# If someone dug up the victims of the 1918 Spanish Flu could they unleash a plague? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 23, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212 "2005-01-23T05:15:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roland\_Deschain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@Roland\_Deschain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Deschain)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/1 "2005-01-23T05:15:06Z")
Okay, it’s been a bad day so my thoughts naturally turn to one of my favorite subjects “how to destroy the world”. Now I know that the nucleic acid in viruses will start to degrade relatively quickly. However, I’m thinking there must have been some victims buried in Alaska or Greenland where the permafrost layer is maintained year round. Why couldn’t someone deliberately or otherwise unleash this virus back out onto an unsuspecting world? ---
**Author:** ![jester21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed655f/32.png) [@jester21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jester21)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/2 "2005-01-23T05:24:06Z")
if we could go back in time… would be be stricken by the virus’ of the time? or would be be relatively immune? ---
**Author:** ![SandyHook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@SandyHook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandyHook)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/3 "2005-01-23T05:29:50Z")
The problem with the Spanish flu of 1919ish wasn’t so much it’s plague like qualities (though it was a particullary easily spread varity) as the lack of anything to combat it with. Today’s drugs and general medical infrastructure would reduce it’s impact drastically. In answer to the question of whether or not the strain is still viable after all these years cooped up with dead and rotting corpses, don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/4 "2005-01-23T05:55:20Z")
Well, to answer one irrelevant part of the question, there were scads and scads of victims among the unprotected Inuit. I have no idea if they bury their dead in the permafrost or not. ---
**Author:** ![CynicalGabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@CynicalGabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CynicalGabe)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/5 "2005-01-23T05:58:32Z")
I believe (can’t find a cite) that a research team already tried the permafrost victims and found that there was no remaining sample of the pathogen (at least nothing that was still intact enough to study). ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/6 "2005-01-23T06:03:39Z")
> [@SandyHook](#): > > In answer to the question of whether or not the strain is still viable after all these years cooped up with dead and rotting corpses, don’t know. Yup. Someone’s playing with [viral coat proteins from the 1918 strain right now](http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2004/Biohazard-1918-Flu22oct04.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/7 "2005-01-23T06:17:51Z")
> [@CynicalGabe](#): > > I believe (can’t find a cite) that a research team already tried the permafrost victims and found that there was no remaining sample of the pathogen (at least nothing that was still intact enough to study). I just read about this in [an old Malcolm Gladwell article](http://gladwell.com/1997/1997_09_29_a_flu.htm) saying that possible Inuit sources were failures, but that these seven bodies in Longyearbyen, Norway might be possible. Any word on what happened with them? ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/8 "2005-01-23T12:43:32Z")
**Russia** This has troubled me for some time. The USSR was in enormous social upheaval during this era. Lot’s o permafrost there. _And_ they violated the Bioweapons Treaties six ways to Sunday. You gotta wonder if somebody’s doing some grave robbing, perhaps as I type this… ---
**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/9 "2005-01-23T13:22:30Z")
The U.S. army has it from autopsies and from Alaska and ID’ed it’s genetics. It is related to the “Swine Flu”. [http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health39.htm](http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health39.htm) One thing not noted in Squink’s excellent cite was that the UM\_Team found antibodies in eldely survivors after 80 years [http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/10/7/42720/2738](http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/10/7/42720/2738) ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/10 "2005-01-23T14:41:18Z")
Robin Cook wrote a novel with that premise some time ago, but I couldn’t remember the title to save my life. ---
