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This apocalypse seed vault could one day be humanity’s last hope of survival
On the Svalbard island of Spitsbergen, off Norway’s northern coast, is a vault which provides the back-up to a network of seed banks around the world.
It is the key to the survival of humans in the event of any disaster which would leave people exposed to contaminated, diseased or scarce food.
Almost every country already has seed repositories or ‘gene banks’ which keep copies and samples of crops in case of a catastrophe, whether it be through flood, drought, accidents or war.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault keeps copies of those samples – which represent 13,000 years of agricultural history – in case anything happens to the originals.
It’s already proved fortunate for some countries.
The Philippines national seed bank was damaged by flooding and later destroyed by fire and the repositories of Afghanistan and Iraq have been lost completely in the midst of war.
In the vault, once an abandoned coal mine, the frozen seeds are stored at -18°c and, even if the equipment fails, they will never be exposed to a temperature of more than -3°c on the frozen sandstone mountain. This stops them from ageing.
There are 865,000 different samples and the main focus is on corn, wheat, rice and legumes. There’s enough room to store 2.5 billion.
And, like any top secret deposit box scheme, entry is restricted.
