What Melting Permafrost Really Means For Human, Animal, and Planetary Health

Ice doesn’t just melt; it remembers. As permafrost thaws, we unpack what really ‘wakes up’ in the soil—and what that means for human health, animals, crops, and culture. We bring a One Health lens to a noisy topic, cutting through “zombie virus” headlines to explain why most human viruses don’t survive freeze–thaw cycles, and how a 2016 Siberian outbreak became a case study in climate, ecology, and policy colliding.

We explore the icy regions of the map—Russia, Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica—then dive into the mechanics: frozen soils, ancient organic matter, and greenhouse gases are released when microbes “switch on.” You’ll hear how megaviruses that infect amoebae survived for tens of thousands of years, why smallpox on ice is noninfectious, and how plant pathogens threaten food systems as tourism and trade move microbes on boots and gear. We also explore prion durability, revived nematodes, and fungi’s overlooked role in carbon cycling that accelerates warming.

Beyond the lab, we sit with the human story. Indigenous communities situated in permafrost regions face failing infrastructure, disrupted wildlife patterns, and cultural loss that statistics can’t capture. Add in geopolitics: like the Ukrainian war that has severed scientific data flows from vast Siberian regions, creating dangerous blind spots in permafrost surveillance. The takeaway isn’t panic—it’s preparation. Surveil, learn, support cross-border monitoring, and center cultural resilience alongside climate adaptation.

Thanks for listening to the Infectious Science Podcast. Be sure to visit infectiousscience.org to join the conversation, access the show notes, and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to receive our free materials.

We hope you enjoyed this new episode of Infectious Science, and if you did, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Please share this episode with others who may be interested in this topic!

Also, please don’t hesitate to ask questions or tell us which topics you want us to cover in future episodes. To get in touch, drop us a line in the comment section or send us a message on social media.
Instagram @Infectscipod
Facebook Infectious Science Podcast

See you next time for a new episode!

Transcript

Welcome And Framing One Health

SPEAKER_03 0:09

This is a podcast about OneHealth. The idea that the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment that we all share are intrinsically linked. Coming to you from a team of scientists, physicians, and veterinarians, this is Infectious Science. Where enthusiasm for science is contagious. All right, hello everyone. Welcome back to this episode of Infectious Science. We are super excited to be here with you all today. We are going to get into a big thawing problem. As we've previously discussed, global warming is continuing, the permafrost on our planet is thawing. And then because there are bodies of animals and humans who died of disease that are in the permafrost in some places, and some of that hasn't melted in a really long time, there's definitely been some discussion in the scientific community about the risk of potentially thawing out pathogens from the permafrost. This is sounds very science fiction-y, but it's actually really hotly debated in scientific circles. So we're going to talk about if we're in danger or not. And so the answer might surprise you. But I'm curious, we have Alex, Christina, Dennis, and myself today. Has anyone ever actually been up to like where we have permafrost regions in the world? Because I I live where it's cold, like up in New York, but it's not permafrost.

SPEAKER_08 1:26

Yeah. I actually have. I had a stint in my career in Winnipeg in Canada. And so this is very close to the Arctic Circle. And yeah, the winters were eight months long. At least that's how it felt to me. And so yes, this is definitely a permafrost area. So that's brutal though.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

An eight-month winter is brutal. But I've always wanted to be up somewhere where I feel like once you're in the permafrost regions, you would see the northern lights. So I feel like that's a draw for me.

SPEAKER_05 1:54

Yeah. I've personally never been in a permafrost region, but my uncle is currently in Antarctica, which is the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_08 2:04

He's sending pictures that's so neat. Oh my god. On a cruise or like a research thing?

SPEAKER_05 2:10

He went on a cruise, but it's one of those adventure cruises, so you actually get to set foot on Antarctica, but he keeps sending pictures every day. It's definitely a bucket list item. And I'm not a cold girl.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Like, what's the that's wild? I love the cold personally. I made the mistake. My uncle was up visiting and I took him out on a walk with me. And he like got so chilled we had to turn back, and I was like, this is great. I was just like a Labrador ready to play in the snow. I was just so content. It's like a it's like a really cold wind chill because I'm really close to the Great Lakes.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

I've lived in Southern California, northern Nevada, Northern Virginia, and Northern Virginia was already enough of winter for me. I only shuddered to think of what you go through being by the Great Lakes control or you, uh Dr. Benter in Winnipeg.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Yeah. You would not survive. I know, but I know that. And so I plan around it. Yeah. There you go.

Climate Change, Infrastructure, And Inequity

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Fair enough. Yeah. And I didn't actually realize that in order to be classified as permafrost, it has to be like frozen to like the ground of spring completely frozen for at least two years, which is really wild to think about. And it's actually less of the planet than I thought it was with 15% of the land in the northern hemisphere, but it can be snow free in the summer, which I guess I knew that, right? Like it'll melt and you have a bit at the top that's constantly freezing, thawing. But I did not know that about permafrost regions before jumping into this episode. It's interesting you mentioned Winnipeg, though, Dr. Bente, because as we have global warming really continuing, NASA actually put out something that, especially in northern areas where we have built up infrastructure, things like that, it's really at risk because that thawing permafrost can like destroy houses and roads and other infrastructures, the ground shifts because permafrost is as hard as concrete. But if you're thawing it out, it's suddenly no longer that way and it can sink and dip. And I know even up here where it's up in New York, it's not permafrost, but we have massive amounts of adjusting to do the all the infrastructure every time everything thaws because you get frost hubes in the roads and it affects your house and things like that. So I just thought that was something to think about. That's not really like infectious focused, but it still can affect health, right? Like you can have a significant threat to like your ability to get food or like medical care, things like that, if the infrastructure, like all the roads and things are being impacted by it.

SPEAKER_08 4:35

So, Camille, first of all, we are on what season four now, and you guys still call me Dr. Benter. How many times have we talked about this?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Okay, Dennis, it's habit. I think you're gonna be on my committee. It's just a force of habit.

