The news broke down like a bomb in August 2016.

A twelve-year-old boy, and 2,300 reindeer, died of anthrax in Siberia, just above the Arctic Circle.

Villages were evacuated, researchers investigated.

Grant frozen in 75

The theory, which is still, almost a year later, adhered to is that the boy and animals were infected by a cadaver from the latest anthrax outbreak in the area, a cadaver that for 75 years has been frozen in the permafrost and in conjunction with last year's heatwave thawed.

The theory is contentious, but it has definitely started a discussion.

What else is there in the permafrost, which is now slowly thawing?

Gary Larsen guides SVT in the permafrost tunnel outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo: SVT

In Alaska, Chief Operating Officer Gary Larsen opens a grim door to another world.

Under the earth is a permafrost tunnel, one of the few of its kind in the world.

- If you have a little imagination when you look, you almost always see it is green, he says, pointing to some frozen plants that are stuck there, in the permafrost.

- It is incredible that they are 12000 years old.

Bacteria thawed

The tunnel, located just outside Fairbanks, attracts researchers from near and far, who want to study the Arctic permafrost. And just recently, a group of scientists got more than they thought when they picked samples from a 25,000-year-old ice cube.

- In short, they brought the ice and thawed it, and then watched with surprise at how a bacterium that had been frozen for 25000 years suddenly began to move, says Gary Larsen.

- After that, NASA came here. They are very interested because they think they have found ice in March, and if a bacterium can live for 25,000 years here so…, me, it is when I get to this part of the tour that everyone starts seeing aliens ahead of him, he says and laughs.

Not worried

Here and there in the tunnel bones stick out, remnants of carcasses that once walked around the ground above ground and grazed. But Gary Larsen says he is not particularly concerned that something like the situation in Siberia will happen when, when the ground slowly thaws.

- The bacteria found so far here are a natural part of the ecosystem, and they are not harmful to animals or humans. In Siberia, the cadaver had not even been around for 100 years, here we talk for thousands of years. I'm not worried, he says.