A sparsely populated area of Alaska home to hundreds UFO and ‘bigfoot’ style sightings has also seen 20,000 people disappear since 1970.

While many have a heard of the Bermuda Triangle, a patch of ocean in the Caribbean known for mysterious airplane and boating disasters, the so-called Alaskan Triangle has managed to slip largely under the public radar, despite having a missing persons rate more than double the national average. 

Located between Juneau, Anchorage and the small town of Barrow, the area is reportedly a hotbed of paranormal activity.

Explanations for the strange phenomenon have ranged from everything from alien activity to powerful electromagnetic fields in the area, similar to those found in the Bermuda Triangle. 

Local legends refer to a ‘sasquatch’ creature terrorizing towns. This includes one settlement called Portlock on the southern edge of the Kenai Peninsula which was abandoned in the 1950s after villagers were ‘attacked and killed’ by an unknown creature they called the Nantinaq.

In recent years however, the area has been the backdrop to thousands of unexplained vanishings.

Despite being just one per cent inhabited, Alaska has far and away the most missing people compared to any other state with  an average of 42.16 per 100,000, according to World Population Review.

The next highest state for missing persons is Arizona with 12.28, double the national average of 6.5 people per 100,000. 

One of the first disappearances to pique interest in the Alaska Triangle took place in 1972, when U.S. Reps. Hale Boggs and Nick Begich along with an aide and their pilot disappeared following a suspected plane crash.

The group was traveling from Anchorage to Juneau when they are thought to have gone down, though no wreckage or any bodies were ever found despite almost 40 days of searches. 

More recently Shanna Oman, 43, disappeared while visiting a friend in Fairbanks on June 3, 2019. Oman had made arrangements to get a ride home with a friend, but never materialized or returned home.

She left without any belongings or her dog and her disappearance has perplexed authorities who searched for days using helicopters and canine units. 

Even experienced outdoorsmen are not safe. In 2011, mountain rescuer Gerald DeBerry, 43, went out with a group in the White Mountains about 70 miles north of Fairbanks to search for a missing woman but never returned from the expedition.

A year later his ATV was discovered with the engine switched off, but no sign of its owner.

Various conspiracy theories have been posited as an explanation to the mass disappearances in the area. 

Field researcher Ken Gerhard told the History Channel that the triangle could be a ‘vile vortice’, a lozenge-shaped area with increased electromagnetic force.

He said: ‘The theory is that these particular areas are supercharged with geo electromagnetic energy and that abundance of electromagnetic energy results in some strange things’.’

A new Discovery documentary has interviewed people with some of the most compelling paranormal experiences. They include Wes Smith who saw ‘very strange’ triangular objects flying without emitting any sound.

He said: ‘It’s like everything you’ve ever been taught has gone out of the window, because how is that possible?’

UFO expert Debbie Ziegelmeyer told the Daily Star that Alaska’s sparse population makes it ‘attractive’ to extraterrestrials. 

‘They can pretty much go where they want,’ said Debbie, who is the Star Team Investigator for MUFON . ‘That’s the attraction of Alaska.’

MUFON believes that aliens could be trying to spy on the military technology on display across the Alaskan Triangle and points to a rise in UFO sightings since World War Two. 

One of the biggest disappearances was the loss of 44 military personnel aboard a a Douglas C-54 Skymaster en route from Alaska to Montana. Despite one of the biggest joint search and rescue missions by Canadian and American authorities, no trace has ever been found.

Meanwhile, cryptozoologist Cliff Barackman told the outlet that ‘anything, of any size,’ could be hiding in the Alaskan wilderness. 

He said: ‘With so much fantastic habitat and so few people to compete with, Sasquatches basically have the run of Alaska’.

Shocking trail cam clip shows the moment a bear and wolf BOTH attack a moose and her calf as they walk through Alaskan wilderness at night

• Intense footage shows the two animals appearing to join forces to ambush their prey
• The perfectly placed cameras ‘give us a front-row seat to Mother Nature’s drama’

By Paul Farrell For Dailymail.Com

Published: 09:22 EDT, 13 September 2023 | Updated: 13:19 EDT, 13 September 2023

The first of several moments of silence at New York’s annual September 11 ceremony was rife with emotion Monday – as Americans mark 22 years since the attacks took thousands of lives in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Arlington, Virginia.

