“The truth is out there” - How ‘The X-Files’ predicted the hantavirus in a 1998 episode

The X-Files was one of the defining television shows of the 1990s delving into the world of the paranormal, aliens, and government conspiracies. Starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, playing agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the TV series debuted to little fanfare, but went on to become a global sensation.

In 1998, it jumped from TV sets to the silver screen with a blockbuster film The X-Files: Fight the Future. One scene from that movie is making its rounds on the internet as the passengers of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are being repatriated to their home countries.

Did ‘The X-Files’ predict the hantavirus?

The X-Files movie from nearly thirty years ago revolves around Agents Mulder and Scully, stumbling upon a conspiracy to hide the truth behind alien life and a plot by the Syndicate to facilitate the colonization of Earth by extraterrestrials. Mulder is aided in his investigation by the character Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil, a former Syndicate member turned whistleblower, played by Martin Landau.

At one of their meetings in a dark alleyway, Dr. Kurtzweil lays out the plot the Syndicate, a shadowy, elite group of businessmen, conspirators, and government officials, has for unleashing an alien virus and take over power using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). During their conversation a small hantavirus outbreak is being used to funnel government funds toward the project.

While some netizens believe that The X-Files invented the name of the hantavirus, the virus was first noticed in the early 1950s during the Korean War. Researchers were about ot isolate it and identify it from striped field mice found near the Hantan River in South Korea from whihch it the virus gets its name. The first U.S. based cases were identified in the Four Corners region of the Southwest during a 1993 outbreak.

The cruise ship hantavirus is not the same as the strain endemic to the U.S.

The Sin Nombre strain discovered in 1993 is native to the U.S. It cannot transmit from human to human. It is transmitted by rodents through their saliva, urine and droppings. This is the form of hantavirus that killed Gene Hackman’s wife Betsy Arakawa.

The strain of hantavirus that afflicted the Dutch-registered MV Hondius cruise ship during its voyage in the Atlantic is the Andes virus. It was first identified in Argentina and Chile in 1995. While it is primarily transmitted by the long-tailed pygmy rice rat, it is the only form of hantavirus that is known to be able to transmit between humans.

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