Fact: One day, a lethal virus could sneak into the US and wipe out the entire population inside 48 hours.
With such a chilling statistic, it's little wonder Hollywood was keen to exploit the killer germ genre with movies such as Twelve Monkeys and The Stand.
Four years after Outbreak scared the world silly with its tale of a flesh-eating bug let loose in America, it seems virus thrillers are back in vogue.
In Jamie Lee Curtis' latest big screen offering - aptly entitled Virus - the photogenic star of Hallowe'en and True Lies is on the run from microscopic alien germs that threaten to turn her well-toned body to mush. Oh, and as with Outbreak, it also stars Donald Sutherland.
The plot for this thriller centres on obsessive viral doctor Sam Daniels and his desperate attempt to stop the fictional Motaba virus after it's introduced into the USA by a lovable African monkey.
The script called for a large budget and a film-maker who could handled hundreds of extras and some big stars.
Director Wolfgang Petersen, piping hot property after making Clint Eastwood's 1993 thriller In The Line of Fire, seemed like the perfect choice. However, it was a race against time to get his vision on screen before other film-makers stole his thunder.
In 1994, the best-selling novel Crisis in the Hot Zone alerted the world as to the dangers of a super virus that could wipe out America in a matter of days.
Needless to say, it caught the imagination of studio executives and the race was on to get it made before someone else jumped on the bandwagon.
Alas, the project which was to star Robert Redford and Jodie Foster fell apart, leaving the cast and crew of rival $50million project Outbreak free to scare the world silly.
Once the Outbreak script was written, there was naturally the problem of casting. Top of the list was Harrison Ford but when he proved unavailable, Petersen plumped for an unlikely action man - Dustin Hoffman.
The diminutive thesp is well known for his methodical approach to acting and working with The Graduate veteran did prove to be something of a pain as the director recalls: "Dustin is so obsessed with work. He wakes up at three in the morning, tossing and turning and thinking about the scene, and he calls me at five in the morning. Was it exhausting? You bet." Hoffman had originally met with Petersen to discuss another project when his curiosity was piqued by the Outbreak script.
"I said, 'Why don't you send me the script. Because I never get sent those scripts. I always wanted to play James Bond." Needless to say, the film-maker agreed and with a supporting cast including Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding jr and Kevin Spacey, it became an unlikely hit - not least because of its timing.
When the movie was released in April 1995, the all too real Ebola virus had almost beaten them to it as the world's scariest news grabber.
The film was not without its technical errors. For those in the know, there is no such thing as Biosafety Level one; there are no (naturally occurring) Capuchin monkeys in Africa and, apparently, it's impossible to talk in a C-130 cargo plane in flight without shouting.
The fact that Rene Russo also develops a slight flush during the finale when she should have been sicker than the world's worst flu patient also seems a little suspect.
© 1999 Roger Crow