Moments before, in a taste of the ceremonies set to take place nationwide, officials in Virginia unfurled US flag on the west side of the Pentagon – the same site where one of the hijacked planes struck.

The attacks happened quickly – claiming nearly 3,000 lives and counting as illnesses to this day continue to affect first responders. The North Tower was hit at 8:46 am, then 17 minutes later the South. A third hijacked plane ripped a hole into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 am – leaving another 184 lives lost.

A flag has been unfurled at the site each year since – celebrating the bravery that was on display from first responders as well as countless Good Samaritans who jumped into action that day. There, Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were among those participated in a moment of silence at Monday morning’s ceremony.

Other commemorations currently being held stretch from the other attack sites, and to Alaska and beyond. Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage, and Kamala Harris – in a rare public appearance – is currently at the procession at Ground Zero. 

Others in attendance included Ron DeSantis and Michael Bloomberg – the successor to the mayor at the time of the tragedy, Rudy Giuliani. Despite recent legal woes, the man known as America’s Mayor made the time to attend, as did Mayor Eric Adams.

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Also spotted in the crowd was New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who joined Harris in the crowd for the traditional name reading and the tolling of the bells. 

In total, six moments of silence will be observed – commemorating when each of the towers was struck and collapsed, as well as the times corresponding to the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of United Flight 93. 

The first was held after the tolling of the bells at 8:46am, which marks the beginning of the attacks – when hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 93 through 99 of the North Tower. The impact killed all 92 on board.

At 9:03am, a second moment of silence was held – marking when hijackers deliberately crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 77 through 85 of the South Tower – leaving no doubt in any New Yorkers’ mind at the time that the attacks were planned and malicious in nature.

The next was at 9:37am, when another group of terrorists deliberately crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, just outside the nation’s capital.

A fourth was then held at 9:59am to mark the moment the South Tower, the second structure to be hit, collapsed, with another slated for four minutes later – to mark the moment passengers on United 93 heroically stormed the cockpit in a bid to retake the plane from their attackers.

In response, the hijackers crashed the plane into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania – likely saving many lives, as many theorized the plane’s target was either the White House or the Capitol. 

The final moment of silent mourning, meanwhile, is slated for 10:28 am – the time that The North Tower collapsed, leaving the 16-acre World Trade Center site in ruins and the collective US consciousness in tatters. 

However, across the country, the rescue effort commenced immediately – a taste of the resilience present in the heart of countless Americans in the centuries before, and after, the senseless tragedy.

The president’s visit, en route to Washington, D.C., from a politically driven trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote it may be. 

On that day, ‘we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling – that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,’ said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland County.

More than 100 miles from the Pentagon and more than three times as far from New York, the site – like dozens of others across the US – share a sense of connection is enshrined in a local memorial incorporating steel from the World Trade Center´s destroyed twin towers.

The predominantly rural county of 25,000 people holds not just one but two anniversary commemorations: a morning service focused on first responders and an evening ceremony honoring all the victims.

Other communities across the country pay tribute with moments of silence, tolling bells, candlelight vigils and other activities. 

In Shanksville, volunteers at the Flight 93 National Memorial were seen placing a wreath at the entrance of the memorial plaza early Monday, to honor the passengers who heroically stormed the cockpit forcing hijackers to crash in a field only a few miles from Washington, DC.

In Arlington, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin participated in a wreath laying ceremony to honor the 184 people killed at the Pentagon – the last of the tree crash sites. 

In Columbus, Indiana, 911 dispatchers broadcast a remembrance message to police, fire and EMS radios throughout the 50,000-person city, which also holds a public memorial ceremony.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts raise and lower the flag at a commemoration in Fenton, Missouri, where a ‘Heroes Memorial’ includes a piece of World Trade Center steel and a plaque honoring 9/11 victim Jessica Leigh Sachs. Some of her relatives live in the St. Louis suburb of 4,000 residents.

‘We´re just a little bitty community,’ said Mayor Joe Maurath, but ‘it´s important for us to continue to remember these events. Not just 9/11, but all of the events that make us free.’

New Jersey’s Monmouth County, which was home to some 9/11 victims, made Sept. 11 a holiday this year for county employees so they could attend commemorations.

As another way of marking the anniversary, many Americans do volunteer work on what Congress has designated both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

At ground zero, Harris – after facing criticism for a lack of public appearances for the past three years – joined famous faces in Giuliani, DeSantis, Hochul, and Bloomberg in the ceremony on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum plaza. 

