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 ...
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?
More from Foreign Policy


At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment
Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.


How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China
As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.


What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal
Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.


Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust
Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.