The screenplay practically writes itself. Norway begins building ‘doomsday vault’:
Norway will begin construction today of a “doomsday vault”, a vast top-security seed bank in a mountain near the North Pole to ensure food supplies in the event of environmental catastrophe or nuclear war.Built with Fort Knox-type security, the $US3 million ($A4.1 million) depository will preserve around two million seeds representing all known varieties of the world’s crops at sub-zero temperatures.
“This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters,” Cary Fowler, executive secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said in a statement.
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The vault will be built deep in permafrost in the side of a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, 1,000km from the North Pole.
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A metre of reinforced concrete will fortify the chamber walls. Arctic permafrost will act as a natural coolant to protect the samples which will be stored in watertight foil packages should a power failure disable refrigeration systems.The thick walls, airlocks and doors mean that even if global warming accelerates badly, it would take many decades for hotter air to reach the seeds.
So the seeds can survive for hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years.
Despite the top-level security arrangements the seed bank will not be under constant guard, except for the numerous polar bears which roam the area.