Are Arctic Viruses "Zombies"?

Permafrost thawing causes disturbances to the soils. This photo has been taken during the 2014 study of UBC Geography on Forsheim Peninsula, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. Photo: A. Cassidy

The Arctic Institute Planetary Series 2025

• Planetary Approaches to Arctic Politics: The Arctic Institute’s Planetary Series 2025
• Relating to the Planetary Arctic: More-than-human considerations
• To the Earth and Back: Expanding Polar Legal Imagination
• Are Arctic Viruses “Zombies”?

A pandemic – a widespread outbreak of a novel disease – is an event that understandably stokes fear. It carries emotional weight, implicative of “universal, lethal contagion,” and finds power in the viscerality of a mass confrontation with death. The fearsome status of “pandemic” also comes from the world’s recent experience of one; the memory of COVID-19 lingers in the global consciousness.

In the Arctic, the concept of “pandemic” has an additional layer of complexity. In the past fifteen years, scientists have raised concerns about pathogens with pandemic potential surviving in the permafrost. These are bacteria and viruses, some of which date back to prehistoric times, that have managed to stay alive in dormant states in glacial environments. These are samples of “giant viruses” that could infect humans have been identified and several studies have confirmed the possibility of their “revival” – that is, a re-activation of infectiousness after their long, frozen dormancy. Summertime thawing of the permafrost has already been connected to a 2016 resurgence of the bacterion anthrax in Siberia. The possibility of dangerous or unfamiliar viruses emerging from the melting ice, just as Arctic tourism rapidly increases, is a serious and worthwhile topic of consideration.

Between the motif of “re-awakening” and its macroscopic potential, the term ‘zombie’ has become associated with Arctic pandemic threats. This moniker is present in literary discourse around narratives of outbreak, academic research on biothreats and ecology, and most commonly in popular science news articles. It is an intuitive nickname for an admittedly fascinating scientific process, but it is worth asking: what are the downsides of “zombifying” Arctic viruses?

The “zombification” of Arctic viruses runs the risk of perpetuating misunderstandings about the threat of disease and its capacity to spread. The term succeeds in engaging an audience, but can be misleading in regard to the breadth of the issue, the uneven dynamic of health emergencies, and the degree of agency humans have in preventing outbreaks.

The unexpected rise of an unknown disease

In the 2013 film World War Z, Brad Pitt’s character is stuck in traffic – a gridlock that seems normal until its cause is revealed to be the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse. Within the first ten minutes of the film, the zombies’ rise turns the world upside down. Our inability to predict their resurrection is one of the aspects that makes these viruses so fearsome. In the words of infectious disease researcher Jeremy Farrar, “if you don’t see [it], you will always respond too late.”

But we are already learning how to expect these kinds of viruses. The International Circumpolar Surveillance (ICS) program operates in eight countries, creating a network of hospitals, laboratories, and public health officials that monitor health status and report cases of concern. The program, which started in 1999, is a “successful example of collaborative surveillance,” supplemented by national disease tracking units run by individual member states. The United States, for example, operates the Arctic Investigations Program that coordinates with tribal communities to “evaluate…infectious threats that may be climate sensitive.” These efforts are also supported by the International Health Regulations, a recently-amended treaty that outlines surveillance, notification, and verification steps its 196 member states are bound to follow.

Viruses can only evade detection for so long, and we have a plethora of programs to detect their emergence. In all likelihood, we will avoid “World War Z.”

The unstoppable spread of a zombie virus

In the 2002 film “28 Days Later,” it takes less than a month for the virus responsible for “zombifying” the public to traverse the world. But would a “zombie virus” of the Arctic variety necessarily wreck this havoc?

Simply put, no. Viruses have variable infectiousness, and there are myriad barriers that can stop them from successfully spreading. The most obvious is geographical – a virus needs a host to climb a mountain or cross an ocean, and without one, its capacity for spread is limited. But a pathogen may be unsuccessful in spreading a disease even when it is able to come into contact with a host. Disease susceptibility is an elusive concept, a complex calculation balancing genetics, environment, target demographic of the disease, medical history, living and working conditions, and more. Most importantly, not all viruses are able to infect humans. In April of last year, researchers isolated strains of defrosted “Methuselah microbes” which are indeed virulent – but only to amoebae.

The bottom line is that being exposed to a disease does not automatically lead to infection. Diseases are extinguishable in ways that the Hollywood zombie is not.

The inevitable doom of another pandemic

Between its sudden emergence and frenetic spread, the zombie – much like the frozen virus – conjures a sense of doom. Yet we have reason to be hopeful about our ability to defeat a “zombie virus.”

The last century has seen remarkable growth in human resilience against outbreaks. Vaccination, for example, has been nothing short of a public health miracle. The World Health Organization’s Expanded Program on Immunization has “saved 154 million lives over the past 50 years.” Between 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 vaccine is estimated to have prevented at least 19.8 million deaths globally. That level of success is particularly remarkable given that it took less than a year from the first sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 genome to the first emergency authorization of its vaccine.

The world’s current capability to address outbreaks of infectious disease is historically unprecedented, and we should not mistake a virus’ ability to spread and cause illness as tantamount to a pandemic. As frightening as zombies may be, their viral counterparts need not cause the same type of fear.

An outbreak by any other name

The threat of thawing permafrost introducing infectious microbes into the environment is a real concern. In 2016, tens of people were infected and almost 3,000 reindeer died in an outbreak of anthrax that may have resurfaced due to summertime thawing. Corpses of victims of past pandemics – including smallpox in Siberia in the late nineteenth century – have been found to host strains of those same deadly viruses. Yet the significance of the threat means it is all the more important that we evaluate it appropriately. Failing to do so casts regional governance as incapable of handling such threats, and more worryingly presumes that people in the Arctic are inevitable victims of a future, not-yet-resurrected disease. These viruses do not have human agency, but should nonetheless be taken seriously. The term “zombie virus” is useful in introducing the topic to new audiences, but it runs the risk of perpetuating a fatalistic vision of disease outbreaks in the Far North.

Isabella Turilli is a graduate student in international relations at Oxford University, where she is a Rhodes Scholar.