SPEAKER_08 4:49

And you're a doctor too, so uh yes.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

It's habit, it's habit.

SPEAKER_08 4:53

Yes. But what I wanted to ask you, Camille, uh Dr. Ledoux, what I wanted to ask you, and I know you will go into details later on, I know that with statistics and so on, but like from a continent or from a country perspective, what countries have the most permafrost? I think that might be also interesting for the audience to hear. Like what countries really have the largest percentage of permafrost?

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah, so really you're gonna be looking at Russia and Canada and Greenland. That's where we see a lot of the permafrost. But in particular, though, not a lot of that is necessarily settled, right? There's not necessarily a huge human population up there. It can be really brutal climate-wise. And so a lot of times I do think you'll see like a lot more of indigenous communities in these areas that were where people live traditionally. And these are people that are definitely experiencing more inequities due to the human-mediated change in our climate. And so these kind of marginalized indigenous communities that live in permafrost regions are being further disenfranchised and disproportionately affected by these ecological disturbances like permafrost thyme. But that's really where we see it, I would say, is really those three main countries.

SPEAKER_08 6:04

Yeah, I looked this up while we were talking about this, and you mentioned this Siberia, which is almost 70% of Russia's land mass, is all permafrost.

SPEAKER_06 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 6:13

Then at 85% of Alaska permafrost, just to throw out some numbers, Canada, Greenland, all in the news, and there's also obviously permafrost in the southern hemisphere. Yeah. And these, yeah, uh, the Southern Alps and beneath the Antarctica. So that was actually news to me, to be honest with you. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Virus Viability Myths And Realities

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Yeah, yeah. And I think this is a good time to talk about what makes something permafrost, right? So it's it's the soil and rock, and a lot of times like organic matter that's frozen. Again, it's got to be like below freezing for more than two years to be considered permafrost. But what's really interesting about it and why we're talking about this topic is that when permafrost is frozen, things like plant material in the soil can't decompose. Animal or human bodies don't necessarily rot away. But as the permafrost thaws, those microbes that are already in that soil can begin decomposing the material. That can release greenhouse gases that's going to be like carbon dioxide, methane, and that warms the planet, which can lead to more thawing in permafrost. So it becomes this positive feedback loop that really results in a lot more damage. But of course, while that's a concern and that's definitely going to impact health, right? And we've done a whole episode on how global warming impacts health. There's also things like ancient bacteria and viruses and parasites in that ice and soil. And there's definitely a kind of non-zero potential that these newly unfrozen microbes have the potential to make humans or animals really sick if we're exposed to them. And some of them are thousands of years old, right? And it's so far beyond what we can even consider on like our normal like human timescale to think about these things that might be persisting in the environment that we just haven't come into contact with. And that's always something we've talked a lot about this on the show of a really big danger is not necessarily that something's in the environment, but that there's a neat naive population that's gonna be exposed to it. And so these are not necessarily things that we've come in contact to. So we're gonna talk about what's thawing out, starting with viruses. But I do just want to put a disclaimer on here because I feel like I read a lot of science fiction, right? I'm a big reader, and most people who listen to infectious science know that. And I love like pathogen horror. And a lot of times they're like, you're gonna thaw out this zombie virus, and then it's gonna take over. It's always set up in these islands off the coast of somewhere and it's super cold, and then they thaw something out or they're digging somewhere they shouldn't. And then like, and it's fun to read, but that's definitely not like the reality of what we should actually be concerned about with this. And that's because a lot of times I think people get this idea that we have had really incredibly deadly viral outbreaks in permafrost regions. You've had things like the 1918 influenza, you've had smallpox, and then people have been basically buried in the permafrost, right? But it's really unlikely when anything like that thaws out that it's still like a viable virus. And by that I mean like that it's still infectious.

SPEAKER_08 9:04

But I do want to make a disclaimer here, Camille, and just adding on to your disclaimer, I think that's this perception, what's the demon in the freezer, right? We have something that's frozen, and now all of a sudden we reach into this freezer and we grab it out and it's immediately infectious. Yeah. I think that's the misperception. It's not a freezer that is at minus 80 degrees and just stabilizes something. It's a pathogen that you put in a minus 80 freezer, but now you unplugged the freezer, and the freezer is slowly thawing. And we know that a lot of viruses, especially the envelope viruses, are very sensitive to the thawing process. So were they stable for years and years at minus temperatures? And to emphasize that this is permafrost, it's the ideal environment. It's there's no oxygen, it's cold, it's perfect for a pathogen to be stabilized, but then it thaws and then gets closer. And especially the refreezing and then re-thawing also influences the infectivity of pathogens. And you brought up 1918, the flu. Keep in mind, somebody, yes, people died in in these areas and were frozen in the permafrost. When people looked for it, they were never able to get the live virus out of those samples. Yes. Were they able to sequence part of the genome and then artificially construct the virus? Yes, but it's not that some archaeologist was digging and then infected themselves.

SPEAKER_06 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 10:35

So I just want to make sure that the audience is aware that this is not some free breach and then all of a sudden we have a new pandemic.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Yes, yes. No, and that was actually my next point is that for anyone interested, Christina and I did an episode on mummies a little while ago, and we talked about how a grave containing the bodies of those who died from the 1918 flu that were in permafrost was excavated. And while they were able to recover these genetic fragments, the influenza virus itself wasn't infectious. And they actually had to dig twice to even find genetic fragments. And they only found it because it was basically insulated by the layer of fat in one individual's lungs. And I think you make a really good point too. I don't know, Alex or Dennis, if you want to comment more on this, but like when we are working with something like a virus in lab, even to have it in a minus 80, you're not really just like sticking it in a minus 80. Usually, if you need to use it at a later date for like more experiments, there's usually like some kind of reagent that's stabilizing it or making sure that it's going to be in a way protected from the effects of eventually falling it out. And so I think that's also something people need to think about that it's actually pretty hard to keep something viable.

SPEAKER_08 11:42

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That needs to be some sort of a matrix that's the protects the virus in addition to the low temperatures. Absolutely.

