While it's great that they are making sure we'll have seeds from all these plants if something happens, I have to wonder.. How exactly are we going to get there to get the seeds if it's in the arctic, surrounded by polar bears. Assuming something bad enough happened to destroy all plant life, wouldn't that destroy at least the majority of vehicles/planes/etc. necessary to get to the vault?

Seems like a great idea to me.

If there is an apocolyptic event and the survivors only have a handfull of stable food plants, and disease could come along and strike a couple of those plants and we would have a brand new disaster all over again.


My only question is it would have to be a very devestating disaster to need those seeds, what if any plans do they have to distribute them, and should they be placed in more than one vault in the world, because Norway is not my ideal breadbasket for the world.

One would assume that whoever survived in the underground bunkers would be very interested in getting those seeds, especially in a "Scorched Earth" Scenario.

What Jenna said is right though, you'd either need a helicopter or a determined group of people to get there, and somehow i doubt that if the world was in that bad a shape a helicopter would be easy to fly.

[edit on 25-2-2008 by Throbber]

Diddos..I was thinking the same thing...? "If" the event happened ..How the hell can anyone use this?So it's in a vault I would think the vault is going to be locked?..Right. Well who has the key..or combination or what ever in the hell it takes to get in the use the seeds if it came right down to it? I mean the seer numbers of the person/persons surviving an "event" that would have the key to get in is pretty small...? That would only lead me to think that this isn't ..well it is a safe house but I would think it's more of a shelter of sorts for a select few who are involved with the project of keeping the seeds safe? Cause why build something to help protect the means to re-plentish plant life if you can't open the damn thing. Thats like having a sun shelter in the desert stocked with COLD water and a/c and not being able to use it to get out of the heat. I hate to read into it but sounds like it might have other functions beside a safe house for seed. But if I had the money and had priviledged knowledge that might save my life you bet your sweet ass I would build something like this to save my skin. But once again "IF" I hope I never find out what it's used for is all I can say..?

I find this all highly curious....seeds need earth to grow into plants. So what kind of "event" could wipe away all or almost all plant life, yet leave Earth in a good enough shape to be replanted? And how much food would the planted seeds, after the "event", yield?

So what kind of event are we talking about? The BBC News online report talks about a nuclear war or another global catastrophe. Planting seeds after a nuclear war is not that useful, unless you are OK with mutated plants. Strange...

At first I was a bit worried about the "doomsday seed vault" but I think it is a very prudent step for humanity to take. Given real global catatastrophe scenarios such as super nova blasts, Yellowstone type volcanoes, comets, asteroids, and pitifully even nuclear war this seed bank is a step filled with the kind of foresight that could take us to a bright future. A future where instead of studying how to destroy one another we learn how to coexist and build for future generations and the evolution of our species.

I would like to know when they started planning this vault. Anyone know?

Have you people not considered that one reason for this is GM seeds and crops. Say if Gm seeds go wrong, then mankind would have a backup of seeds created by nature that work.

How come you guys always think that there has to be an ultimate disater first.

Originally posted by andy1033
Have you people not considered that one reason for this is GM seeds and crops. Say if Gm seeds go wrong, then mankind would have a backup of seeds created by nature that work.

How come you guys always think that there has to be an ultimate disater first.

Yes indeed this makes sense...but then first we would have to destroy al "rogue" GM crops and seeds....

i don't think its all that useful in a catastrophic situation, crops don't grow over night, they take several weeks, you would probably starve before anything is edible