February 09, 2007

Doomsday vault design unveiled. The Svalbard International Seed Vault, built into the natural refrigeration of the permafrost in Arctic Norway, will safeguard the means to resurrect the planet's agriculture - in case it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

More here. (And it's the real actual Svalbard, not the fictional one, so sadly no Panserbjørne)

posted by mothninja 17 years ago
  • Why is it that I find anything remotely associated with the words doomsday or apocalyptic so freaking fascinating? Also: the graphic makes it look a lot like a house in the Hollywood hills I saw a couple of weeks ago.
  • That's pretty sweet.
  • haha!! isn't permafrost the first thing on climate change's chopping block? I agree, HW, these apoco-catastropho scenarios are fun!
  • But will it have a working water chip? How about a G.E.C.K.? These things are important!
  • The idea that someone is doing this is vaguely comforting. How about some other repositories? A great library of Scholarly Knowledge would be nice. Also a large cave filled with delicious recipes.
  • And we're letting the Norwegians handle this? Wait. I'm Norwegian. Alright everyone: put your seeds in this bag...slowly, and no one gets hurt.
  • Wow. First I have heard of that. Freakin' cool. Arctic style.
  • So what seeds are they gonna disallow? The "immoral" ones; such as Cannabis sativa, Lophophora williamsii, Papaver somniferum, etc., I'm guessin'.
  • Uh, given the current activities in the persian gulf area, this seems quite timely... *rushes out to buy canoe, shovel, map of norwegian sea and a parka*
  • This is so cool on so many levels. Thanks mothninja!
  • Good post mothninja! This is cool! And benevolent as well, unlike the virus respository in 3001, or nuclear waste storage.
  • Sure, it SEEMS like a great idea - "let's lock Doomsday, aka Victor Von Doom, up in a vault, that way he won't be any more trouble to the Challengers of the Fantastic or the Judgement League Avengers or the X-Patrol". But do you really think that a super-villan like Dr Doomsday is going to be held against his will by a couple Norwegians and the bitter Arctic frosts? You people are the stupidest superheroes EVER. Maybe you could all join together and form THE STUPID GANG or THE LEAGUE AGAINST BRAINS or THE NOT-CANNY Z-MEN.
  • This is fifty different kinds of cool. I'm gonna pass this along to my school-gardening listserv.
  • I'm with Medusa--Al Gore's movie even showed permafrost failure beginning. Seems kinda short-sighted for such a long-range project. If ANY seeds are disallowed, the value of the project becomes questionable, as we have already learned that once "worthless" plants are often later found to be of inestimable value. (Consider the Pacific Yew, from which we have derived Taxol, a powerful anti-cancer agent.) Politics have no place when it comes to attempts at preservation on such an ambitious scale. BTW, kitfisto, if they had Bruce Dern and those weird robot thingies it would make the whole thing SO much cooler and more fabulous.
  • Will this save our nanas?
  • I am SOOOO joining the League Against Brains!
  • Fine piece of art linked by nathancaswell over in the MeFi thread.
  • MonkeyFilter: I am SOOOO joining the League Against Brains!
  • Researchers Rush to Fill Noah's Ark Seed Bank While Politicians Bicker: Scientists at the Millennium Seed Bank are racing against time to gather seeds from as many of the world's plant species as they can before extinction, but the global recession and the rise of climate skepticism are making the job harder.