The Doomsday Vault: Preserving Agricutural Life

When anyone hears the word 'doomsday', they automatically think of the end of the world. Different ways have been theorized to suggest the way 'Doomsday' is going to occur. Comet, meteorite, nuclear war, global warming, and etc. have all been speaking of along with ways to possibly prepare and protect ourselves against extinction. However, those of the Norwegian government are not trying to find a way to save the human race, but at the time of 'Doomsday', protect the humans that are left from whatever wrath we face.

The Norwegian government is building the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, also called the Doomsday Vault that is going to house every assortment of seed obtainable from every country in the world. The main idea of the vault is to preserve agricultural life in the occurrence of a nuclear war, environment transformation due to climate, meteor strike, or even any additional form of catastrophe that would annihilate all of the plant life in the world or even in a certain area of the world.

The location of this vault is going to be on an island cluster of Svalbard (the island Spitsbergen) where there are many mountains; these mountains are going to provide the entrance to the vault. The vault is going to have a refrigeration system but in case there would be a problem, the reasoning for building the vault within a mountain is because in the case of such malfunction the vault would still remain cool due to the year round permafrost. This is actually a pretty thought out idea.

Many scientists have been pursuing the possible global effect of the glaciers of the world quickly melting due to climate change, even if the entire world's glacier system would melt, this vault would be safe from the rise of the sea. The entrance to the vault is 430 feet above sea level. Scientists are convinced that if in the worse scenario, the water would never raise that high. But as for my theory, I believe that anything is possible.

The length of the vault is said to be 390 feet and be able to store three million seeds. Trying to store any and every type of seed is a great idea because after a type of cataclysmic catastrophe, no one knows which seeds will be able to grow in the land that is now left after a disaster. Not to mention how the atmosphere would become. Personally, if you want to make sure that the land is still in tact for fertilization, I'd vote for a volcanic eruption on a cataclysmic scale, at least we would know that the ash is a great type of fertile soil.

Some seeds will be frozen, others will not. Agriculturists state that many types of seeds can be kept anywhere from twenty to hundreds of years without dying. The designers even designed a fancy entrance that can be visible in any type of light and stick out like a sore thumb to know what it is in case of need.

The designers of the vault say that even if it was hit by a nuclear bomb that it would harm it at all. What in the world is this vault made of? Just because it is over four hundred feet above sea level and hundreds of feet deep into a mountain doesn't mean that the mountain could be blown away. I doubt meter thick walls can stop a nuclear bomb.

Bombs are made in so many ways, this means that the government had to take in consideration every type of bomb out there and analyze what it cannot destroy as well as make sure that all types of bombs had the same does not destroy element shared. But how did they find this one type of material that could not be destroyed by any type of nuclear weapon? Did they test it out somewhere?

Not only that, if there is a refrigeration system in there, that means that there is electrical wiring... is this vault prone to electrical fires? What about earthquakes? And what if this mountain becomes a volcano? Hot spots of open fissures move open up all over the world as the crust of our Earth moves. Islands are generally created out of lava from a volcanic eruption. Actually halfway between Iceland and Spitsbergen there is an island that was created by a volcano called Jan Mayen; which means that there is a hot spot near by, if a hot spot opens under Spitsbergen can this vault withstand the heat?

My other concern is that, say there was a catastrophe...how are we going to grow these three million seeds? There is possibility that in a global disaster, water could be scarce or non existent, there have been entire lakes recently just disappear because of the climate change. Even if the Arctic Ocean, Greenland Sea, Barents Sea, and Norwegian Sea survive some sort of disaster, they are all salty bodies of water; this has to be determined for growing crops.

Also a consideration would be the atmosphere itself. Not much will grow with an atmosphere that has little or no oxygen or little or no sunlight. I really think this idea of the vault is a good one; however there are still some doubts and some things that have not been considered upon building this vault. Which, by the way, is supposed to be completed in late 2008.

In conclusion, I remember Star Line Vice President P.A.S Franklin saying that the Titanic was unsinkable and guess what, it sunk.