Buried in rock on an icy, barren, and unforgiving island not far from the North Pole lies what might just be the next Noah’s Ark. The Svalbard “Doomsday” vault is a refrigerated, heavily fortified, and virtually impenetrable storehouse for a very valuable, if unexpected item: seeds. The vault was built to house natural, and pure strains of the worlds staple crops, and store them for later use in case of disaster.
“Anyone seeking access to the seeds themselves will have to pass through four locked doors: the heavy steel entrance doors, a second door approximately 115 meters down the tunnel and finally the two keyed air-locked doors,” the Global Crop Diversity Trust writes. “Keys are coded to allow access to different levels of the facility. Not all keys unlock all doors.”
The vault exists in part to protect us from ourselves. In an age where companies like Monsanto believe they can improve upon a potato’s genetic code by causing it to produce pesticide within its own cell, anything is possible. The vault exists to keep the natural crops pristinel, so that we will have seeds to return to if or when we realize GMO agriculture is not beneficial. To achieve this, the vault was placed on the fairly inaccessible and unforgiving island of Svalbard. It is so far north that the ground remains permafrost-ed, of permanently frozen. This serves as a backup in case the vaults freezers fail. Once frozen, seeds can be stored virtually forever, until humanity needs to use them once again.
