the accidental time travelers: how ancient viruses could wreak havoc on a warmer earth
Thawing permafrost is revealing a ticking time bomb of climate change that doesn't get nearly enough attention for the devastation it could cause.
Climate change denialists love to claim that we should all welcome a warmer planet, asking who wants to be cold and what’s the worst that could happen. This claim is in bad faith, of course, as are all of their arguments against the idea of cleaning up our world. And this is especially true when you consider the actual worst that could face us on an Earth that’s warming by multiple degrees within the span of a century. We’re not talking about bigger, stronger storms. Or famine-generating droughts. Or wars for dwindling resources. Or global refugee crises. No, we’re talking about new pandemics as diseases from the distant past race across the world in rapid succession.
If you thought that COVID did a number on us, imagine a new COVID every six months washing over the world. How is that possible? Well, as permafrost is thawing, it turns out that viruses and parasites frozen tens of thousands of years ago aren’t dead and forgotten, but simply dormant. The warmer it gets, the more of them are waking up to spread across the world once again, simply waiting for a new carrier, and ready to do their absolute worst in a closely connected world that can be traversed in the span of two days rather than years when they were last free to roam. And we have absolutely no idea what they could do to us when they reach their full potential.
Now, we could get lucky. It’s possible that none of these viruses will harm us because they’ve never encountered human cells. But many of them could make the jump to us, and quite a few were around when modern humans roamed North Africa, or started to create the first agricultural communities across the Middle East, potentially making a lot of our ancestors very sick, and now getting a comeback tour. After all, viruses are the most numerous organisms on the planet and always have been. Do we really want to take a chance having more around, knowing that some of them may have infected us in the same form in which they’ll return?
Come on, really, you might ask. These viruses are tens of thousands of years old. How dangerous would they possibly be? Dangerous enough that a group of scientists was easily able to thaw a 48,500 year old virus and get it to infect an animal cell. An animal rooting around in some recently thawed permafrost would almost certainly become a host to a virus this planet hasn’t seen since the peak of the last set of ice ages, ready to spread it to new hosts while giving it time, resources, and opportunity to mutate so it can jump species. Or, as mentioned, we could dig up an old enemy as we build new roads through what were once frozen tundras.
Bottom line is that if we don’t want to deal with these potentially devastating viruses, we need to do everything we can to keep our planet in the temperature range it is now and being good custodians of the environment. Not only would this be a terrific thing to do economically, socially, and politically, but also from a public health standpoint. After all imagine thinking that burning down the planet, despoiling its waters, forests, and air, triggering wars and the displacement of millions, and resurrecting diseases Earth hasn’t seen for as long as 100,000 years just for some scraps of colorful plastic or linen was a wise choice, and you were a smart, sensible person for making it.
See: Alempic J-M, et al. (2023) An update on eukaryotic viruses revived from ancient permafrost. Viruses 15(2):564 DOI: 10.3390/v15020564