The real reason is because seeds are REALLY important. I guess “because it’s rad” isn’t enough of a reason to go to this much effort. The construction of this big underground seed freezer was funded by the Norwegian Government, and the facility is operated by Norway, and a trust organisation that gets its funding from governments, and private foundations. And it’s just getting started… the facility has the capacity to store 2.5 billion seeds. All stored in airtight, heat-sealed, aluminium bags at -18 degrees Celsius, or -0.4 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and as of 2015 it contains around 840,000 seed samples from 4,000 different species. And not just the seeds of plants that we currently use for food, but the seeds of plants in general. It doesn’t contain the world’s food in the way that a very very big supermarket might, but instead it’s all there in the form of seeds. Image: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Globale frøhvelv And it also has a very serious security system, so put that coat hanger down. There’s another reason why you’re not getting inside… the vault has no permanent staff on-site, so there’s nobody there to answer the front door. The vault was opened in 2008, and is located 120 metres (400 feet) inside a sandstone mountain. Who’s going to wear athletics shorts when it’s minus 22 degrees. I’m not allowed inside, you’re not allowed inside, polar bears are not allowed inside, and I can only presume that zombies are not welcome, either. As the title of this article suggests there’s an apocalypse-proof underground vault for the world’s food. But back on the original browser tab, I found maybe the strangest and most interesting thing yet about Svalbard. My urge to see this place was intensifying, and by this time I had another tab open in my web browser, where I was assessing flight prices and trying to convince myself that the prices weren’t too bad (much cheaper than Greenland, in case you were wondering. Imagine how acute the need would be for a Valentine’s Day spray tan. How much is a “whole lot”? When the sun sets on October 26, it doesn’t rise again until February 15. Because it’s so ridiculously far north (Svalbard’s only town claims to be the northernmost in the world), it has that “midnight sun” thing during the summer, and a whole lot of darkness in the winter. It’s a tremendously cold place, and home to a grand total of 2,642 people. One day, I was learning about Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands way off the top of mainland Norway, and well inside the Arctic Circle.
When I get in these moods, I end up in strange corners of the internet, reading about things I didn’t previously know I was interested in. One of my main plans for the rest of 2015 is to walk from one side of Luxembourg to the other wearing a tuxedo. I’ve spent the last five years contemplating whether I could spend 26 days eating the alphabet (Day one: apples, apricots, avocados. I don’t want to go an all-inclusive beach resort for a holiday, I want to go looking for gorillas in the Rwandan jungle instead. As my ex-girlfriends will assure you, I am a strange man.
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