Time to read: 11 minutes(s)

Maria Ivanova, climate crisis and energy transition analyst at Arctida

In the Arctic, permafrost is thawing due to the climate crisis, and governments and businesses are rushing to northern latitudes for natural resources. But along with the permafrost, so too are the viruses and bacteria "dormant" within it, and we may soon encounter them. Which pathogens are harbored in Russian permafrost, how many people are at risk, and what does this have to do with mammoths? Read this joint article by NeMoskva and Arctids.

As soon as the winter frosts eased, a small group of travelers set out for the tundra. There, a recent discovery awaited the expedition: the well-preserved carcass of a huge mammoth. Part of the group—scientists—was to examine it. The other part was to film the explorers and their valuable find.

Having conducted their research in the Arctic snows, everyone returned home safely. But disaster soon struck: all members of the expedition came down with some kind of infection. The illness was severe and unknown, but it closely resembled smallpox: fever, back pain, and, most importantly, a terrible rash.

It became clear that the source of the infection was an ancient mammoth. The infected were hastily isolated, but it was too late. The disease, dubbed "mammoth pox," began to spread rapidly. Hospital intensive care units were overwhelmed. A new deadly pandemic engulfed the world…

It sounds like the beginning of another thriller, like "Contagion," but it's not really a movie. The World Health Organization (WHO) worked through a similar hypothetical scenario in April of this year.

For the online exercise "Exercise Polaris," the WHO brought together ministers from 15 countries, including some far from the Arctic—Germany, Ukraine, Somalia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Each was given the opportunity to choose its own strategy for combating the pandemic. Some imposed quarantines, conducted contact tracing, and closed borders. Others opted for more lenient measures. On the second day of the exercise, the organizers concluded that the differences in their policies had hampered their efforts to contain the virus.

However, unlike the movie, the new pandemic has every chance of becoming a reality as the climate crisis worsens and the race for natural resources in the Arctic intensifies. The fictional "mammoth pox" scenario was based on real scientific discoveries: the Arctic harbors ancient viruses (paleoviruses) that can remain viable for thousands of years. Melting permafrost could unleash pathogens unknown to modern medicine.

Encounters with unknown viruses are nothing new in history. While medicine has proven capable of responding quickly in recent decades, as in the case of the coronavirus, in the past this has resulted in tragedy for entire populations. For example, in 1520–1521, smallpox, brought to the Americas by the Spanish, killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of inhabitants of the Aztec Empire, who had no immunity to the unknown virus. Approximately 20 million people—95 percent of the indigenous population of pre-Columbian America—died from pathogens brought by Europeans. Smallpox also became the main factor in the extermination of the San people in South Africa by European colonists in 1713. But all these diseases were known, at least to those who brought them. But what has been lurking in the permafrost for thousands of years—that remains to be seen.

Nothing lasts forever...

Scientists who study permafrost call it perennial rather than eternal. It's becoming perfectly clear why. The area covered by permafrost—ground that remains frozen for more than three years at a time—is vast. It covers a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere and almost two-thirds of Russia's territory.

Nikita Tananaev, A candidate of geographical sciences and leading researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Arktida that permafrost in one form or another exists in 28 regions of Russia, but only in nine of them does it occupy a significant area: Yakutia, Chukotka, Komi, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Magadan Oblast, and Kamchatka Krai.

Permafrost depth varies across regions—in some places it's less than a meter, while in the mountains it reaches over one and a half kilometers. The deepest permafrost is found in Yakutia.

Every summer, the top layer—which also varies in different places—thaws.

Climate change is currently causing the air and soil to warm more intensely, causing permafrost to thaw deeper. Over the past 20 years, Roshydromet reports, this has been most noticeable in the Vorkuta region of Komi, and in Siberia—in the northern Yamal Peninsula, in the Nadym, Urengoy, and Novy Urengoy regions. These are currently the main oil and gas producing regions of Western Siberia. In Nadym, permafrost thawed an average of 70 cm deeper in the early 2020s than in the late 1990s, and in Urengoy, it thawed almost 50 cm deeper than in 2008–2010.

But let's return to our mammoths.

Extinct but dangerous?

While the WHO prepares to deal with a virus that could be released from the remains of mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and other animals extinct for thousands of years preserved in the tundra, research is underway in Yakutia on the carcass of a baby mammoth. Yana, found in the republic's Verkhoyansky District last year, had lain frozen for over 50 years.

Only seven such well-preserved carcasses have been found worldwide so far. But scientists say there could be 10 million of them in the Russian permafrost alone. And as the planet warms and the permafrost thaws, these remains are becoming increasingly accessible.

In 2014, an international team of scientists isolated a 30-year-old giant virus, comparable in size to a bacterium, from permafrost in Chukotka. This giant virus has approximately 500 genes. By comparison, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic has 13-15.

Subsequently, scientists discovered 13 more viruses that had survived in deep permafrost in Siberia and Kamchatka for nearly 50 years and confirmed their potential danger to humans. The researchers suggest that permafrost harbors "an entire world of viruses."

A storehouse of diseases

Cold, darkness, and a lack of oxygen create ideal conditions for the survival of pathogens up to a million years old—predecessors even of modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives—in the deep layers of permafrost. This means our immune system may not be prepared for such an encounter, which is becoming increasingly likely due to thawing permafrost and industrial development in the Arctic.

