Norway to Build Doomsday Seed Bank

Kagu writes "According to the BBC, Norway is planning to build a Seed Bank in the Artic Permafrost to protect all known variations of seeds in case of worldwide disaster." From the article: "Mr Hawtin said there were currently about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but a large number of these were located in countries that were either politically unstable or that faced threats from the natural environment."

Comments

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Short Story

[eldavojohn]

This article reminds me of a short story I once read by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I think it's from his book Palm Sunday.

Anyways, the world is dying because the resources were squandered by humans. As a last resort, we package our genetic material into the nose cone of a rocket and fire it blindly into space (colder than the artic tundra).

Would it be such a bad idea to launch seeds into outer space to orbit the world just in case? I mean, they have to be worth something to us, right?

From the article:

Permafrost will keep the vault below freezing point and the seeds will further be protected by metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete, two airlocks and high security blast-proof doors.

I hope there's a foot of lead included in that shielding somewhere. To me that would seem the most vital shielding they could provide.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Short Story

[drinkypoo]

AFAIK seeds don't last forever, which is why seed banks periodically replant and harvest seeds. I remember this coming up with some marijuana seeds (no joke) at some conservatory in Russia or something. Might be a good thing to search for on smokedot, if it wasn't using slashcode with its attendant super-shit search tool.

Actually

[TubeSteak]

Actually, In Soviet Russia, they build a Doomsday Device

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device

The Soviet Union built the world's only doomsday device, known originally as the "dead hand." The Russian dead hand is designed to launch the bulk of the country's nuclear forces in the event of a decapitating strike, utilizing specially designed rockets carrying radio equipment. The device may still exist under the name Perimetr.

[Obligatory Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb quote]

Another idea for preserving life on Earth . . .

[Amiasian]

Marshall T. Savage, a while ago, proposed a rather interesting idea for preserving life that I think would work as a great parallel project to this:

In this boldly optimistic manifesto, Savage proclaims a master plan for the human race: to spread life throughout the galaxy. To many, space exploration seems irrelevant to Earth's real problems; but humanity may in fact have no other way to secure its long-term survival. To remain confined to Earth, Savage claims, is to court extinction, possibly within a few decades. Savage (an engineer who has established the Millennial Foundation to promote space exploration) outlines his program for transferring a significant portion of humanity off-planet. The crucial first step is to colonize the ocean surface with floating cities, quadrupling the living space available to the growing population of Earth. This allows us to reverse the degradation of the environment by shifting to the thermal energy of the deep ocean as our primary power source. At the same time, spirulina algae (already on sale in health food stores) becomes a major new food crop. The hardware for these oceanic colonies is already within practical reach: Savage provides a detailed inventory of how his floating cities would work and support themselves, with copious citations of the scientific literature. Once this move is well underway, it frees up energy and resources for the next steps. Improved space vehicles make possible orbiting space colonies, then settlements on the moon. A larger step is terraforming Mars--creating an atmosphere and a water supply for our lifeless neighbor to form a human habitat. On an even longer time scale, the race can expand into the rest of the solar system: asteroids and the moons of other planets. Ultimately, artificial habitats may completely surround the sun. With the resources of an entire solar system at our command, according to Savage, humanity can at last send out emissaries to other stars. The stuff of science fiction? Of course--but rigorously built from existing science, carefully documented, and convincingly argued. Highly recommended.

Norway has political stake to develop Spitsbergen

[bdwoolman]

Svalbard, of which Spitsbergen is an island, is a complicated case politically -- sort of like the Antarctic where signatories to the treaty of Svalbard can have a research or economic presence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard.

Norway's sovereignty is not in question, but it is under constraint. The Russians mine coal there (among other things). Norway has huge oil reserves in the North Sea and wants to move drilling into the Arctic ocean. The Norwegians have a strong interest in developing Svalbard and have a heavy presence in Longyearbyen. There is a developed tourist trade for people like me and my crazy wife who rode snowmobiles six hours to Berentsberg (The Russian Settlement) in a whiteout last Easter. But how many idiots like us can they count on?

Now, put in this context, the seed project makes a lot more sense. It is a good thing to do, of course, but at root there is the matter of "presence" not to mention all that oil and gas up there. And let's not forget those pesky Russians who also have interests.