The event will not feature remarks from political figures, instead giving the podium to victims’ relatives for an hourslong reading of the names of the dead.

James Giaccone signed up to read again this year in memory of his brother, Joseph Giaccone, 43. The family attends the ceremony every year to hear Joseph’s name.

‘If their name is spoken out loud, they don’t disappear,’ James Giaccone said in a recent interview.

The commemoration is crucial to him.

‘I hope I never see the day when they minimize this,’ he said. ‘It’s a day that changed history.’

Biden, meanwhile, will be the first president to commemorate September 11 in Alaska, or anywhere in the western U.S. 

Havin attended last year’s memorial in Arlington, he’s already facing criticism for the unprecedented decision not to mark the anniversary of 9/11 at one of the three crash sites.

Instead he will spend just two hours at Joint Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska with service members and first responders on his way home from a 24-hour trip to Vietnam dominated by a shambolic and rambling press conference.

He and his predecessors have gone to one or another of the attack sites in most years, though Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama each marked the anniversary on the White House lawn at times. Obama followed one of those observances by recognizing the military with a visit to Fort Meade in Maryland.

First lady Jill Biden is due to lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.

In Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked jets crashed after passengers tried to storm the cockpit, a remembrance and wreath-laying is scheduled at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown operated by the National Park Service. Harris´ husband, Doug Emhoff, is expected to attend the ceremony.

The memorial site will offer a new educational video, virtual tour and other materials for teachers to use in classrooms. Educators with a total of more than 10,000 students have registered for access to the free ‘National Day of Learning’ program, which will be available through the fall, organizers say.

‘We need to get the word out to the next generation,’ said memorial spokesperson Katherine Hostetler, a National Park Service ranger.

Biden leaves for New Delhi as polls raise questions about his 2024 run

By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporrter In Charleston, South Carolina

Published: 08:13 EDT, 8 September 2023 | Updated: 08:13 EDT, 8 September 2023

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President Joe Biden departed Thursday for the G20 Leaders‘ Summit in New Delhi, India after days of speculation over whether the president would catch COVID-19 from his wife and scrap the trip. 

The maskless commander-in-chief didn’t take questions from the press as he boarded Air Force One through the smaller steps.

His trip begins just 24 hours after the Department of Justice warned they would seek to indict his son Hunter on gun charges by the end of the month, and he faced criticism from 9/11 families for marking Monday’s 22nd anniversary of the attacks in Alaska.

And more poll results released by CNN on Thursday morning show the majority of voters – including Democrats – think he is too old to run, and he is neck-and neck with Donald Trump.

While press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that there were no ‘contingency plans’ being made if Biden had to skip, the White House didn’t reveal too much of Biden’s schedule either. 

He’s expected to meet with the G20’s host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after Air Force One lands Friday and then attend G20 sessions Saturday and Sunday before jetting off to Vietnam. 

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wouldn’t say Tuesday if Biden planned to hold bilateral meetings with two of the most controversial leaders expected to attend –  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is skipping the meeting of the world’s richest economies amid the Ukraine invasion – sending Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his stead – while Chinese President Xi Jinping is sitting the summit out amid tensions with host country India. 

Last week, China and India got into a diplomatic tiff over an ‘official map’ released by China that claimed lands along the Himalayas that Indian officials say belong to them. 

Xi is sending Premier Li Qiang in his place, Beijing announced Monday. 

At the briefing Tuesday, Sullivan encouraged the Chinese delegation to still play ball, despite Xi’s summit snub.

‘As far as the question of tensions between India and China affecting the summit: Really, that’s up to China,’ Sullivan said. ‘If China wants to come in and play the role of spoiler, of course, that option is available to them.’ 

Sullivan encouraged the Chinese to come to the summit ‘in a constructive way’ and work with other nations on the issues of ‘climate, on multilateral development bank reform, on debt relief, on technology’ and ‘set aside the geopolitical questions.’ 

One of the top summit agenda items for the U.S. is World Bank reform, scaling up the lender to provide funds for climate and infrastructure projects.

This move is strategic in that it could move some developing economies toward Western nations and away from the Chinese Communist Party’s lending practices, which the White House called ‘coercive and unsustainable’ when asking Congress in late August for $3.3 billion in additional funding. 

