There are discoveries out there that change the world.
And I am convinced that somewhere tucked away in the labyrinth of the scientific world, there are researchers studying things that the rest of us could only dream of or perhaps things we’d rather not know about. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been fascinated by the unknown.
We tend to think of science fiction as imagining things that don’t exist, but every once in a while, I stumble across a real scientific discovery that makes me think:
OK, maybe my imagination isn’t as wild as I thought.
What if permafrost isn’t simply frozen dirt, but a time capsule? It’s a freezer containing pieces of the Earth’s past. Scientists have recovered remarkably preserved animals from it. Mammoths. Cave lion cubs, Ancient wolves. Plants that haven’t seen daylight for thousands of years.
But it gets stranger.
Researchers have revived microscopic organisms after they spent tens of thousands of years frozen. In one experiment, scientists reported reviving tiny animals called bdelloid rotifers after roughly 24,000 years in Siberian permafrost.
Another group revived nematode worms from ancient permafrost, with subsequent research identifying one specimen as a previously undescribed species and dating the material surrounding it roughly to 46,000 years ago.
46,000 years
Frozen
Then alive again.
Tell me that doesn’t sound like the beginning of a novel.
Then there are viruses….
This is where things get particularly interesting. Scientists studying ancient permafrost have isolated viruses that remained infectious after 10s of thousands of years.
One famous example was a giant virus recovered from approximately 30,000 year old Siberian permafrost. Researchers were able to reactivate it in a laboratory, where it infected amoebae.
More recently, researchers studying ancient viruses recovered from permafrost described multiple ancient strains including one associated with material more than 48,000 years old.
Before anyone starts building a bunker, there’s an important distinction. These particular viruses were studied using amoebae as hosts. Their revival doesn’t mean a 48,000 year old human zombie virus is waiting to jump out of the Arctic tomorrow. But the underlying idea is fascinating.
Freezing can preserve biological material for an astonishing amount of time and our planet has a lot of frozen ground.
Now add a changing climate…
Permafrost doesn’t necessarily stay permanent. As Arctic regions warm, previously frozen ground is thawing that exposes material that may have been locked away for thousands of years. Scientists are interested in what that could mean for ecosystems, carbon emissions, ancient microorganisms, and potentially pathogens.
There has even been a real world example that sounds unnervingly like fiction. In 2016 an anthrax outbreak occurred in Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula after an unusually warm period. A child died, people were hospitalized, and thousands of reindeer were affected. Scientists and officials investigated thawing permafrost and old infected animal remains as a possible explanation for the outbreak.
That doesn’t mean melting permafrost is about to unleash the apocalypse, but it does mean nature occasionally reminds us that buried doesn’t necessarily mean gone.
And that idea stuck with me, so I asked the question writers are always asking:
What if…
What if something was buried beneath the ice?
What if it had been there for longer than anyone could imagine?
What if scientists found it?
And what if it wasn’t dead?
That’s where reality ends and Hidden in Ice begins.
In my story forensic anthropologist Hannah Fraser travels to a remote Alaskan research station after an extraordinary discovery. A boy had been found entombed in the ice.
Finding an ancient human would already be the discovery of a lifetime, except the boy presents Hannah with a considerably bigger problem.
He’s alive.
And because I can’t allow my fictional scientist to have a nice, uneventful work day, things don’t exactly improve from there. But the part that fascinates me isn’t really the zombies. It’s the questions of how far human curiosity can take us and what happens when we go too far. Humans are explorers.
We dig.
We investigate.
We open things.
We want to know what’s behind the door, beneath the ocean, inside the tomb, and under the ice. It’s one of the reasons we’ve accomplished extraordinary things. But imagine being the person standing in front of a discovery that shouldn’t be possible. Every scientific instinct you possess would tell you to investigate, and perhaps another much older instinct would whisper:
Leave it alone
Which one would you listen to?
Because the deeper you venture into the Resurrection Hour series, the less it becomes about the dead rising, and the more you begin the question what really brought the world to its knees
And perhaps that’s what makes the line between science and fiction so fascinating
Science tells us what is possible.
Fiction gets to ask:
What if we went one step further?
So here’s my question for you…
If scientists discovered something frozen beneath the ice that appears to be biologically impossible.
Would you investigate it?
Or would you leave it exactly where you found it?
I already know what my scientist chose.
And well…
There wouldn’t be much of a book if they’d made the sensible decision, but isn’t that how all horror movies start?
…that one stupid person opens the door.
Please find the link below to read the first three chapters of Resurrection Hour: Hidden in Ice.
Patricia Elliott 