In the freezing vastness near the North Pole, there's a hidden vault tucked away that has the capacity to conserve 4.5 million seeds. (You can get a sneak peek inside the Doomsday Vault in the video above.) The $9 million dollar structure was funded 100% by the Government of Norway and its mission is to collect & preserve seeds from all over the world in case of global catastrophe. (The "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" spent about $750,000 to assist with seed collections and shipments from various parts of the world to the Seed Vault.)
Call us conspiracy theorists, but we suspect that the Doomsday Vault is probably just one such structure in a larger network of contingency planning. It wouldn't make sense to just collect all these seeds unless there was also a plan on how to use them in case of global disaster, right? And if all the seeds everywhere suddenly dry up and are worthless, who will protect the Seed Vault when the armies of the world converge on the only viable seeds left on the planet? We humans barely get along when resources are plentiful, let alone scarce.
It's also entirely possible that we're completely wrong and the opposite is true. There is no larger plan, and in case of global emergency the "MacReady Option" from John Carpenter's "The Thing" will be invoked:
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
ONGYEARBYEN, Norway (CNN) -- A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world is scheduled to open this week in a mountain on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean.
The inside of one of the vaults at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which will hold 4.5m different seed types.
Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.
The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole. Building began last year, and the vault is scheduled to open officially Tuesday.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, can hold as many as 4.5 million seed samples and will eventually house almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and maintain the seeds...
The inside of one of the vaults at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which will hold 4.5m different seed types.
Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.
The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole. Building began last year, and the vault is scheduled to open officially Tuesday.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, can hold as many as 4.5 million seed samples and will eventually house almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and maintain the seeds...
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