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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Mark Hall learn about the Wildfire lab as he's reading the last of the file?

2. What doesn't the government tell Stone about Scoop?

3. When they arrive at Piedmont, what do Burton and Stone do first?

4. What were the first two scientific crises in history?

5. What did Merrick theorize?

Short Essay Questions

1. Write about the procedure the three planes used to look at and take pictures of Piedmont and the capability of the scavenger spy plane.

2. Already, by chapter 4, the reader can tell this is a technical narrative. How does the author handle the technology?

3. Describe what the Wildfire lab looks like on first approach.

4. Describe the chain of events, in Stone's mind that has lead up to project Wildfire.

5. Write about the first pages of the book and what the author does to grab the reader's attention.

6. On level 1 what does Stone tell the men when he briefs them about the Wildfire lab?

7. Describe what happens at Dr. Stone's house when he's called for Wildfire.

8. What is it about the narration, the characters and the plot thus revealed that makes you want to read further?

9. In Chapter 3, the narrator discusses the nature of crisis from a historical perspective. What does he have to say about the nature of crisis?

10. What is Lieutenant Roger Shawn doing at the beginning of the book?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In this book the government had several "top secret" projects of which few of its citizens were knowledgeable. Do you think this is okay for the government to do? Do you believe that the government should keep secrets from the people? Why or why not? Do you think the government should have first access to all technology? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

Did this book hold your interest throughout? How? Why? If not, why? Describe what parts interested you the most and any parts you thought were boring. Did you foresee the end long before it came? How?

Essay Topic 3

The folly of trusting automated processing above human supervision is first shown by the printer jam early in the book, and yet many of our systems, from communications to financial are automated or at least depend heavily upon computers and other machines. Do you think it's reasonable for humans to rely so heavily upon "machines?" Describe the advantages and disadvantages of such a dependence.

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