Ancient Amoeba Viruses And Smallpox Checks

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Yeah, yeah. And in particular, too, something to think about. We talked about climate change on a previous episode. And a lot of our listeners probably know 40% of the Arctic and subarctic permafrost by the end of the century might be thawed, which is wild to think about. That's gonna massively change entire communities and ways of living. But if viral pathogens maintained infectivity while frozen in permafrost, which as we've just said is pretty difficult, they're only really a concern if they can actually jump to humans or animals. And there's not really a reason for alarm because that's actually pretty difficult, right? So you'd have to see a reintroduction of something that is probably already not persisting in a body that's in thawing graves or mass burial sites. There is always the concern that you could see something jumping into wildlife or domestic animals. Alex is going to talk about that a little bit later. And then it could be maybe transmitted to humans from them. And then there's the concern too that, okay, we have viruses that we know are viable, right? There are some viruses that are viable. I'll talk about them in a minute, but their hosts are microbial, right? So it's not a human host, it's not an animal host, it's something like bacteria or archaea, things that then to make the jump to infecting a human is pretty significant. And it's not something we really see. Oftentimes, a virus is going to infect not even just animals or something, it's going to affect a species, right? Like we've talked before a lot about papillomaviruses. And there are human papillomaviruses and there are canine papillomaviruses and so on and so forth. But you don't necessarily see like a crossing over of these things. Usually it has a pretty specific host. And so that's something that I just wanted to throw out there. But there are some viruses that are in permafrost, which I think is really cool, and we should talk about them because they are viable, which is really wild to consider based on everything we just talked about. Again, not all viruses infect humans. So the ones that we found that are viable from permafrost in 2014 and 2015, there were samples of Siberian soil. It had been frozen for 30,000 years, which is an exceptionally long time. And researchers were able to find two large DNA viruses, but they could only infect amoeba. So they don't pose any threats to humans. And then later on, they actually found 13 more permafrost megaviruses that infect amoeba, some of them dating back up to 48,500 years. So just to put that in context, Neanderthals were still walking around alongside Homo sapiens 48,500 years ago. So these are really old viruses, but they were still able to infect amoeba, which is really fascinating because a lot of times, for all the reasons we just mentioned, freeze thaw cycles and having the perfect conditions and viruses needing a host that was alive in order to continue to persist, we don't necessarily see stuff like this. So it was really significant that we saw that. I feel like is the specter, right? I think I'm the first generation that didn't have to get vaccinated for smallpox. Dennis, did you have to get vaccinated?

SPEAKER_08 14:49

No, my brother did, but I didn't. I know I look old, but I'm not that old.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

Oh, all right, rude. I was not saying that. My mom has a smallpox vaccination, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_06 15:00

Mine does too, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Yeah, I don't know. But Christina, Alex, myself, I know we don't have it because we don't vaccinate for it anymore. Because we eradicated it. Woo, that's great. And but there is always this kind of fear, I think people are like, oh, it still could be out there. The reason we were able to eradicate smallpox is because um humans were basically its reservoir, right? So it wasn't necessarily just existing elsewhere. But just to rule out anything for permafrost, we don't have to worry about smallpox because actually in the 1990s, a wooden vault near a village in northern Siberia that actually contained mummified bodies of smallpox victims was found. But scientists from the Vector Institute, which is similar to the CDC, and so colleagues from there really collected samples from these mummified bodies from the chamber, including from smallpox postules, right? Which, if you were going to find something infectious, you'd expect to find it there. They were actually unable to isolate live virus from the samples. And they suggested that this was because it was destroyed by freeze thaw cycles, because the burial site was pretty near the surface of the permafrost. And I think that's really important to mention because this is likely where most recent human remains would be, as permafrost is hard as concrete, as I already mentioned. So burying people any deeper would have been super, super difficult. And there are other examples where they found that.

Anthrax Biology And Spore Survival

SPEAKER_04 16:15

As Camille was saying, bacteria and viruses certainly loom beneath the permafrost. And bacteria are a slightly different story than viruses, as many of these can be fairly hardy. And regardless as to whether they infect humans or not, increasingly it appears that bacteria thawing from the permafrost can either directly contribute to global warning, may pose a risk to plants we rely on for food, but in the case of anthrax, also may also pose a direct risk to livestock and to us ourselves. And so bacillus anthoracies is the bacterial agent responsible for causing anthrax. And it's important to understand with bacillus anthoracicis that there are two forms of bacteria during its life cycle, a vegetative and a spore state. And spore formation occurs when the bacterium encounters unfavorable environmental conditions, say a high oxygen content environment, for instance. And the spore is essentially the dormant form for the organism, and it contains the most critical parts of the vegetative, the replicative bacteria. So its genome and some small acid-soluble proteins that protect the genome and other components, and it's encased by a variety of different protective structures, like a thick peptinoglycan cell wall known as the cortex, and then a protein-rich spore coat and a thin outer membrane. And these spores can remain in a dormant state for an extended period of time. Some of these have been isolated outside of permafrost after several decades. And when environmentally favorable conditions resume that these spores can encounter, then they may subsequently germinate and revert to a more vegetative state. And these spores tend to be shed by dead or dying animals that were infected with bacillus anthracis, because bacillus anthrasis is this pathogen that predominantly affects these large herbivores. Reindeer are some that are really critical in the case of the Siberian outbreak.

SPEAKER_07 18:02

Reindeer? Oh no. Christmas is in jeopardy.

SPEAKER_04 18:11

I'm afraid, although I do say that the thine of uh the Arctic polar ice caps will probably do a little more damage to Santa's workshop than just the reindeer dynoff. Yes. I could not help myself with that.

SPEAKER_05 18:30

But I know sheep too, right, Alex? But sheep too, right? So you're saying reindeer, but also sheep are like very large reservoirs. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

Yeah, sheep, pigs, the a wide variety of different uh herbivores end up being affected, and so it's definitely a significant problem. But humans, of course, can also get infected, which is a significant issue. It's largely as a result of contact with infected herbivores, for what it's worth. And it's not like there's a case of human-to-human transmission, certainly, but it's still something that, especially like in industrial settings, it's important to be aware of the fact that some of the animals involved may end up having rabies, and there's a re or not rabies, sorry, anthrax.