In addition to unknown viruses, thawed permafrost may also reactivate pathogens that humans have already encountered but thought eradicated. For example, smallpox, eradicated by 1980 thanks to an effective vaccine, is caused by a virus that can remain infectious for up to 250 years at subzero temperatures. Incidentally, this very virus was the "prototype" for the mammoth pox experiment conducted by the WHO.

Permafrost harbors not only viruses but also bacteria, including those related to the pathogens that cause anthrax, brucellosis, diarrhea, staphylococcal, and streptococcal infections. Burials of animals and people who died from deadly infections in the past can be dangerous.

We already know how such diseases resurface: in 2016, extreme heat and the cessation of reindeer vaccinations led to an anthrax outbreak in Yamal, the first in the region since the 1940s. One child and over two thousand reindeer died.

In the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) alone, there are over 200 burial grounds of animals infected with anthrax. Spores of this pathogen remain viable for decades and even hundreds of years. Yakutia also has cemeteries of smallpox victims from the second half of the 19th century: one such burial was discovered in the early 1990s near the village of Pokhodsk.

Nikita Tananaev points out that burial sites containing anthrax pathogens—like those that led to the 2016 outbreak in Yamal—are not always marked, and many remain undisclosed, raising questions for veterinary service organizations.

The relatives of modern bacteria dormant in the tundra are currently of less concern to the scientific community, as a potential epidemic can be brought under control relatively quickly with modern antibiotics.

Scientists conducting virus research in 2022 believe that an encounter between plants, animals, or humans and a previously unknown pathogen could be far more catastrophic. New vaccines will be needed, and their development and production will take time. And, as we know from the COVID-19 pandemic, the pathogen could already have taken over the planet by then.

Around 10 million people live permanently in areas where permafrost is widespread. That's roughly the size of two cities like St. Petersburg. Sometimes you won't see anyone for hundreds of kilometers around.

Due to the low population density, Nikita Tananaev remains skeptical about the possibility of a new pandemic due to permafrost thawing. Furthermore, Arctic regions are isolated, and the likelihood of the pathogen coming into contact with humans or other carriers is very low.

"Discoveries of ancient animal remains along the banks of rivers flowing through the mountains and tundra plains of northeastern Russia are common; anyone can encounter them. However, such discoveries have not previously posed any health risks (other than criminal ones), and it's unlikely that such a thing will happen in the future," says Tananaev.

The scientist believes that at the moment, the real danger of pathogens already circulating among people is much higher than the “virtual risk of encountering an ancient variant of a killer virus.”

However, "the scenario in which an unknown virus that once infected Neanderthals returns to us, although unlikely, has become a real possibility," says Jean-Michel Claverie, professor emeritus at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in France, who has given rise to the nickname "zombie viruses."

New horizons…

The risks are, of course, particularly pressing for the indigenous peoples of the North, who live on the front lines of the climate crisis and for whom the tundra is their only home. But warming and thawing permafrost are opening up new opportunities for scientists to study the Arctic, for its development, and for a greater human presence there. Consequently, viruses may also develop new opportunities.

Besides scientists, mammoths in Russia are of interest to private hunters, including those who illegally export their tusks abroad. Such cases have occurred, for example, in Chukotka and Yakutia.

Tananaev says that since the ivory trade was banned in China—its main market—in 2018, the extraction and export of mammoth remains has become a popular and profitable business in Russia.

But the Arctic's treasure trove has much more to offer than the bones of extinct animals to those willing to explore. The government and businesses view the Russian North as a strategic resource base and plan to expand the extraction of hydrocarbons, rare earth metals, and other minerals there.

The Russian Federation's Arctic Development Strategy through 2035 envisions a significant expansion of its economic presence in the Arctic, including the construction of new enterprises, terminals, and transport routes, as well as the development of mineral deposits and tourism.

"Clearly, the worst-case scenario for contamination is a large concentration of workers around an open-pit mine where permafrost extracted from hundreds of meters deep could release extremely ancient and completely unknown viruses that infect humans," Claverie explains in his 2023 paper, "Zombie Viruses from the Arctic."

…and new responsibility

Since the threat of pathogens that persist in permafrost is still poorly understood, developing an action plan is only possible after extensive cross-sector research.

Experts believe a national strategy must be developed to preserve the health of the Arctic population amid the climate crisis. This should include, for example, developing healthcare in remote regions so that, in the event of infection, patients do not need to be transported to Moscow, increasing the risk of spreading the infection.

Climate factors such as global warming and extreme precipitation also need to be monitored, particularly in regions where there have been previous cases of anthrax.

According to Tananaev, the threat posed by permafrost thaw must be considered in the context of the healthcare system's preparedness for an overload that could be greater than that experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For now, plans for industrial development in the Arctic are far more ambitious than those for healthcare development. Nikita Tananaev, however, offers a slightly different perspective on industrial development in the North:

"The best thing that could be done today is to calm down a bit with the geological development of the Arctic, reduce fossil fuel production, and switch to more accessible rare earth ore deposits in other, more southern regions of Russia (they exist there)," says Tananaev.

Today, the risks of ancient pathogens awakening in thawing permafrost are barely discussed in Russian society and are insufficiently taken into account. The Russian law on permafrost monitoring also does not include measures specifically for monitoring ancient viruses and bacteria.

The greater the human presence in the Arctic and the deeper we drill into the permafrost, the greater the risk of encountering bacteria and viruses, and then accidentally transporting them in any direction. If we ignore these risks during industrial expansion into the melting Arctic, we could find ourselves in a painfully familiar game of "Russian roulette."