Anthrax: Nenet community’s reindeer are dying in droves

[pscot]

In a news report that could easily be the plot of a cult horror movie, an anthrax outbreak has swept the remote Yamalo-Nenets district of western Siberia, killing 1,500 reindeer since Sunday. According to NBC News, authorities think the outbreak began when some zombie anthrax thawed out of an infected reindeer corpse and woke up.

It’s been an exceptionally hot summer in Siberia, with temperatures in some provinces soaring up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The extreme heat has triggered a seemingly endless rash of freak weather, natural disasters, and signs of ecological malaise, including enormous wildfires, record flooding, and natural moon bounces that might be explosive.

But above all else, this week’s anthrax outbreak—the first to hit the region since 1941—signals that global warming is transforming Siberia’s lonely wilderness into a feverish nightmarescape. Thirteen members of the nomadic Nenet community have been hospitalized, while more than 60 others are being temporarily relocated to avoid contracting the bacterially-transmitted disease that is, again, believed to have blossomed to life out of a sodden corpse.

Meanwhile, the Nenet community’s reindeer are dying in droves

http://gizmodo.com/the-horrifying-reason-siberia-is-dealing-with-an-anthra-1784540317?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. natural moon bounces that might be explosive. ???????????

wth is...are....that????

[pscot]

3. the ground is so saturated with methane

that it reacts to the tidal pull of the moon. Or maybe not.

[StrayKat]

2. Human Life Now Claimed

It looks like at least one human child has died of anthrax in this community. There are reports that his grandmother died of anthrax last week in a nomad camp.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/anthrax-outbreak-climate-change-arctic-circle-russia

A 12-year-old boy in the far north of Russia has died in an outbreak of anthrax that experts believe was triggered when unusually warm weather caused the release of the bacteria.

The boy was one of 72 nomadic herders, including 41 children, hospitalised in the town of Salekhard in the Arctic Circle, after reindeer began dying en masse from anthrax.

Five adults and two other children have been diagnosed with the disease, which is known as “Siberian plague” in Russian and was last seen in the region in 1941.

More than 2,300 reindeer have died, and at least 63 people have been evacuated from a quarantine area around the site of the outbreak.