SPEAKER_08 19:11

Anthrax is also it's a bacteria f found in the soil, right? It's bacterium that lives in the soil. And every once in a while we see these explosive outbreaks where like an animal picked up the bacterium in the soil, gets infected, and it's just maybe dying and then amplifying the anthrax to other animals close by. So, my question for you is why what's the permafrost component that makes it more dangerous? Or since we already see that day-to-day in many countries around the world with anthrax from the soil, what's the difference now finding it in permafrost?

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Absolutely. The soil conditions in which some of these anthrax spores can be found play a really critical role in terms of their ability to proliferate and in anthrax outbreaks ultimately coming to fruition to some extent. So anthrax spores tend to favor more neutral to alkaline pH soils along with environments that have high degrees of soil moisture. And it's also more common for livestock to potentially come into contact with anthrax spores after a prolonged period of dryness that in and of itself was preceded by a period of significant soil moisture. That moisture event essentially could allow for a greater degree of proliferation of the spores themselves, and that and it may have some sort of a germinative effect on the spores in a limited capacity. That's still something that a number of bacteriologists are looking into. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_08 20:44

Okay, that makes sense.

The 2016 Siberia Outbreak And Drivers

SPEAKER_04 20:45

But what we see in the case of the permafrost thaw in Siberia was that there was this anthrax outbreak in Siberia in July of 2016. And in the years leading up to it, 2011 to 2016, there were these abnormally hot winters and periods where the permafrost was simply not refreezing the way that it should have been. And so as a result, and as Camille was saying about the importance of the soil remaining frozen for years on end, really, that enabled some of these spores that would have been within the frozen soil to emerge from perhaps their somewhat more dormant state and start to proliferate in a limited capacity. And then in the summer of 2016, so this was in this like northwestern part of Siberia specifically, this particular region had abnormally high temperatures as well, 29 to 34 degrees Celsius. So pretty hot, you know, uh upwards of the the 90s, I believe, in the on the Fahrenheit scale on the lower end, right? Which is not exactly the most ideal, and certainly atypically hot conditions for that sort of environment. And that affects the animals that then are going and feeding in the sense that in these sorts of drought like conditions, there may be more limited grass for these animals to feed on. And so that means that they be more in contact with the soil as a result of that. Or they may be, in their grazing behavior, more enforced in nature, in the sense that they have to seek out these limited areas that have had perhaps better access to water, and that congregation around certain limited areas may also enable this sort of a proliferation. Another key aspect of it though is not just about the contact with the spores directly through some of these soil dynamics themselves, but also the fact that these high temperatures increase the amount of biting insects that were present in the region. And these insects play a very critical role, especially in terms of the explosion of some of these anthrax outbreaks and can transmit to humans and to other herbivores alike. And so what was also noticed in this region was that there was a significant increase in the population of some biting flies. And so as a result, that probably all combined in kind of a perfect storm for an outbreak in the local reindeer population to emerge, and for then that to then rapidly spread among reindeer who may not have necessarily been immediately geographically proximate to that specific case. And then through that, and through the important role of reindeer as a livestock animal in the region and handling of reindeer products, or then exposure to the human population on that side. And ultimately there were reindeer that were infected, and over 300 more ultimately were culled by Russian authorities in response. And there were about 36 human cases, one of which resulted in a death of a 12-year-old boy, which was of course a tragedy indeed.

SPEAKER_08 23:37

Yeah, this I was not aware of this outbreak or this thawing. So I thought it was very interesting. And what I saw when I looked into this is that during this period you mentioned these six warm years, right? Like where there was enough time for things to thaw. So after these relatively warm years, there were actually cold years after this, but the cold years had a lot of snow, and the snow covering stopped the permafrost from freezing over again. Yeah. Insulation, the snow is insulation. And so although it was colder, it just didn't freeze through again and turned back into permafrost. And I think this just goes to show that weather or local climate or climate in general is just way more complex than we think. People always say, this year was just one warm year, but it's not just one year, it's the trends that we have to look at.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah, and that's really important to you for when you think about the contribution of permafrost bacteria to global warming. It's not just, oh, you have one super hot day and then they start to become active, right? There were some researchers that took basically bacteria that they isolated from a permafrost research tunnel in Alaska. And when they basically simulated the thawing conditions in a lab, it took one to six months for those bacteria to essentially wake up and begin to sort of proliferate to the point where they would start breaking down organic matter and producing the greenhouse gases. You're correct. That it's these long-term trends that kind of does it in. And I think it's also important to think about we've talked about this before, but like anything that happens in an environment that happens fast is usually bad for the ecosystem there, right? If it happens on a quick scale, it's going to be devastating for something.

SPEAKER_08 25:18

So the adaptation that's not just not enough time for the environment to adapt. Like with what's happening with AI. The AI development is so fast that we don't have time to adapt, and probably AI will kill us off. Well humanity itself. Meanwhile, our AI chat agent here on Riverside is uh telling us not to pass. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

We can't put it back in the box. I think that's the thing with permafrost. That's the thing with AI. You can't put it back in the box. Once it's started, it starts rolling. Like it just becomes this sort of feedback loop.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Yeah. Yeah.

