Is Live Smallpox Lurking in the Arctic?

KOLTSOVO, RUSSIA—The scene: the village of Pokhodsk, high above the Arctic Circle, on a muggy July day in 1991. A team of Russian bioweapons experts in blue respiratory suits enters a wooden vault full of 19th century smallpox victims mummified in the permafrost. More reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project than a scientific project, a homemade documentary—rarely shown outside a small circle of experts—follows the scientists from the VECTOR laboratory near Novosibirsk and their Yakutian colleagues as they wade through icy cold water into the chamber. In the dim light, several corpses come into view. Some are intact and beginning to thaw.