The return of an old pestilence?

In the early 19^th century and then again in the 1890s this part of northern Siberia experienced a number of major smallpox epidemics. In the 1890s in some towns, 40% of the population died from the disease and were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil along the banks of local rivers. Now after more than 125 years their bodies are becoming exposed as temperatures and floodwaters rise.

Is it possible that the smallpox virus might be reactivated from some of these corpses? Many of the bodies that have come to the surface show the symptoms of smallpox, including skin pocked with blemishes characteristic of smallpox pustules.

But the jury is still out on whether or not the virus might have survived the local temperature fluctuations as bodies close to the surface have thawed and then refrozen innumerable times. We really do not know if the smallpox virus can survive in frozen bodies for this length of time.

The question therefore remains – does the smallpox virus continue to exist in Siberia’s permafrost and does global warming mean a possible resurgence of the disease?

If this is the case then it is more than possible that smallpox was only eradicated from our planet’s surface and lingers largely unnoticed beneath the surface.

It is a chilling (no pun intended!) thought, and given that people are no longer vaccinated against smallpox or indeed that it remains possible that people who were vaccinated over 30 years ago may have lost their immunity against the virus, the re-emergence of smallpox into our world would be a demographic and social disaster.