Saturday 6 May 2017

Neanderthals Revenge

As we all know, Climate Change brings many, many dangers and as we go hurtling past the tipping point, things are already changing for the worse very quickly but apart from all the usual, most discussed ways Mother Nature will reap her revenge of ravishing her planet, there is another that is starting to show its ugly head, literally. 
As the Earth warms, it is accepted that northern countries will become more susceptible to outbreaks of diseases more associated with equatorial nations such as like malaria, cholera and dengue fever, as these diseases thrive at warmer temperatures but a frightening, little discussed news story throws another, more ancient angle on the spread of disease.
A 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalised after being infected by a reindeer carrying anthrax, the twist is that the reindeer had dropped dead over 75 years ago and its frozen carcass had emerged from under a layer of permafrost during the thaw last summer which exposed the reindeer corpse and released infectious anthrax into the environment.
Scientists have also discovered intact Spanish flu, smallpox and even the bubonic plague virus's in corpses buried in Alaska and in Siberia.
NASA scientists discovered bacteria that had been encased in a frozen pond in Alaska for 32,000 years which, when the ice melted, began swimming around unaffected.
The twist is that as 30-40,000 years old virus's and bacteria puts there lifetime in the age of Neanderthals, we could soon be facing ancient diseases we have never faced before that once riddled long-extinct species like Neanderthals as their bodies re-emerge from icy graves which have been buried for tens of thousands of years under a frozen ground which is thawing and now offering up its deadly harvest to carry on the work with homo sapiens.
A very scary thought.

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