**Author:** ![jester21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed655f/32.png) [@jester21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jester21)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/11 "2005-01-23T14:51:42Z")
> [@jimmmy](#): > > The U.S. army has it from autopsies and from Alaska and ID’ed it’s genetics. It is related to the “Swine Flu”. > > [http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health39.htm](http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health39.htm) > > One thing not noted in Squink’s excellent cite was that the UM\_Team found antibodies in eldely survivors after 80 years > > [Doomsday Gene Identified For Spanish Flu – SciScoop Scitext ChemSpy](http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/10/7/42720/2738) a couple things popped out while i was reading the various articles… from the [BIC link](http://ireland.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health39.htm) this: > [@](#): > > Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology said last year that the genetic pattern of the 1918 flu virus is unlike any other flu bug, but is closely related to the so-called “swine flu.” > > Taubenberger said although the disease that caused the worldwide epidemic was called “Spanish flu,” the virus apparently was a mutation that evolved in American pigs and was spread around the globe by U.S. troops mobilized for World War I. > > Flu virus from swine believed most harmful to people > The finding supports a widespread theory that flu viruses from swine are the most virulent for humans. Two other flu viruses spread worldwide since 1918 – the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 – both mutated in pigs. > > Most experts believe that flu viruses reside harmlessly in birds, where they are genetically stable. Occasionally, a virus from birds will infect pigs. The swine immune system attacks the virus, forcing it to change genetically to survive. The result is a new virus. and then in the [SciScoop link](http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/10/7/42720/2738): > [@](#): > > Another important result of the new study is that it supports the idea that the 1918 Spanish flu virus was avian in origin, but already adapted to proliferate in humans. That insight is important as scientists and public health officials view birds as a primary reservoir of influenza A virus, strains of which can sometimes jump species to infect other animals, including humans. > > According to Kawaoka, it’s known that avian strains of the virus have slightly different receptors - key proteins on the surface of the virus that act like a key to unlock and infect host cells - from those on flu viruses that infect humans. they directly contradict each other… however the BIC article is dated 9 February 1998, where as the SciScoop article is dated Fri Oct 8th, 2004 so perhaps the SciScoop article is more accurate. Another thing that i noticed is in the [Gladwell.com link](http://gladwell.com/1997/1997_09_29_a_flu.htm): > [@](#): > > Something else was strange about the 1918 strain, and that was its choice of victim. Flu epidemics kill mostly at the demographic fringes–the very old, whose immune systems are the least robust, and the very young. Other adults do get sick, but they rarely die. In 1918, however, the usual pattern of mortality was reversed. The Longyearbyen seven, for example, were all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-eight, and that was by no means unusual. In the United States, men between twenty-five and twenty-nine died of the Spanish flu at several times the rate of men between seventy and seventy-four. This wasn’t just a deadly infectious disease. It was a deadly infectious disease with the singular and terrifying quality of being better at killing the young and healthy than the old and the infirm. and then in the [SciScoop link](http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/10/7/42720/2738): > [@](#): > > A third and intriguing finding of the study is that blood from the now very elderly survivors of the 1918 pandemic had high antibody titers to the engineered virus, Kawaoka says. > > “People who were infected with this virus in 1918 still have high antibodies, even after 80 years,” he says. > > That scientifically interesting finding, Kawaoka explains, suggests that another outbreak of flu like the 1918 pandemic would spare many very old people who had had a brush with the virus more than 80 years ago. The irony in that, according to Kawaoka, is that influenza often extracts its heaviest toll on the elderly. This to me would seem to imply that the 1918 flu must have occurred _before_ (albiet in a less lethal form) and that the elderly of 1918 were more immune to it. Given that the [Gladwell.com](http://Gladwell.com) article said 70 - 74 y/o’s tended to fair the best… that would give an initial exposure date of around 1846. (assuming that said people were 2 years old when the initial exposure occured) Any thoughts on that idea? Seems like a ripe area for research. -Jester- ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/12 "2005-01-23T15:10:45Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Robin Cook wrote a novel with that premise some time ago, but I couldn’t remember the title to save my life. Nope. You’re thinking of John Case’s “The First Horseman” (Basic premise: Fundie-Terrorists dig up buried victims of swine-flu from permafrost; Planning to re-invigorate and unleash same on sinful world) A very chilling story, imo. I highly recommend it. FWIW: Case’s “Genesis Code” predates the popular “Da Vinci Code” by several years, and is a better tale, (again, imo) ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/13 "2005-01-23T15:14:14Z")