At the G7 in May in Hiroshima, Japan, some of the planned topics of discussion were overshadowed by the Ukraine war. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise visit to the summit, meeting with Biden and the other leaders of the top industrialized nations. 

The dynamic will be slightly different at the G20 – in part because Zelensky wasn’t invited by India. 

India has not condemned the Ukraine war as harshly as the United States and its top allies, as Russia is an important trading partner, though Modi did meet with Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 in Japan. 

Also while Russia was expelled from the then-G8 in March 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, territory previously held by Ukraine, it remains a member of the G20.

Lavrov will be filling in for Putin during this weekend’s Leaders’ Summit, as the Russian leader hasn’t traveled outside the country since the International Criminal Court in March issued a warrant for his arrest over war crimes, including the removal of Ukrainian children to Russia. 

Lavrov has been on a world tour this week, appearing at the ASEAN summit in Jakarta, Indonesia – which was also attended by Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Sullivan predicted there would be a ‘continued focus on how the G20 deals with Russia’s illegal and ongoing war in Ukraine.’ 

‘The reality is that Russia’s illegal war has had devastating social and economic consequences, and the poorest counties on the planet are bearing the brunt of that,’ Sullivan pointed out. 

No major headway is expected from the full G20, with Lavrov on Friday already saying that Russia would block the final declaration from the summit if it didn’t reflect Moscow’s views on Ukraine. 

Meanwhile Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise trip to Kyiv earlier this week.  

With Putin and Xi skipping the G20, no meeting of Biden’s will be more closely watched than if he decides to sit down with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the sidelines of the summit.

Late last month, Axios reported that Biden was considering meeting with MBS, according to four sources in the know. 

Sullivan wouldn’t cement anything when asked about MBS – and Erdoğan – on Tuesday. 

‘I’m not going to speak to how the schedule will shape up over the course of the coming days,’ the national security adviser said. 

Sullivan said there was a ‘certain dynamic element’ to G20 scheduling, meaning that some of the meetings ‘will likely be announced at the last minute.’ 

‘And we will do our darndest to make sure that they are done in a way where the U.S. press has the ability to participate in them,’ he told the reporters in the briefing room. 

On the table, potentially, is a ‘mega-deal’ between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. that could lead to Saudi and Israel normalizing relations. 

It would be a historic breakthrough for Mideast peace. 

Officials told Axios that the administration is trying to finish its diplomatic push before the 2024 presidential election ramps up. 

While those sources pointed to how much of Biden’s time his reelection campaign will eat up, Saudi relations are not popular among swaths of the U.S. 

Besides the country’s poor treatment of women, there was the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. 

And timing of an MBS meeting could also be awkward for Biden – who has decided to skip the traditional 9/11 ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the terror attacks Monday in Alaska on his way home from India and Vietnam. 

For years, 9/11 families have gone after the Saudi government, as 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers were Saudis. 

America’s postcode lottery for the price of giving birth has been revealed in DailyMail.com interactive maps.

Based on data from healthcare insurance claims analyst FAIR Health, they show how the national average stands at $12,900 for a vaginal delivery and $15,500 for a C-section.

The costs ranged by as much as $13,000 for a vaginal delivery depending on where someone lives, with Alaska and New Jersey charging up to $21,000 for birth, while in Alabama and Louisiana, the price for the same procedure could be below $8,000.

The situation was worst for uninsured patients, who could face costs upwards of $50,000 for giving birth in the country.

Some states were more expensive because of their high cost of living and the fact that they had nationally renowned healthcare providers. 

On the other hand, states with a lower cost of living tended to have lower price tags for giving birth. The map comes as the number of births per year continues to trend downwards in the US, with many now waiting until later in life to have children.

For the analysis, FAIR Health looked at its database of 41billion claims — the largest in the US — and included those linked to giving birth in 2022.

These were claims for the actual birth — such as renting the labor room — and for tests afterward — like fetal stress and any scans.

The analysis calculated figures for people with health insurance, comprising 92 percent of the population and those without.

Patients will likely only need to pay a fraction of the total costs out-of-pocket — typically $2,500 to $3,000, with insurance companies footing the rest.

Major insurance groups like Cigna and Aetna negotiate the price of a birth or C-section with insurance companies, with patients later required to pay only a percentage of the total.

However, those who come to healthcare systems without insurance face much higher costs.

