In Russia they have revived a 48,500-year-old virus found in Siberian permafrost… An event that science is studying carefully but that is causing panic on the web, where many fear that could unleash a zombie epidemic. But is this a possible scenario? Or is it just science fiction?
Let’s go in order and start from the beginning. It must be said that the virus in question itself does not affect humans, but has an impact on amoebae. The fears of many focus on the possibility that this could be the first step of a path paved with mistakes and wrong decisions…
Indeed it seems that the virus that is capable of multiplying easily, so much so that there are those who fear that it could evolve until it mutates into something different. Maybe in a new virus that can directly affect humans unleashing some sort of zombie apocalypse. Not even its size reassures, as it seems to be a thousand times larger than the normal flu virus.
A rather remote possibility, actually, but it is joined by another more concrete one. The virus in question, in fact, remained buried in the ice for millennia and came back to life because the perennial layer of that area of Siberia in which it was located is melting. Among the less evident effects of climate change, therefore, there is the danger that new ancestral viruses could be released from the glaciers during their now constant process of undoing.
What if there were some among them some capable of affecting humans and perhaps to unleash a new global pandemic of which we know nothing about the possible effects? It won’t be a B-movie zombie apocalypse, but there is certainly the (minimum) risk that this discovery could lead to something not so pleasant…