The Doomsday Vault

What an ominous name, the Doomsday Vault. So what is it exactly? The Doomsday Vault is officially known as the "Svalbard Global Seed Vault." It's built to warehouse backup copies of all the world's crops and stores about 1.5 billion seeds. Located deep inside a mountain on a Norwegian island close to the Artic Circle, the seeds are stored at sub zero temperatures. The seed vault can survive the ravages of climate change, nuclear war, or even an apocalyptic asteroid strike. The vault was also constructed to combat crop extinction. Apparently modern methods of agriculture has lead to the extinction of thousands of variates of food crops. For example, in the 1800's in the United States people were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples that were catalogued. We have lost about 6,800 of those, making the extinction rate for apples varieties in the United States about 86 percent. For those reasons, I think that this seed vault is not only a great idea but also a necessity. It really is a shame what we have done to our planet. My family and I love to go to the orchard in the fall and pick apples right off of the tree. I should have liked the opportunity to taste some of the 86% of varieties now extinct. It's really depressing when you think about it.


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