The costs were calculated for people who did not face complications, with those that do likely to face a larger bill. 

Broken down by state, the most expensive for vaginal delivery was Alaska ($21,525) and New York ($19,990).

Rounding out the top five were New Jersey ($18,688), Connecticut ($17,387) and Massachusetts ($16,731).

At the other end of the scale, there was Alabama ($7,840), Louisiana ($7,981) and Maryland ($9,183).

Alaska was also the most expensive state for C-sections, with the procedure priced at more than $25,000.  

The state was followed by New Jersey, also at $25,000, New York ($22,353) and Connecticut ($29,956) regarding C-section costs.

The cheapest state was Alabama, priced at $8,913, with Louisiana second at $8,995 and Maryland third at $9,856.

Alaska is one of the most expensive places for healthcare in the United States, including giving birth, partly because of its geographical isolation.

This leads to higher costs for getting vital medical supplies to the state, while the limited competition — due to fewer providers — allows those there to charge more.

The costs of giving birth in Alaska are also forced by its high cost of living, with people needing to earn more to live comfortably in the state.

The cost of giving birth is also higher in the New York metropolitan area — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

This may be linked to it having a higher quality healthcare system, with hospitals there often ranking among the best in the country, alongside the higher cost of living in the area.

Women giving birth in these areas may also face higher insurance premiums and deductibles due to the higher cost of living, also inflating prices.

At the other end of the scale were the southern states — particularly Alabama — for both vaginal deliveries and C-sections.

This is likely driven by the state having a lower cost of living and, as a result, being able to charge less for healthcare than in other areas.

It also has a low population density, which can result in less demand for healthcare — which would also help to push down prices. 

Robin Gelburd, the president of FAIR Health, said that Alaska’s high prices were due to its ‘remote geography and practice settings, cost of travel and potential lack of access to practitioners and relevant facilities.’

On Alabama, he said this was a state with ‘a relatively low cost of living that translates generally into lower cost of healthcare’.

He added: ‘The lower prices may also be a reflection of the reimbursement rates negotiated between plans and providers in the South and the relative negotiating power of the parties.’ 

It comes after it was revealed that a record number of women are now waiting until they hit their 40s to have children. 

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the birth rate for women aged 40 to 44 rose four percent 2022 from the previous year to a record high.

There was also a 12 percent uptick among women aged 45 to 49, the first change in this rate since 2015, and to another record level.

Experts say that more people are putting off starting a family until later in life, instead focusing on their career, travel and social life in their younger years. The cost of giving birth and becoming a mother is also a factor.

The rise of technologies such as invitro-fertilization (IVF) and egg freezing have also played a role.

The uptick among older women comes as America’s fertility rate hovers at just below 1.7 births per woman. It hit a record low in 2020 at 1.6 when the pandemic led many couples to put off having children.

The data was released as a ‘Cost of Giving Birth’ tracker on the FAIR Health website.

Its president Robin Gelburd said: ‘FAIR Health is pleased to shine a light onto the costs of giving birth from state to state and nationally.

‘With the Cost of Giving Birth tracker, we once again use our vast data repository to inform healthcare stakeholders — including patients, policy-makers, payors and providers — on issues that matter to them.’ 

Officials have killed the first rabid moose reported in North America after it was spotted ‘drooling’ and ‘being very aggressive towards people’ in an Alaskan town.

The giant horned animal was initially seen bleeding and covered in patchy fur, and after being put down,  it tested positive for an Arctic fox variant of rabies.

Alaska wildlife officials believe an infected fox bit the moose and are now widening surveillance efforts to track rabies, testing all brain samples from wild mammals found dead or euthanized in shelters across the regions plagued by Arctic fox rabies within the past year.  

Before this case, all recorded cases of moose with rabies were limited to Europe. 

‘That moose was being aggressive towards people and charging and getting a little bit too close for comfort to them,’ Sara Germain, a Nome-based wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), told local NBC affiliate WMTV. 

In response to local reports of the moose’s erratic behavior, Germain traveled to Teller, a small seaside community 70 miles northwest of Nome, with additional ADF&G personnel as a backup.  

‘We decided to dispatch the animal,’ Germain said, ‘take the head and some other samples to try and see what was wrong with it.’

Further study of the downed moose, Alaska Wildlife Veterinarian Kimberlee Beckmen told reporters, revealed a partially healed chest wound believed to be a fox bite.

