Dan Brown - Digital Fortress book

[Robert J. Hansen]

Mark H. Wood wrote:
> Well, it's a tangled mess.  There are many different chemicals which
> have been sold under the Freon name.  Mr. Brown may have confused any
> of these with Halon, another large family of fluorocarbons which
> *have* been used for fire suppression, including data centers.

Right.  But in the book, the Freon is explicitly said to be a _cooling_
agent.  The cooling cables come loose in the fire and Freon sprays
everywhere.  It's not Freon being deliberately released as a fire
suppression agent.

I don't know about every Halon out there -- maybe there are some which
can do double duty as cooling agents.  But the fact the Freon is
ascribed as a coolant first and has no fire-fighting properties Brown
sees fit to talk about makes me think he intended for it to be coolant
gas which was escaping, not a fire suppression system which was activating.