Surveillance Gaps And Geopolitics

SPEAKER_04 26:09

And that's why it's important to certainly be cognizant of some of these risks that are associated with some of these as well and mitigate those, have strategies in place to mitigate those. Because, for instance, with this anthrax outbreak, there are anthrax vaccines that are available, including some that are available for animals. But Russian authorities in 2007 stopped vaccination efforts because this particular region in Siberia, its last outbreak of anthrax was in 1941, and there were significant vaccination efforts since then, and the region was declared anthrax-free in the 60s. And so as a result of just halting these vaccination efforts, because it didn't appear like there was a problem, it enabled also then for anthrax to subsequently emerge. And of course, it's urgently critical then to go and be cognizant of some of these things and perhaps exercise a modicum of excess caution, which I think is a word to the wise when it comes to both AI and the effects of climate change both.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah, but I also think too, we're talking a lot about Russia with this particular outbreak, but because of the current war that's going on in Ukraine, all of the collaborations that existed in place to basically do this kind of surveillance that you're talking about for permafrost are gone. They've been blocked. And so the only places we're now doing this are Greenland and Alaska and Canada. And so we're also missing out on part of the picture. And that's still a very human thing, right? That we can't just put back in the box that we've lost out on all these years now of data because of a war. And so this is another way that it's all so interconnected and entwined and something that is going to come back to bite us. Yeah. Okay. So last year I read this book called The Light Eaters, right? And ever since then, I've been interested in plants. Like I've actually seen them as a more interesting thing than previously. I was always very much like, oh, like it's a plant, but it doesn't have the kind of things that I was interested in, which was always much more on like the mammalian side of biology. But interestingly enough, when we're thinking about bacteria that are thawing out of permafrost, in 2025, so just last year, a research team that was looking at Alaskan permafrost found that a dormant pathogenic bacteria that infects plants could be thawed from the permafrost and was viable, which I thought was really interesting because if you think about this, it was a pseudomonas species that they isolated and it causes potato soft rot symptoms, which you might be like, oh, okay, whatever, it's fine. But if you think about this, permafrost might be acting as a reservoir of pathogens that affect things that aren't humans, but that can absolutely affect us as we are existing in these ecosystems, right? And so if you have something like a plant pathogen that is viable, that is thawing out of this soil, that could affect crop production. Also, if you think about just like what's the biosecurity of that, right? As we're going in and out of these regions, that's something that people don't often think about and consider. What might we be taking elsewhere? And could plants be naive to these pathogens, right? If they've just been frozen. So something to think about.

Plant Pathogens, Biosecurity, And Tourism

SPEAKER_04 29:06

I mean, it reminded me of this and what you were saying about these pathogens coming in and out and thinking about the biosecurity aspects as we continue to venture further into some of these regions and also take some stuff out of it in some ways, some unintended deaths, perhaps. Like I'm reminded of I'd had a chance to visit Hawaii a couple of years ago, and I had seen some of these stations to go and wash your shoes off on certain trails. And I was initially a little confused because I'd never seen really those over here, or I'd never really paid much attention. But there's a parasite that causes uh rapid oh here death, which it affects this plant that's endemic to Hawaii and that has cultural significance to the native Hawaii. And it's and it's something that can get attached to one's footwear very easily, and that's how you can go and further spread it throughout otherwise uninfected populations. And I remember reading about that and seeing that, and it made me think about how the movement of pathogens work in a different way that I just it was unintentional for me because as a human, of course, I'm gonna think about human pathogens, but I don't really think too much about some of these plant pathogens, but they're just as relevant.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Yeah, and we certainly have tourism to permafrost regions, right? Like people, um, I mean it's dark, but they want to see them before they're gone, right? And people are going in and out. But if you're thawing out something like a plant pathogen and that's just in dust on your shoes, you can track that pretty far. And I think a lot about it as if someone who grew up on a farm, bioscuit was super important. So you were often like washing your boots and stuff, but I think it's the general day-to-day, you don't consider it. So yeah, it's just something to think about that we might be impacting something that already is existing on the very fragile edge of being in an ecosystem. And we also don't know what the domino effect repercussions of something like that are. So yeah, it's really interesting to think about.

SPEAKER_08 30:49

I would like to also address the point of biosecurity, but from a different angle, not so much from potential pathogens that are being released. But Camille talked earlier about the how the Ukraine war has influenced the work, the research, that's the sensing, the surveillance that's going on. And I know that the collaborations between countries that have permafrost, so Canada, the US with Alaska, and Russia with Siberia, that they had really good collaborations in the past. And I think it was around like 2023, Russian scientists asked their American counterparts, their American colleagues to stop sending funding and communication because they feared of being labeled as a foreign agent by their government. And so the data flow from Russia completely stopped. And you can imagine it's almost like yes, we have permafrost in Canada and the US, but we have massive amounts of permafrost in Russia. And now we have a blind spot. We don't have any data that's coming from that area in terms of permafrost. And I think that's a big biosecurity issue. It's definitely a blind spot that people don't talk about.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Yeah. Yeah. And I hadn't even considered it before I was reading more on permafrost. It hadn't even occurred to me because you get so caught up and the war is so terrible and people are suffering. We're seeing so many health effects just from the war itself that you don't think about how, on the outside, the way that politics influences science and controls where science can be done and what kind of science can be done can end up being something that's going to hobble us in the future to just not know something is happening. And if I think you said earlier, like 70% of Russia is permafrost, like that's a huge amount and we don't know. We have no idea. And there's not a way to kind of keep track of that. And I'm grateful in so many ways, like researching this episode, that so many pathogens that we know infect humans, whether they're viral or bacterial, don't necessarily survive being in something like permafrost. We know tuberculosis doesn't. And we know that because like we've looked at stuff like the Franklin expedition, which was really ill-fated and people died. And when they eventually found bodies, these people were iced in and they clearly died of tuberculosis, but there's no viable tuberculosis still there. Or like something like Atsy, which I guess isn't technically a permafrost body. Christina and I talked about Atsy, the iceman.

SPEAKER_07 33:11

Oh, you mean Etsy?

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, all right, you say it. How do you want to say it?

SPEAKER_06 33:18

Etsy.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

It sounds like you're saying Etsy, like the online store. Um okay. Yeah. Etsy.

SPEAKER_08 33:25

It's defined different. Okay, is that the proper way?

SPEAKER_03 33:28

Okay, all right, all right.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 33:32

Wasn't he found in Switzerland or was he found in Austria?

