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Doomsday Seed Vault Design Unveiled
in2mind writes "The BBC News is reporting on the completion of a design for a 'doomsday' vault ... that will house seeds. All known varieties of food crops will be represented in the structure, which will be constructed by the Norwegian government. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes by building into the side of a mountain. On a remote island. Near the North pole. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will house the seed samples at a preservative -18C (0F), and could be used by post-apocalyptic people to feed a hungry planet."
...on seeds that are buried in a mountain on a remote island? Provided they can get there, how many big macs can they make from those seeds?
Scientists go to the North Pole to build a Doomsday Vault, only to find such a vault is already there.
o_O
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Ocean voyage. Fighting off post-apocalyptic pirates to get to the seed storage site only to find that it's submerged and you have to fight mutant sea creatures to get inside so you can save your village with the last non-mutated vegetables in the world.
:)
Kind of like a cross between "The Postman" and "Waterworld".
Okay, I lied about the "good" part.
Nah, it could be a good movie, or a good video game, or paper RPG module, or book for that matter. I had the same exact thought, "Whoah, that would make a cool story!"
Imagine, it starts out in some desolate village, with people scraping by on a few mutant crops and canned goods. Every year, the situation becomes a little more desperate as the crops produce few viable seeds and the canned goods are running out. Our intrepid hero (probably a moon-headed youth out exploring some old ruins instead of working) finds a fragment of an ancient magazine mentioning the seed-vault. He has some difficulty convincing his elders to invest any of the villages precious food-stuffs in his hair-brained scheme, but then the village seed stocks are plundered by raiders, leaving no choice. Of course, the raiders find out about the seed-vault and thus become recurring bad-guys throughout the rest of the story.
The journey to the seed-vault would be fraught with danger. Mutants, savages, the ever-present raiders, hot-zones and weather run amok all dog our heros on their journey. I say heros, because of course we need a team. There has to be the strong and capable ranger-type who doesn't quite trust the kid; the plucky heroine, tomboyish until she lets her hair down and we discover just how beautiful she is; the kid's geeky friend who knows how to fix things; the brawny muscle-type with a secret heart of gold who sacrifices himself when all seems lost, and the sneaky one who turns out to be a traitor like we always suspected he would.
When they finally get there, they discover... well, it could go lots of ways here. I'll leave it up to the imagination.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh Crap! This one says we need bees to pollinate the flowers. Does anyone remember where we keep the Doomsday Insect Vault?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
From reading a few of the comments I think that some posters are missing the point. First off, the idea is not to save a few seeds in the hopes that those seeds will feed the 'entire' population of earth after planting just one crop. The idea is to preserve the overall agricultural diversity of our 'future' ecosystem. As one particular species of plant (or whatever) goes extinct, the proposed seed bank would (hopefully) ensure that our future ancestors could reintroduce the species back into the ecosystem, assuming that whatever caused the species to go extinct was no longer present, be it nuclear war, climatic changes, etc. As for the location, well, I imagine that it makes more financial sense to keep them in a place where you won't have to foot the air-conditioning bill. Sure, it would be great to have these 'master-backup' seed banks all over the earth to prevent a wayward disaster from wiping out the whole stock, but I'd guess that the cost of building a cold-storage facility for an indefinite period of operation in Nairobi would be much more costly. (Not to mention that if the arctic DOES melt, we're all probably done for anyways...) And the article does mention that there are several seed banks already in existence, and that this facility is to be a more secure backup to the existing banks. Just my 2 cents...
How long will a post-apocalyptic population last on seeds that are buried in a mountain on a remote island? Provided they can get there, how many big macs can they make from those seeds?
And they might as well make them into bread, because they are unlikely to sprout.
Seeds stay fertile only for a limited time. You can stretch that somewhat by keeping them frozen - provided that the particular seeds can survive freezing, of course. But short of cryonic preservation (after perfusing them with cryoprotectants) you're not going to get them to last more than a few years.
That's why REAL plant gene banks work by growing the plants with heavy water. This drastically slows their metabolism (along with that of any bugs that might attack them), resulting in these tiny bonsai-like specimens that live very slowly - and thus very long - and eventually make seeds you can use to continue the cycle. Grow their seeds in normal water and you're back to normal plants - or gradually switch the plants over to normal water and they may revert to normal growth patterns.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way