Sci-Fi News and Reviews

Real-Life Noah's Ark

I've recently read two separate articles dealing with seed banks. What's a Seed Bank, you may ask? Its a repository for the seeds of important plant life. In the case of an emergency (and, by emergency, I mean 'Oh My God We're All Gonna Die'), the seeds stored in the bank can be used to repopulate the world's flora. I had no idea these places existed - and it turns out there are quite a few.

One of the most famous repositories is the UK's Millennium Seed Bank (MSB). It was opened by Prince Charles in the year 2000. At the time, it was hailed as 'a visionary attempt to save many of the world's endangered plants'. Their goal was ambitious - save the seeds of more than 24,000 species by 2010, which is approximately one-tenth of the world's flora. The MSB is alive and well today, by all accounts.

More recently, I found that Norway is opening the Svalbard International Seed Vault (SISV). It has a similar goal as the MSB (saving a bunch of seeds), but with a twist. It will be housed in a man-made, concrete cave drilled several hundred feet into a sandstone mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, which is part of the Svalbard archipelago, approximately 600 miles from the North Pole. If this is not secure enough for you, the seeds will also be protected by by two airlocks and high security blast-proof doors and kept at a cool -18 celcius. In addition, the Permafrost will ensure that the seeds never reach a temperature above freezing, even if there is a power failure.

In my source articles for this story (found here and here ), I learned that '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'. I also discovered that polar bears are expected to be 'natural guardians' for the bank.

So, file this under 'truth-is-stranger-than-fiction'. The end of the world is nigh, but at least we'll have seeds if we can make it past the polar bears and the blast doors.

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Posted by Fred on August 24, 2006 12:01 AM
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