As global warming continues to heat up the atmosphere daily, long-dormant bacteria and viruses that have been trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries are beginning to revive. Over these past centuries, humans have mutated to develop genes that can resist certain harmful bacteria. While this happens, viruses are also mutating rapidly, in order for them to survive and develop new ways of infecting us.

The endless war with humans battling pathogens, such as bacteria, requires a tremendous amount of effort and scientific knowledge to discover new treatments. However hard we try, bacteria seem to have a way to overcome the medications, like how they have evolved with antibacterial resistance.

Around 50 centimeters of superficial permafrost melt every summer, meaning that more and more diseases are being exposed to the atmosphere as time passes. Older permafrost layers from long ago, about one million years, have hidden all sorts of bacteria and other types of infectious agents. Humans should be concerned nowadays, since those layers are beginning to melt and the temperature in the Arctic Circle is rising three times faster than the world. These viruses and bacteria preserved in deeper permafrost layers may even include those that triggered the global epidemics in the past.

Evolutionary biologist Jean-Michel Claverie at Aix-Marseille University has done much research on the permafrost layers deep down.

Scientists have been researching about what else may be under the soil and permafrost frozen for so long. They have realized that people and animals buried in soil for the past centuries may release deadly diseases, plagues, and viruses. Viruses from the first humans that populated the Arctic Circle will definitely emerge again, but thankfully some other weaker viruses will die out. They will not be able to survive the long time in the permafrost without any hosts cells. Therefore, we are fortunate that the several viruses that will emerge again only infect single celled amoebas. That means they will not affect us in any way.

Currently, DNA and RNA extraction all over the world has been used to analyze the substances within the frozen soil as well as cases that have already occurred in which humans have died from obtaining diseases from permafrost.

Claverie thinks we should be worried about these diseases waking up. She has reported that “If the pathogen hasn’t been in contact with humans for a long time, then our immune system would not be prepared. So yes, that could be dangerous.”