Scientists fear the dangerous “X Factor” virus could emerge from Earth’s permafrost and trigger a catastrophe.

In the frozen confines of the Arctic, permafrost, the icy mantle that covers vast regions of the north of our planet, has been a silent witness to geological eras. However, As climate change unleashes its effects the old permafrost fades , divulge secrets that could upset the global balance.

Permafrost is permanently frozen ground, a living fossil that harbors plant and animal remains buried for two or more consecutive years, with two years being the minimum and up to thousands of years. Its thaw, driven by rising temperatures, triggers a cascade of worrying consequences.

Deep in the permafrost lie microorganisms that have been dormant for millennia, a sort of microbial time capsule.

The feared possibility of previously unknown prehistoric pathogens being released into the modern world due to global warming poses a potentially catastrophic risk.

“There is an X factor that we don’t know much about” told Newsweek Birgitta Evengård, professor of infectious diseases at Umeå University in Sweden . “Deep in the permafrost, there must be microbes, notably viruses, but also bacteria, which already existed on Earth long before Homo sapiens.”

Over the past decades, the Warming in the Arctic has been much faster than in the rest of the world, up to four times. As global temperatures rise, permafrost is melting at an alarming rate.

Inside, Viruses like anthrax, smallpox or prehistoric viruses, thought to be eradicated or unknown, could trigger a series of deadly diseases. after being in torpor.

The danger lies not only in their release, but also in the lack of human immunity against these resurrected diseases. “There’s a lot we don’t know, and very few people have studied permafrost,” Evengård said.

The world is still recovering from Deadly coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly seven million people, and the probability of another pandemic occurring in the next decade is 27.5%, according to international studies. Because of how infectious diseases work, most outbreaks likely originate from wild animals, called zoonoses.

Studies have shown that Zoonotic disease outbreaks are increasing, both in number and diversity, and deaths are expected to continue to increase by an average of nearly 10 percent each year. In July 2021, a group of scientists identified that viruses such as Lassa, Ebola, Seoul, Nipah, Hepatitis E and Hanta could become the next pandemic.

Last year, a group of scientists in France seven resurrected viruses which have been frozen for thousands of years in the Siberian permafrost. The virus, called Pandoravirus, included the oldest specimen resurrected so far, with one being 48,500 years old, a world record.

The youngest was frozen for 27,000 years and the oldest, Pandoravirus yedoma, for 48,500 years. However, this virus only attacks amoeba. However, demonstrates that viruses are incredibly resilient, capable of surviving indefinitely when kept frozen.

“If amoebic viruses can survive this long in permafrost, it strongly suggests that those that infect animals/humans could still be infectious under the same conditions,” Jean-Michel Claverie, who led the study, told Newsweek . “Moreover, we know that the DNA [de los virus que infectan animales/humanos] detected in permafrost “.

In 2016, An anthrax outbreak in northern Siberia has killed more than 2,000 reindeer and a 12-year-old boy. It is believed that the origin of the disease was due to the corpse of an infected animal that had been frozen for a long time in the Siberian ice, because according to Evengård the virus has a very thick cell wall, so it can remain in a dormant state. prolonged for hundreds of years, then a return to life.

What is found in permafrost could be “viruses from extinct diseases like smallpox; the omnipresent anthrax, through areas contaminated by spores ; and also the accelerated spread of already known diseases [existen] in today’s Arctic, such as tularemia, a serious bacterial infection or tick-borne encephalitis,” explains Claverie.

And that’s without talking organic matter inactive for millions of years locked in frozen soil: 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon could be released with methane into the atmosphere, damaging the ozone layer.

The warming of the Arctic is also making these polar regions more habitable. “The public health risk comes from the accelerated release of previously frozen viruses combined with increased human exposure,” Claverie said.

Since the viral load locked in permafrost is massive, if released over the course of twenty years or so, it could eventually could trigger a large number of new viral infections worldwide.