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Svalbard Seed Vault (aka Doomsday Vault) Gets Upgrades
I personally love the idea of the Doomsday Vault, which I wrote about as early as 2007. Well, time flies and now it's time for upgrades to one of humanity's most dystopic ideas - the Svalbard International Seed Vault.
Parents! Looking for something to do with the kids? Have you considered taking them to the Seed Vault?
(Spend a day with the kids at the Svalbard International Seed Vault)
Norway plans to spend 100 million Norwegian crowns ($13 million) to upgrade a doomsday seed vault on an Arctic island.An unexpected thaw of permafrost meant some water flowed into the entrance of the tunnel to the vault in late 2016. A decade ago, Norway said that it had cost $9 million to build the facility.
In 2015, researchers made a first withdrawal from the vault after Syria’s civil war damaged a seed bank near the Syrian city of Aleppo. The seeds were grown and re-deposited at the Svalbard vault last year.
“This demonstrates that the seed vault is a worldwide insurance for food supply for future generations,” Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale said in a statement.
Well, parents, you'll need to plan ahead, because the Seed Vault is only open a few days each year.
The earliest use of this idea that I know about in science fiction (or anywhere, for that matter) is in The Ophiuchi Hotline, a 1977 novel by John Varley.
There had been a time when wheat, soybeans, potatoes, corn and rice had been the major foods of the human race. Now there was no one alive who had ever seen them.But they existed in the Life Bank, as did virtually every plant and animal that existed on Old Earth.
(Read more about the Life Bank)
Via Reuters.
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