Norway is planning what they’re describing as a “Doomsday vault” in which they will store seed samples from all current food crops. The vault will be located in the Svalbard Islands, near the North Pole.

At $5 million, it’s a cheap insurance policy against cataclysmic events destroying entire lines of crops.

The site was chosen carefully, taking into account a wide variety of potential disasters including rising sea levels and nuclear war.

Norway expects to begin the project in March of 2007 and to be done within a year.

The vault will not be staffed: “If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then you cannot actually have too much dependency on human beings.”

Via: BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | ‘Doomsday’ vault design unveiled
[tags]norway, seed vault, arc, doomsday vault, svalbard islands[/tags]

|