Stephen King Shares Chapter Of ‘The Stand’ About Pandemic Spread
If you’re looking for a quarantine activity that will absolutely chill you to the bone, head on over to Stephen King’s Twitter. The writer posted an audiobook reading of a chapter from his post-apocalyptic novel The Stand, which details how pandemics spread. Not exactly easy listening for your Tuesday morning, but hey, why not?
King’s 1978 novel focuses on a weaponized superflu that wipes out nearly the entire world population. The remaining survivors organize themselves into social groups and go head to head with each other. The sweeping epic is 823 pages long, and is considered by critics to be one of his best works of all time. Mick Garris adapted The Stand into a miniseries in 1994, with a dizzyingly large cast including Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, and Rob Lowe. A new adaptation starring James Marsden is in the works for CBS All Access, ironically coinciding with our current coronavirus pandemic.
If it’s anything to soothe your mind, King himself tacks on at the end of his post that COVID-19 is “not as lethal as the superflu.” Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? Earlier in March, King took to Twitter after being bombarded with comparisons between the virus in The Stand and the coronavirus. Then again, March 8 seems like forever go in terms of what we’ve learned about the illness. Nonetheless, there’s no need to start forming post-apocalyptic coalitions yet:
Will do, Stephen King. Will do.
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