i stumbled upon this news item on the bbc news site - Doomsday vault begins deep freeze.
engineers are building the svalbard international seed vault in a mountain on one of the islands of svalbard, norway, where they will store seeds from all known varieties of key food crops by freezing them at -18C. built to hold about 4.5 million seed samples the vault aims to safeguard the world's crops from future disasters such as nuclear wars, asteroids or dangerous climate change.
the concept is amazing and i could think of somre more such vaults for :
- books
- art
- films
- recipes
- animals/ birds/ insects
... a post-modern noah's ark of sorts!
but a few questions come to mind -
1. what if nobody survives doomsday to pull out the seeds from the vault?
2. will there be any arable land left for use?
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1 comment:
I always used to think about this. Of storing the genetic material of all living things in time capsules, ceiling it in a mountain, packed with some real strong concrete, so that it can withstand earthquakes, nuclear wars, etc.
I think we also need to stash a smilar cache on a neighbouring star, and put a radio beacon at the site with enough nuclear power supply to power it for a million years!
I draw inspiration for all this, from the superman comics and the sci-fi films that I have seen!!
Cheers
Anupam
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