Doomsday Vault

The Norwegians have created a deep underground vault near the North Pole to house a backup copy of seeds for all known varieties of crops. The goal is to ensure food supplies and enable humanity to regenerate in the event of nuclear war, global warming or other catastrophes. It’s a brilliant idea.

“Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population,” said Cary Fowler, head of the

Global Crop Diversity Trust.  As executive director, Fowler takes the long view. He leads an organization dedicated to collecting samples of every variety of crop plant in the world and to preserving them in the interest of food security – this is a term Fowler uses often – “in perpetuity.”
Perpetuity is a long time, and if it has the ring of science fiction, so does the notion of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, the culmination  – or perhaps the beginning  – of the five-year-old Trust’s work.

Constructed almost 400 feet inside a sandstone mountain, below the permafrost on Spitsbergen Island, 700 miles from the North Pole, the Seed Vault is designed to hold 4.5 million seeds that are sealed inside four-ply air-tight, water-tight packages, dried to a particular moisture level and held at a couple of degrees above zero. The seeds will be preserved for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The vault received its first seeds in January. I know where to go for my potato and green bean seeds!

Tags: North Pole, Seeds, Vault