Prions, Parasites, And Fungal Feedback

SPEAKER_03 33:36

I do not remember which. I just know that he was entirely encased in ice until hikers found him. So not really a permafrost body, but encased in ice. So it gives us an idea of something that might be in the permafrost. He's the oldest known case of Lyme disease, but they weren't able to culture the bacteria that causes Lyme from his body. They only found genetic fragments. And so I think that's something to really take away that yes, we want to see surveillance. Yes, we want to know what's going on in these regions, because there are other impacts to human health, like with global warming, which is going to affect everyone everywhere. But also with things like plant pathogens or things that do persist in soil, I think in particular, is something we worry about in the permafrost. And so I think that's something to keep in mind that even though it might not seem like a super direct, oh, you're finding live, viable pathogens of direct concern to human health, that doesn't mean there isn't going to be an impact on human health later, even if it's not immediately something that we see.

SPEAKER_05 34:34

That's an interesting question I have. So some viruses, like we know, can be transmitted through respiratory secretions, right? Which means that they can jive with water, essentially. And when you think about the water cycle and how water moves through, it evaporates and then comes back down in different regions of the world, not necessarily just in the exact same spot. I wonder can this melting of the permafrost and the evaporation of this water, can you find viruses that were once endemic in one area in other areas through this water cycle that we see in the transportation with the water cycle? I don't know if that's a really silly question. It's not. But that's just something that I've been thinking about.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

It would be a really interesting question to ask someone who's a phage expert because it literally rains phages, and phages are found in water supplies all over the world. And bacteria phages are viruses that infect bacteria. I don't know that they would survive something like the free thaw cycles of permafrost, but but I don't I never came across any of them.

SPEAKER_05 35:35

But to find the genetic makeup somewhere else.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

I think that would be a really interesting thing to think about. Also because we know, say something like a lot of bacteria can pick up genes from the environment, right? From basically their dead comrades essentially, or just you know they find in the environment. And I know back in 2017 there was a publication that ancient permafrost staplococci were carrying antibiotic resistance genes. So one, that shows us how ancient antibiotic resistance is. But two, is there the potential that as you see these thaw cycles and then bacteria eventually start proliferating, might they pick that up from their environment? Who knows? But that would be really interesting because phages can also basically move antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. So I think that's a really interesting question. I don't have an answer for it, but I find that a really fascinating thing to speculate on. That's a good question. Thank you. That's cool. I'm gonna think about that the next time it snows. Where is this water coming from? And like, what is landing on me? I love that. That's really interesting. So I do think though, this is a great segue into getting into so we've talked about viruses, talked about bacteria, but there's other pathogens, right? There's prions and parasites and fungi. And so I could find very little on this. Alex, I don't know if you found more. I feel like this has not really hit the science consciousness. Let's think about what else besides bacteria and viruses might be lurking. What I found super cool, which probably most people have heard about because it hit the news and everyone was very excited about it. But this was back in 2018. So I was a 17-year-old when this happened. In 2018, scientists found two types of microscopic nematodes in the Siberian permafrost. And one of them was estimated to be around 46,000 years old based on the dating of a plant matter that was found with those. So that's because they could enter cryptobiosis. So basically, some creatures are able to just freeze and then thaw again, which I think is really wild. Yeah, we have frogs that can do that up where I live. And I did not realize, I just thought they were really cute frogs. I don't know, I think frogs are neat. So I was always like taking pictures of them. And then I finally looked up the species. It turns out they're basically the ice cube frogs that can just, it's not really anti-freeze, but it basically allows them to get super, super cold without ice crystals forming that would damage the rest of their bodies. It's super, super fascinating. So whenever I saw one of them, I was like, oh, you're gonna live through the winter. That's so exciting. They're very cool. They're very cool. But yeah, I did not realize that. And I don't necessarily know that these are round worms that are actually parasitic to us because Dennis, you know the most about this, probably as the vet. There's all kinds of round worms, right? And some of them just live in water and they aren't necessarily parasitic and don't necessarily have a host, but a lot of them, the ones we're most familiar with, do. But I couldn't find anything on whether or not these were actually considered parasitic.

SPEAKER_08 38:20

Yeah. It's not my strong suit, to be honest with you, to tell you what strongloids or whatever are infectious on which ones, but there's definitely a range of ones that even if a human is a dead-end host, that they can cause some sort of a clinical form of disease. Right. Yeah.

Cultural Loss, Indigenous Impacts, And Adaptation

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Yeah. And this kind of jumps back to Christina's question earlier. I could not find anything on this when I was looking up stuff for the episode. So I was really interested in whether or not there's been any prions that have been identified from permafrost. And prions for our listeners, those are infectious proteins essentially that can basically infect other proteins into their misfolded conformations. And I would have thought that prions would actually be a pretty good candidate for chilling up there in the permafrost and then still being something that could be infectious, right? Because they're extremely resistant to decomposition and they can persist beyond freezing and thawing cycles and they can exist in soil. So to me, it seems possible that they could be up in the permafrost, which is honestly to me a scarier concept than viruses or bacteria, because I used to study a benign mammalian prion when I was in grad school. But I find ones that are infectious very creepy in a way because they're not a virus, they're not a bacteria, they're just a protein that's folded, and then it can just cause all kinds of damage. And so I was really surprised that I found nothing. Like I could not find anyone that had looked, any research team that was trying to see if there were any prions in permafrost. Everyone was looking for viruses and bacteria. So I thought that was an oversight.

SPEAKER_08 39:47

Yeah, I agree with you. I looked at that too because the prions are near dear to my heart as well. And just like you, Camille, I didn't find any documented thawing from permafrost. I couldn't find anything. I don't know any of that. But what I did find is that research on prions has shown that they are actually uniquely suited to persist in these environments for two things. So, first of all, when they are in the hydrated state, so combined with water or something, and they are multiple freeze thaws that can actually destroy them. But if they are dehydrated before freezing, they are basically largely protected from any degradation, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_05 40:30

And then in addition to that, they also bind the jerky version of crayons.

