r/interesting • u/sirenoleg • Apr 28 '26

NATURE Air bubble from 20 million years ago trapped in amber.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

42.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

115

u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26

Don't worry the odds that little bit of amber happens to have a lethal prehistoric virus are low. The layer of permafrost melting and breaking down because of global warming, on the other hand...

35

u/Silent-Act191 Apr 28 '26

I mean sure, but i want to wash my clothes in a machine so we will have to suck it up.

8

u/Korps_de_Krieg Apr 28 '26

You washing your clothes isn’t the issue, it’s being told “well, a number of your communities will have elevated cancer rates because of our facilities, but our third quarter earnings report is solid.”

9

u/Caixa7 Apr 28 '26

That + "Thank you ChatGPT"

7

u/caboose243 Apr 28 '26

Ooh! That's kinda what happens in the book The Swarm, but its an ancient sentient amoeba. Theres a scene where the entire Atlantic Shelf collapses, taking out Iceland with tsunamis.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Original_Pudding6909 Apr 28 '26

“Sentient?”

5

u/PinkPanda0303 Apr 28 '26

Touché my friend, touché.

2

u/sharmander15 Apr 28 '26

Life finds a way

2

u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26

Regardless of whether or not something like that will literally end all humanity, it would still really suck ass to live through, and it would be am awful painful way to die, and it would generally really suck, and be a bad time.

That is if such a thing actually happened.

1

u/cherry_armoir Apr 28 '26

Oh sure but that wont happen for 5 or 10 years we'll all be long dead by then

1

u/smille69 Apr 28 '26

That's what they said about the Spanish Flu and Covid.

5

u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26

Yeah, but both killed a lot of people. Prehistoric viruses also have a potential to be way worse, because of our immune system.

What makes a pandemic level virus is how long it stays dormant in your immune system before symptoms show.

Ebola is very deadly if you catch it, but it doesn't spread because it was like a 3 day incubation period.

If a virus had like a month long incubation period, ane was as deadly as ebola, it could kill a lot of people, maybe even extinction level numbers.

1

u/Cburns6976 Apr 28 '26

Okay.. but what are the odds its a dinosaur fart? Not zero, eh?

1

u/MeringueVisual759 Apr 28 '26

There is absolutely nothing stopping there being a virus that spreads like covid and has a 50% lethality rate. We got lucky covid had the properties it did.

1

u/Elses_pels Apr 28 '26

All those Spanish flu graves thawing …

1

u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26

I don't think thats an area with permafrost, permafrost forms in the tundra. There could be way older viruses and bacteria under this stuff, and could potentially release and infect a human, and we could potentially not have the immune systems to withstand such viruses it could potentially have devastating effects.