Beckmen and her ADF&G colleagues said this bite was likely how the moose contracted the Arctic fox rabies variant, which was later corroborated via samples tested by the Alaska State Virology Laboratory and the CDC. 

‘We’re going to begin testing all mammals that come out of Northwest Alaska and other parts of the endemic region for fox rabies,’ Beckmen said. 

‘So that includes Southwest Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula, and the North Slope. We’ll test all mammals now.’

The arctic fox variant of rabies has hit local fox populations in record numbers this year, according to the ADF&G, circulating among red foxes on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula and among Arctic foxes on its North Slope all winter. 

Of the 66 local foxes tested for rabies this past year, 28.8 percent tested positive, Alaska’s wildlife officials reported a record number.

‘The normal underlying is three to five percent in a non-outbreak year,’ Beckmen said, ‘and 15 percent in an outbreak year for normal foxes.’  

Alaskan state veterinarian Dr. Bob Gerlach said that moose are very solitary this time of year — which means that the likelihood of this rabies strain spreading to infect more moose is, fortunately, fairly low.

After correcting their initial statement, Alaskan wildlife officials confirmed that the now-dead, rabid moose was the first known case of a moose with rabies in North America. 

Beckmen said that moose had previously been tested for rabies in ‘close call’ cases in South Dakota, Minnesota and Canada — but the results were negative in each of those cases.

Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game advised the public that the best way to protect themselves, their domesticate animals and their livestock from rabies is to ensure their pets are vaccinated. 

According to ADF&G, pets are the most likely to come into contact with rabid wildlife. 

‘Likewise,’ ADF&G commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said in a statement, ‘preventing pets from interacting with foxes or other wildlife, and not leaving garbage or other attractants accessible to foxes and other wildlife, remain important.’

The viruses have turned up in mammoth wool, Siberian mummies, prehistoric wolves, and the lungs of an Influenza victim buried in Alaska‘s permafrost.

And scientists say there’s more to come.

An international team of researchers from institutions in Russia, Germany and France warns that ‘the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious’ has been underestimated.

Worse, these scientists now believe that ‘the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming, in which permafrost thawing will keep accelerating,’ unleashing some diseases that had been trapped in the ice since prehistoric times.

The team — which includes experts in genomics, microbiology and geoscience, some of whom have been tracking these resurrected ‘zombie’ viruses for nearly a decade — published their findings in the journal Viruses last February.

Below are six long-frozen microbes that scientists have unearthed from the permafrost’s quickly melting fossil record. 

Influenza

In the late 1990s, Swedish pathologist Dr. Johan V. Hultin found a cache of 1918 Influenza virus RNA in the lungs of a woman slain by the virus nearly 80 years prior.  

Dr. Hultin had been searching intentionally for Influenza samples that could help medical researchers better understand how to fight future pandemics. 

But his discovery was an early indication of just how easily deadly viruses could be preserved in arctic permafrost. 

Hultin, in collaboration with the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, exhumed the body of a large Inuit woman buried in a mass grave of Influenza victims near a remote village outside the town of Brevig Mission, Alaska.

Thanks to the permafrost, enough RNA from the Influenza virus was so well preserved that the researchers could sequence the entire 1918 strain’s genome. 

But the discover was both a victory for medical researchers and dark omen of what other diseases might be frozen in time under the ice.

Pithovirus sibericum 

First dredged out of the Siberian permafrost in 2014, from 100 feet (30m) under the ground, the gigantic ancient virus Pithovirus sibericum is one of the few viruses visible under an ordinary, high school-style, light microscope.

At about 1.5 micrometers, P. sibericum is over seven-times the size of a modern human-infecting virus, which typically range from 20–200 nanometers.

French scientists with the National Centre of Scientific Research at the University of Aix-Marseille (CNRS-AMU) resurrected the 30,000-year-old zombie P. sibericum by exposing sacrificial amoebas to the virus.

‘This is the first time we’ve seen a virus that’s still infectious after this length of time,’  Professor Claverie of CNRS-AMU said at the time. 

As Claverie’s co-author on a 2014 PNAS study about the virus, Chantal Abergel, told the BBC: ‘It comes into the cell, multiplies and finally kills the cell. It is able to kill the amoeba – but it won’t infect a human cell.’ 