Fascinating link! Has anybody been able to explain how the 1919 virus got around the world so fast? As I recall, the disease broke out at a US Army camp in Kansas…and got to Europe via troops going to the front (in the fianl weeks of the war). But how on earth did it get to the remote Spitsbergen Archipelago? Longyearbyen is a coal mining town, and had perhaps 2-3000 people, Maybe a few coal freighters a year went there, yet the epidemic devasted the place. Even remote inut villages in Alaska and Greenland got the virus…although I read that American Samoa escaped the disease, by instituting a strict quarantine. I’ve allso heard that the epidemic of heart disease first noticed in the late 1950’s (in middle-aged men) may have been the result of heart damage from the flue virus, when these men were children (in 1918-19). ---
**Author:** ![jester21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed655f/32.png) [@jester21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jester21)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/14 "2005-01-23T15:19:53Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Fascinating link! Has anybody been able to explain how the 1919 virus got around the world so fast? as explained in a couple of the afore mentioned links, it was spread initially by the U.S. Army as they deployed for WWI. From there it was spread by boat to nearly every corner of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/15 "2005-01-23T15:27:10Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Fascinating link! Has anybody been able to explain how the 1919 virus got around the world so fast? A documentary on the flu from a few years back suggested that it traveled with the mail. ---
**Author:** ![jester21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed655f/32.png) [@jester21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jester21)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/16 "2005-01-23T15:28:53Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > A documentary on the flu from a few years back suggested that it traveled with the mail. That would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase: “Going Postal” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/17 "2005-01-23T16:17:39Z")
> [@jester21](#): > > This to me would seem to imply that the 1918 flu must have occurred before (albiet in a less lethal form) and that the elderly of 1918 were more immune to it. Substantially correct. [THIS BOOK](http://waldo.library.nashville.org/search/Xinfluenza&l=&m=&b=&searchscope=5&SORT=D&r=&c=&p=&Da=&Db=/Xinfluenza&l=&m=&b=&searchscope=5&SORT=D&r=&c=&p=&Da=&Db=/43,54,54,B/frameset&FF=Xinfluenza%26l=%26m=%26b=%26searchscope=5%26SORT=D%26r=%26c=%26p=%26Da=%26Db=&50,50,) discusses a wave of (relatively) milder 1918, cropping up in Kansas, migrating to Europe, mutating into an even worse form, & returning to the US to wreak havoc. However, this all happened in 1918. ---
**Author:** ![kinoons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a698b9/32.png) [@kinoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kinoons)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/18 "2005-01-23T16:40:42Z")
Well, if it worked, it would give the NHL a good reasion to not award the stanley cup again… ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/19 "2005-01-23T19:47:25Z")
I have an uncle by marriage whose mother was a nurse during the flu pandemic. She said that each time she did her rounds, by the time she made it to the end of the ward three or four guys she’d just checked on would have died. Also, to elaborate on the Gladwell comment about the disease hitting the young folk harder–what made it more frightening was that the big, healthy strapping lads from the farms were the ones who died most often. The survivors were more likely to be the scrawny guys from the cities. (Of course, they were the one who would have been exposed to more diseases over the course of their lives, so they had better immune systems.) ---
**Author:** ![YPOD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e99b99/32.png) [@YPOD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YPOD)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212/20 "2005-01-23T19:49:16Z")
Try reading the book “the Great Influenza” by Barry. It gives a great overview of the state of medicine in the US and the effects of the flu. His description of how it was living through the outbreak would make Stephen King 'fraidy-scared. Of particular horror was the attitude of the generals and admirals shipping men overseas. They thought that the two week trip would work as a quarantine period. In fact, they had thousands of men literally locked closely together with little ventilation and inadequate sanitary facilities. At first, the ships captains would record the name, rank, place of origin and some other details of whoever died. After a few days, so many were dying that they simply recorded the name and date before throwing them overboard. Apparantly, there are still a great deal of unknowns about the 1918 flu. But, it appears to have triggered an absolute, total, no holds barred response from the body’s immune systems in trying to fight it. People died not so much from the flu itself, but from the “debris” of the immune systems efforts. The result was the stronger the immune system - such as in young healthy men - the more likely it was to kill you. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-someone-dug-up-the-victims-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-could-they-unleash-a-plague/286212.md?page=2)