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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage of duplicates of seeds conserved in genebanks around the world. This provides security of the world’s food supply against the loss of seeds in genebanks due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts, and natural disasters.[1]

Coverage[]

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is featured in Bound and Buried.

It was introduced in 4 months after people within the frozen wastes of Norway's northernmost islands. The show gave information that it is known as the Doomsday Vault where it was meant to secure the world against a disaster that is currently happening before revealing that the disaster was sparked when in the time of humans that the need to feed an exploding population. Without farmers using pesticides, there is nothing to stop a single species of insect from mowing down hundreds of thousands of acres of crops. This doomsday was built for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault with a capacity to store a billion seeds with millions of different kinds, bringing life back to Earth. Cary Fowler stated if something went wrong like an asteroid hitting the earth or global nuclear war, the seed vault would restore agriculture to the world.

An artificial cooling system chilled the vault to -4 degrees in the time of humans making it perfect for seed storage. However since electricity failed, the vault has been warming up till it stabilizes at 25 degrees, the temperature of the surrounding is same as permafrost.

DarkSeedVault

The seed vault in the dark.

In 50 years after people, plant life is beginning to perish and the first seeds have begun to die in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Cary Fowler stated that the seeds that last the shortest amount of time are seeds such as sunflower or lettuce in 50 to 75 years under the conditions. Scientists believe that seeds have a special anti-aging protein. When the protein fails, the seeds die, causing a structural breakdown in the seed. In the cold, dark stillness of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the collapse of the proteins makes the lettuce to be the first casualty.

The last event is in 20,000 years after people when the last of the hundreds of millions of seeds stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault have died making the potential to generate new life to be gone forever. The doomsday has arrived for the contents of this vault, but for the vault itself, its fate remains to be unknown.

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