This cache is NOT located at the posted coordinates. It is located in a seldom used park in Middletown. Do not attempt to search for this cache after sunset. Difficulty rating is for the puzzle portion of the cache - not the hide at the final destination. The rating for the cache itself, would be a 2.
The actual cache is located at:
N 41 XX.XXX W 074 XX.XXX
We live in scary times! Not in recent history has the world have to contend with a pandemic such as COVID-19. It is true that there was the Black Plague, Swine Flu, Ebola and others, but that was then, this is now. It is ironic that such an event was postulated by fiction author, Michael Crichton in his novel, “The Andromeda Strain”.
The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 techno-thriller which at the time had readers scared to death. It explored a crisis that developed from a bacteria that had had been brought back by a satellite returning from outer space. This caused a crisis in Piedmont, Arizona where the satellite had landed, killing most of the population.
The book explores the actions of the team sent in for evaluation of the threat and how to approach the outbreak. The team, code named Wildfire, collects the satellite and the only two survivors and takes them to the secret underground Wildfire laboratory, a secure facility equipped with every known capacity for protection against microorganisms escaping into the environment. Wildfire is hidden in a remote area near the town of Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles from Las Vegas. The government program that was responsible for the satellite was located at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They were on high alert ever since the re-entry of the satellite. I won’t ruin the rest of the book, but it is a fun and exciting read that I enjoyed very much and recommend highly.
There are many ways that this book differs from our current problem, mostly that it involved a bacteria and it is not from outer space, but when you consider that this book is now over 50 years old it can serve as a cautionary tale for our time. A 2003 publication by the Infectious Diseases Society of America noted that The Andromeda Strain is the "most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all novels of the killer virus genre ...”
Curious!