Ustinov, it had mutated into a more viral and dangerous form.

Oh, great.

It was more powerful, it was more stable.

And so before Dr. Ustinov was buried, wrapped in plastic and sealed in metal case, the doctors harvested more of the virus out of his corpse for further testing.

And then maybe to put into an aerosol dispenser, maybe you put it in a warhead.

Maybe it just shows up mysteriously in a bustling city.

And here's the kicker.

The new version of that virus was called Variant U in Dr. Ustinov's honor.

People took that really personally, I felt like.