SPEAKER_08 40:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_08 40:39

And then add this to it, they also bind abidly to soil minerals like clay and so on. So yeah, they can really stay infectious for years. So just some fun facts, but I don't think anybody has ever really so that's the horror novel that we need to read because it's the it'd be the accurate.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

If you're gonna thaw something out, my money would be on it being a prion. Just throwing it out there.

SPEAKER_08 41:04

Yeah, but you also need to keep in mind that to in order to infect with a prion, you need really high doses, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:10

This is true, yeah. Yeah, unless you're yeah, especially eating the permafrost, you're probably fine.

SPEAKER_08 41:18

But then again, reindeer eating the grass. This is how chronic wasting disease is spread in the US. That you you have maybe some sort of an abortion or some sort of a still birth. You have a lot of the prions on the grass, and then that's how it's transmitted. Same with scrapie as well.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, so I don't know. I was really surprised that that seemed to me like a really big gap that no one had considered prions. And I know that these aren't necessarily regions that were typically inhabited by like really large populations, but there's a lot of evidence that there's been livestock up there. There's also, as you mentioned, things like reindeer, and especially I know I think it was in in Greenland where there was like a sheep population with the Norse, and then eventually there were no more Norse and no more sheep there. But that doesn't necessarily mean that anything they might have brought with them doesn't necessarily still exist in the permafrost there. And I thought that was really interesting. I know prayons aren't particular to small ruminants, but I I think of them a lot because scrapies is probably the most widespread one that I can think of. But yeah, there's something we worry about a lot with livestock. And I could also see that being an issue as these regions do thaw, and maybe it becomes like we're extending the range of what we would consider like farmland or something like that, because it suddenly has these major differences in how the soil is or like how much grass is growing there or whatever. And if people are moving livestock up there, you could have the potential that you might see an issue. Yeah. So that's something I'm thinking on. And then also it wouldn't be an infectious science episode if I didn't mention fungi. So it's a bias. So the fungi are basically doing exactly what bacteria can do, right? So like you, they're they're really important for carbon cycling. But it's interesting because I would associate a lot of fungus as not loving super cold, not loving super hot, living in that middle. But there are some that would be expected to be in this state of survival where they would have like low activity levels and that could persist in like low oxygen, sub-zero environments. But as it thaws, those fungi can potentially become active decomposers over the frozen organic material, just like bacteria can. And that can lead to greenhouse gas emissions that can then increase the rate of permafrost thawing. So again, it contributes to this feedback loop. But I also just want to, as we come to the end of the episode, think about there's certainly dangers and we certainly want to preserve the permafrost. But there's also so much that we can learn from this because it's thawing out.

SPEAKER_08 43:45

Right. Opportunities.

Takeaways, Risks, And How We Prepare

SPEAKER_03 43:46

There's opportunities to learn from it, right? So we can kind of start to think about the past of pathogens and their evolution, and we can look at this through like different layers of time, which is really fascinating. We can learn so much, like. I think, I think a lot about something like PCR never would have existed if some scientists hadn't gone to Yellowstone and been like, wow, this bacteria lives at super high temperatures in these thermal springs. And then we have something that we can then adapt later on and develop something like PCR, right? It could be super useful to us to find something that exists at these incredibly sub-zero temperatures or in low oxygen environments. We don't know what part of the puzzle that might eventually fit into. And I think this was really cool stuff. Like I learned about paleo parasitology, which honestly sounds like the coolest job ever. But this idea that as we see things thawing out, can we do just cool stuff, right? Identify parasites that used to interact with now extinct species, something like the woolly mammoth. Like now there's been findings of a stomach bot fly that associated with them and various like helmets and things like that. And I think that is something that is still really fascinating. So I don't think it should just be like, oh, we should be afraid. There are going to be impacts on human health and we need to adapt and we need to protect our environment. But also we've done damage. What can we also learn from that damage we've done? Like, how can we not continue to just cause problems to our permafrost regions, but what can we learn from it because we have? Because I think otherwise it's lesson lost.

SPEAKER_08 45:17

Yes, and maybe in addition to all the potential threats and opportunities that we pointed out, we briefly touched on the peoples that live in these areas. And we all know that climate change disproportionately affects these areas, these permanent frost areas, compared to maybe just a standard area in the US or something like that. So they really see these effects much more dramatically as many of us. And so we also have to maybe uh humanize a little bit more their their suffering that they go through due to the change of those native or First Nations and in certain areas.

SPEAKER_03 45:55

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so right. That's why I wanted to bring it up at the beginning of the episode. And it's important to reiterate that the people who are doing the damage aren't necessarily the people who are going to suffer the most. And in many cases, it's just adding disenfranchisement on top of disenfranchisement. And so also we can't really quantify what we lose when we start to damage something like the permafrost. Because there are people that live there. There's so many different practices that revolve around what that space has traditionally been like climate-wise. And that's a major loss that just cannot be quantified. You can quantify something like infrastructure damage. So if your house is damaged by the permafrost thawing because it's sinking, and then there's issues with your foundation, your insurance isn't going to cover it because they don't cover climate change to permafrost. Like that's an impact on an individual life, right? And it's it's unjust. But there are also things that are so far beyond what we can quantify when it becomes this kind of human aspect that we don't always even know what we're losing. And a lot of times I think it's because we're not necessarily listening or looking to groups that do have wisdom about these places and do have knowledge about where they're living and what it has traditionally looked like. If you think of how that shifts something like an oral history, right? Of where someone is, it's an intense change.

SPEAKER_08 47:12

Sure. Absolutely. So are we gonna release the new super bug from the permafrost?

SPEAKER_03 47:18

I hope not.

