‘Zombie’ Viruses Released from Melting Glaciers Could Infect Animals and Humans

Just like the “zombie” Puthovirus sibericum virus discovered in ice back in 2014, ancient pathogens lie dormant in frozen ice around the world and could potentially spread to humans and animals, causing a severe pandemic in the future.

While this has numerous adverse effects, scientists claim that four sextillion (4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) microorganisms will enter the water, and with them, the chances of previously undiscovered and dangerous diseases and viruses.

Instead, the name refers to how viruses can ‘come back to life’ after being suspended in frozen animation for thousands of years. While they present a very real threat to life on the planet, odds are people won’t have to worry about them causing a ‘George Romero’ situation.

This fungus infects a host like an ant or spider and manipulates its body to do its bidding. The fungus will “move” the infected host into a more suitable climate where the fungus can grow spores and reproduce. After the spores are created, the fungus will move the host to a high elevation to disperse the spores.

For many of the illnesses that have plagued humanity in our recent history, we had time to develop countermeasures. However, with these long-forgotten viruses potentially being millions of years old, all of our accumulated anti-viral experience may not be enough to prevent a new pandemic.

While that may have been true in the past, human industry and trade have recently been expanding into the area in a big way. Arctic ice melt has created a huge opportunity for new mining sites to be discovered and new trade routes to be mapped out that just wasn’t possible before.

Geographical reported in 2022 that this area is one of the final frontiers of resources that humans have yet to fully exploit. There is potential for a modern gold rush as many countries seek to shore up energy concerns in their regions.

However, a recent paper published by a group of scientists in the journal PLOS Computational Biology attempts to predict the ecological risks associated with the bacteria.

“I think it’s rather remote, but it’s there,” he said. “You would have to, first of all, have the virus still be able to be resuscitated, right? And it would have to be in some fashion transmitted to a human being. Then, of course, the virus would have to have the inherent capacity to be transmitted readily from person to person. So you have a series of steps, if you will, that has to take place before that could happen.”

According to simulations carried out by the paper’s publishers, 1% of the dormant viruses can potentially cause severe environmental damage to modern bacteria.

At this point, the possibility of these nasty mega viruses becoming active is theoretical territory.

Using this program, the scientists ran predictions that simulated what could happen if one of the ancient pathogens was released into modern biological communities.

The scientists working on this system hope that it will be able to give out early warning signs and predict potential pandemics so governments don’t have to wait for symptoms to start showing up to take action.

Many of the outcomes saw the invading pathogens survive and even evolve under certain circumstances.

This means the pathogen would undoubtedly affect the modern host bacteria in a real-world scenario.

Such a scenario saw the pathogen multiply so dramatically that it reduced the modern host bacteria by as much as 30%.

With an enormous number of microorganisms lying dormant in the ice of the world’s poles, a dangerous outbreak in the future is certainly a possibility, according to scientists.

However, the fact that the simulation predicted the possibility of the ancient bacteria dominating a host community is quite daunting.

While the chances are low, the researchers believe humanity can no longer write off such a scenario as a fantasy.

As the Earth experiences the throes of global warming, more animal populations will move into the Arctic that previously couldn’t make their home there. As animals migrate more to suit the new climate, this creates a greater area where disease can spread.

Scientists are still unsure of the full extent of what viruses are suspended in frozen animation in the Arctic. It is suspected that some them are deadly human diseases from animals who carried them into the region before getting trapped in ice.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, Artic sea ice is being lost at a rate of 13% every decade.

While it would take a confluence of different factors to set the stage for an ancient virus to reemerge as a pandemic in the modern day, we get closer to that point as time goes on.

Just like COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2, researchers must begin to study and understand the potential frozen pathogens before the virus spreads around the world.