Originally Posted by DieselMinded (Post 110211)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2...0209074207.jpg
The Norwegian government has revealed the architectural design for the Svalbard International Seed Vault, to be carved deep into frozen rock on an island not far from the North Pole. The entrance to the "fail-safe" seed vault will "gleam like a gem in the midnight sun," signaling a priceless treasure within: seed samples of nearly every food crop of every country. The vault is designed to protect the agricultural heritage of humankind -- the seeds essential to agriculture of every nation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0209074207.htm

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-...6061900070.gif

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061800950.html


from wikipedia
The Norwegian government has built a "doomsday" seed bank to store seeds from as many of the world's crop varieties and their botanical wild relatives as possible. The bank was created by hollowing out a 120-meter tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of -6 degrees Celsius, refrigerating it to -18 degrees Celsius, and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world. The vault has top security blast-proof doors and two airlocks. The number of seeds stored depends on the number of countries participating in the project. The point of this project is to prevent the diversity of agricultural crops currently stored (typically in the form of seed) in seed banks from becoming extinct as a result of accident, mismanagement, equipment failure, war or natural disaster, or due to a regional or global catastrophe

Originally Posted by dozerboy (Post 112071)

I'm just glad they didn't waste my tax $$$$ on it or I hope so.