Norway’s doomsday vault

If a great flood ravages the Earth in 2207, we won’t have to worry about losing the key to our food supply. The Norwegian government is paying for the construction of a Noah’s Ark that will house seeds of all the world’s food crops. The seed vault—which will hold up to 3 million seed samples—will ...

604116_doomsday_vault_05.jpg
604116_doomsday_vault_05.jpg

If a great flood ravages the Earth in 2207, we won’t have to worry about losing the key to our food supply.

If a great flood ravages the Earth in 2207, we won’t have to worry about losing the key to our food supply.

The Norwegian government is paying for the construction of a Noah’s Ark that will house seeds of all the world’s food crops. The seed vault—which will hold up to 3 million seed samples—will be built 364 feet inside a mountain on a remote island near the North Pole. It would protect the seeds from apocalyptic catastrophes such as a nuclear Armageddon, an asteroid collision, and the much-feared consequences of climate change.

The site on Spitsbergen, one of Norway’s Svalbard islands, was chosen because of the long-term stability that it will provide. Designers modeled the worst-case scenario for climate change 200 years in the future and determined that the seed vault would still remain above water if the ice sheets of Greenland and the North and South Poles all melted. The surrounding permafrost will protect the precious seeds if the refrigeration system malfunctions.

My only question is: If humans get wiped out in a global catastrophe, who would take the seeds out of the vault?

Preeti Aroon was copy chief at Foreign Policy from 2009 to 2016 and was an FP assistant editor from 2007 to 2009. Twitter: @pjaroonFP

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