Although P. sibericum poses no clear and present danger to either people or animals, the researchers chose their amoeba ‘canaries in the coalmine’ as a way to test the future risks posed by undead pathogens emerging from the thaw. 

Along with their co-authors on the new study in Virus this year, Claverie and Abergel called this approach a ‘decisive advantage’ using amoebas as ‘a specific bait to potentially infectious viruses.’

But just the fact that these viruses could be fully revived was a bad sign. 

‘The ease with which these new viruses were isolated,’ they wrote, ‘suggests that infectious particles of viruses specific to many other untested eukaryotic hosts [including humans and animals] probably remain abundant in ancient permafrost.’ 

Mollivirus sibericum

Frozen Mollivirus sibericum was found alongside those same 30,000-year-old Siberian permafrost samples as P. sibericum. 

Slightly smaller than P. sibericum (as small as 0.6 micrometers), M. sibericum is another giant virus that’s not a threat to humans or animals — but its proximity to P. sibericum left scientists worried that the permafrost was packed with undead pathogens. 

‘We cannot rule out that distant viruses of ancient Siberian human (or animal) populations could reemerge as arctic permafrost layers melt and/or are disrupted by industrial activities,’ Claverie, Abergel and their co-authors wrote in their 2015 study.

Pandoravirus and Megavirus mammoth

Both the Pandoravirus mammoth and Megavirus mammoth were discovered in 27,000-year-old clump of ice and frozen mammoth wool on the banks of the Yana river in Russia.

Like past ancient giant viruses, P. mammoth and M. mammoth have been shown to be capable of killing amoebas. 

Researchers have chosen amoebas as their test ‘canaries’ because these single-celled organisms are close enough to human-like and animal-like eukaryotic cells to be informative, but not close enough to risk creating a new pandemic.

For their study this year, Claverie, Abergel and their team exposed the newfound Pandoravirus strain to another culture of amoebas, as well as to human and mouse cells. 

The move was part of a standard protocol to verify that viruses cannot infect mammalian cells.

While both of these viruses fortunately could not infect those human and mouse cells, the researchers don’t think it’s time to breathe a sigh of relief yet.

They wrote that it’s still ‘legitimate to ponder the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious and getting back into circulation by the thawing of ancient permafrost layers.’ 

‘Wolf’ virus (Pacmanvirus lupus) 

An ancient relative of African swine fever virus, Pacmanvirus lupus was found thawing from the 27,000-year-old intestines of frozen Siberian wolf.

The remains of this Siberian wolf (Canis lupus) were found at the same Yana riverbed site as the two mammoth viruses.   

Like the rest of these large-sized ancient viruses, P. lupus still capable of coming back to life and killing amoebas, even though it’s been out of the game since the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age.

Smallpox

Smallpox needs no introduction. The brutal disease was officially eradicated globally, according to the United Nations World Health Organization, in 1980.

But in 2004, French and Russian scientists found smallpox inside an icy 300-year-old Siberian mummy frozen in the tundra of Russia’s Sakha Republic.

The mummy dates back to hasty graves made during a smallpox outbreak during the late 17th to early 18th centuries in northeastern Siberian region.

Each of the archeological sites consisted of frozen wooden graves buried in the permafrost, but the unusual grave with the smallpox had been stuffed with five frozen mummies. 

Individual burials were traditional practice in the region at the time and further analysis suggested to the researchers that the corpses were buried rapidly after their death.

For the authors of the new paper in Virus, this 2004 smallpox discovery shows just how bad viral eruptions from melting permafrost can get. 

‘Probably for safety/regulatory reasons,’ the wrote, ‘there were not follow-up studies attempting to “revive” these viruses (fortunately).’

But that does not mean these viruses could revive on their own, as the rising temperatures continue thawing out the vast northern landscapes of regions like Siberia and Alaska. 

‘Very few studies have been published on this subject,’ Claverie, Abergel and their team wrote.

REVEALED: NORAD detected Russian warplane flying off Alaska during US military exercise and was forced to dispatch fighter jets to intercept

• It is unclear what kind of Russian jets were flying over Alaskan Airspace on Monday
• The announcement comes four days after NORAD intercepted six operating in the same zone on May 11
• Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said that they ‘responded appropriately’ to the incident 

By Emma James, Senior Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 09:09 EDT, 17 May 2023 | Updated: 11:30 EDT, 17 May 2023