Biodiversity ‘Doomsday Vault’ Secured for Business
Posted by feww on February 26, 2008
This year’s (and the next) Nobel Prize for ingenuity must surely go to … drum roll … Bill Gates and Norway!
Bill Gates “donated” $30m (Norway forked out $9m) for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, aka the ‘Doomsday Vault,’ a seed bank carved into the permafrost layer of a remote Arctic mountain in Longyearbyen.
Situated on the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, The vault is less than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from the North Pole. The vault would be inaugurated today by European Commission President Barroso and the environmentalist Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Mata among other celebrities.
Protected by towering walls of reinforced concrete and armored doors equipped with electronic motion sensor security alarm, the vault’s three airtight chambers have enough room to hold duplicate samples from world’s 1,400 plus existing seed banks.
Doomsday Vault (Image Credit: AFP)
The “concrete cocoon” can withstand nuclear missile attacks or diving passenger jets!
In Case of Armageddon, or Postdiluvian Catastrophes, Don’t Panic!
So you have nothing to worry about. In case of Armageddon, total ecosystems collapse, or global deluge, if you happen to be one of the very few ‘lucky’ survivors, here’s what you should do:
1. Fly to Norway.
2. Find a boat heading to Svalbard archipelago.
3. Take a bus to the city of Longyearbyen.
4. Ask Direction to the Arctic mountain where Svalbard Global Seed Vault is situated.
5. Call Agnar, Niklas, Vidor, or his brother Ragnar on their cell phone and ask them to meet you at the vault’s entrance. [They are the only ones who know the combination to the vault. If they are deceased, ask local phone directory for details of their next of kin. Don’t hang up until you get an answer!]
6. Take the good seed samples out of the vault [good seeds = the ones that would germinate!]
7. Leave Svalbard archipelago [it’s too cold to grow anything there.] Make sure the seed samples are kept dry and cool throughout your journey.
8. Do not eat the seeds, even if you are starved!
9. Find a suitable plot of land somewhere in the world with enough topsoil and water.
10. Plant the seeds and watch mother nature doing her miracle!
Before you do all of that, be sure to learn fluent Norwegian!
It’s really that easy!
Photo Credit: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust
Related Links:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t
Fire Earth 
Optimist (Norway) said
Doomsday vault flooded?
Norway said it is “repairing” the entrance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies.
The flooding allegedly had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored in the so called “doomsday vault.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-norway-vault-idUSKCN18G0QH
feww said
Arctic seed vault sets record (!!!), over 500,000 samples
“New seeds … are taking us over the milestone of half a million samples,” Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust which runs the vault with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center in Sweden, told Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62A01I20100311