Arctic zombie viruses in Siberia could spark terrifying new pandemic, scientists warn

Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity

Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth's warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.

Strains of these Methuselah microbes - or zombie viruses as they are also known - have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered - not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.