SPEAKER_04 47:21

I certainly hope not. It seems unlikely with what we've discussed, all things considered, right? Because a number of, as I think you pointed out, Camille, at the beginning of the episode, a number of these pathogens have significant issues in terms of it's it's not like those uh sci-fi novels of the zombie virus that emerges, you know, uh you're frozen from the depths, right? That was that kind. I'll take your word as to the merits of those books.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Um I have many recommendations. If anyone wants to reach out, let me know.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

But yeah, I think that there are significant uh challenges that still remain as a result of the freestyle cycle that would likely make it difficult for the next super bug to come from the permafrost. But as the anthrax outbreak has shown, and as we were talking about some of these plant pathogens, some of which could still be viable, it's still something that we have to be cognizant of and be wary of and perhaps take proactive steps to go about mitigating some of these effects.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Yeah. And I think to add to that, it's not necessarily that we might be releasing a superbrogue from the permafrost, but if we're thawing it and we're seeing an increase in global warming because of fungi and bacteria that are being released from it, that is going to impact like the wild weather events that we're seeing that might lead to cutoffs from medical care. And also, we know that global warming is increasing where vector species can range, right? Is malaria going to be coming to a city near you soon because you've thawed the permafrost? I don't know. So it's not necessarily I'm worried about something coming out of the permafrost. It's a non-zero possibility. It could happen, but I more think about everything else that we know is already happening because of global warming that the permafrost is leading into. And so that's where I really think it's going to be leading in a way, indirectly, to the next major challenges we see in health.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

Absolutely. No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 49:22

I'm sad that we have so little uh cultural references in our podcast. We used to have a lot, but I was just thinking about all the sci-fi movies that I've watched where some alien was stuck in the ice and then somebody like it either thought it was somebody drilled.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

That's a good trope.

SPEAKER_08 49:39

So the predator, was it the predator series, but it was like stuck in Predators versus Aliens. Yeah. So we should have dug more into movies and how movies use this this topic.

SPEAKER_03 49:52

Yeah, I feel like I've not watched a ton of pathogen horror movies. I can't watch horror movies. I like I don't sleep afterwards for weeks. But I read a lot of horror. And I feel like it's such a good trope. I think part of what makes it good horror is there's this desolation aspect, right? But that's also a misnomer, right? These places aren't desolate. They're full of life. There's entire ecosystems, there's people that live up there. But I think that's what a lot of those lean on. It's like the same thing as Jaws, like something coming from below, like something that you can't see, right? It's in the ice, it's in the water, whatever. Yeah. And I think that's where it comes from. But that's also the horror of it, right? Is that you're so busy looking at the ice melting that you don't think about what's happening 2,000 miles away because that ice is melting, right? And because you're seeing this release of greenhouse gases. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

And if I may, to build off of what Camille was saying about some of the more distant effects, perhaps, of some of these issues that we've been talking about, because we've talked a bit about the implications of permafrost melt on these indigenous groups that live in these areas that would be most proximal to the issue and most directly affected by the loss of this permafrost and some of the cultural changes that may come as a result of some of these things, et cetera. But something that I was also reminded of was how the implications of climate change writ large are certainly something of which permafrost Yamalt is only an example of, is certainly something that reaches in far more distant ways. I was reminded of the when the discussion turned to the more cultural side of things. Australia and Tuvalu recently, right, reached an agreement in 2024 that was really important in terms of recognizing the continued sovereignty of Tuvalu, even in the face of sea level rise that will likely end up engulfing the island nation. And importantly, uh, you know, invested quite a bit of um resources towards preservation of the culture of the Tuvaluan people and towards mitigating some of the effects of the migration that may be associated from that. Because for those who live in these areas who ascribe cultural and personal significance to these lands, despite the fact that those lands may very well be underwater in a hundred years' time or even less than that, I think that it's important to think now about the implications of going and working on maintaining still those cultural practices, those traditions, and still keeping those alive regardless as to the effects that climate change will have on the land itself. It doesn't necessarily have to affect or have to so strongly affect some of these cultural practices that may surround the people of that land. And I think efforts like that with Australia and Tuvalu is a great step in that direction.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful example. And I think you're absolutely right. Because that's also part of health, right? Where's your cultural health in a way that's so important for your psychological and physical health and your well-being as a person and as a human and just as someone who's part of a broader community and recognizing that shared humanity is also really important. And even beyond that, too, like the cultural significance of other things like animals that we're putting at risk, right? Like in an Arctic region, we're certainly putting so many animals that might be traditionally food supplies or also something that just had an even more significant meaning. And so I think that there's this aspect of how do we recognize what we're doing? I feel like we keep touching the burning stove, right? We keep touching the burning stove with climate change and with these big shifts we're making in our environment, but we touch the burning stove and then we forget about it. And so we don't want to just keep burning ourselves, right? How do we remember what we've learned and actually face it and look at it and be like, yeah, like we we've done something we can't repair, but how do we move forward into a future where we can still try to honor that shared humanity? So I really love that example, Alex.

SPEAKER_08 53:36

Thanks. All right. Who's gonna wrap it up? You no, Christina.

SPEAKER_05 53:40

Christina, take us away. I feel like we covered a pretty broad base of information regarding permafrost. I mean from viruses to anthrax to other bacteria to fungi to prions, even. So I think that is a pretty good synopsis of permafrost and at least the effects that permafrost has or could have on our environment in the future, not only the world around us in total, not only the biological environment, but the cultural. Do you guys have anything else?

SPEAKER_08 54:11

No, absolutely. It was like an interesting episode. Thanks everybody, and I hope the listeners enjoyed this episode. I did, I certainly did, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 54:20

Interesting. Bye guys. See you next time.

Closing Notes And Calls To Action

SPEAKER_01 54:24

Thanks for listening to the Infectious Science Podcast. Be sure to hit subscribe and visit infectious science.org to join the conversation, access the show notes, and to sign up for our newsletter and receive our free materials.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

If you enjoyed this new episode of Infectious Science, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts at Spotify and go ahead and share this episode with some of your friends.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Also, don't hesitate to ask questions and tell us what topics you'd like us to cover for future episodes. To get in touch, drop a line in the comments section or send us a message on social media.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

So we'll see you next time for a new episode. And in the meantime, stay happy, stay healthy, stay interested.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

This podcast is sponsored in part by the Institute for Collaboration and Health, an action-oriented nonprofit that partners with innovators in science and health, working with communities to develop nimble approaches to the world's most challenging health problems.