#You tube doomsday vault for seeds archive#
#You tube doomsday vault for seeds plus#

But as the world experiences increasingly extreme temperature changes-with areas near the poles more dramatically affected-that permafrost is no longer as reliable as it was just 10 years ago. “It was supposed to without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,” Hege Njaa Aschim, a member of the Norwegian Government, told The Guardian. The vault is buried into a hillside on Spitsbergen Island, as the permafrost in the ground at this location helps to reduce the mechanical cooling needed to keep the seeds at a safe -18 degrees celsius. However, this year the security of Svalbard as a location for the doomsday vault has been called into question.

#You tube doomsday vault for seeds archive#

The importance of this logic was demonstrated in 2015, when Syria made the first ever withdrawal from the bank to replace parts of their own archive which were lost as a result of the Syrian civil war. While many countries maintain their own seed vaults, the Svalbard vault was intended as a failsafe, in a place that is rarely affected by world events. The only “withdrawal” to date has been induced by the Syrian Civil War.The vault was opened in 2008 as part of a worldwide initiative to preserve global biodiversity-in particular, to preserve the seeds of important food crops worldwide to serve as a backup in case of any disaster which might wipe out existing crops. But the tornadoes that the Cherokee Nation fears are much more likely, and there’s an even more horrible everyday use case. Yes, someday, the human species could need to “rebuild” the entire world following an apocalyptic event. Indeed, Modern Farmer says most seeds are first backed up in regional banks and then leveled up to Svalbard. “If we have a large-magnitude tornado, our crops that we’ve worked so hard to preserve could be wiped out at the stroke of a tornado,” he told Modern Farmer.

The Cherokee Nation’s senior director of environmental resources, Pat Gwin, said the biggest threat is tornadoes.

This is exactly why the Cherokee decided to add their seeds to the Vault. Having a global depository to back up the regional ones is just good sense-it’s a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for seeds. The reality is much more prosaic: Organizations and universities around the world collect and study seeds of all kinds, and sometimes these facilities are destroyed, damaged, or just tainted. In fact, the people who oversee the Vault are quick to emphasize that the “Doomsday Vault” reputation they have in the media has never been their desired claim to fame, or even their most common use case. We Spend Two Days in the Shelter From the Future.The Doomsday Clock Creeps Close to Midnight.Which of These Doomsday Scenarios Will Kill Us?.In the 2014 game 80 Days, you can travel through Svalbard and end up on a doomed expedition to the North Pole. The location is ideal for refueling, making weather measurements, and other strategic aims. But its location has made it a popular place for archaeological digs and military bases, including an infamous Nazi base. Svalbard itself is a group of islands marked by, for example, the northernmost settlement where civilians are permanent residents. Just 800 miles from the North Pole, the fortress-like Vault is safe, isolated, and naturally refrigerated.

#You tube doomsday vault for seeds plus#

This huge resource is the result of decades of work, first by the Nordic Gene Bank and then by the NordGen supergroup that formed from the Gene Bank, plus two other groups. By the end of 2018, the Vault held 983,524 samples.

The Svalbard Vault is administered by NordGen, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre. The Svalbard Vault is the most secure and remote doomsday vault in the world, and the Cherokee seeds will join a depository that dates back to 1984. The Cherokee Nation has become the first North American indigenous group to store seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, nestled in Norway's far, far northern region. Cherokee contributions include sacred varieties from before colonists arrived in America.The remote Svalbard Vault in Norway acts as a nature preserve and military resource.The first North American native tribe to deposit seeds in the Svalbard 'Doomsday Vault' is the Cherokee Nation.