Doomsday Seed Vault, Do They Know Something We Don't?

Doomsday Seed Vault, Do They Know Something We Don't?

»What is the Doomsday Seed Vault?

The 'Svalbard Arctic Seed Depository' constructed in Svalbard, Norway, is more commonly known as 'Doomsday Seed Vault' or the 'Global Seed Vault'.

It is a unique underground international seed bank facility, offering protection from natural and human dangers. It lies buried deep within a frozen mountainside near the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen.

The facility construction, operation and seed transportation is funded by various people and organizations including Bill gates, founder of Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) approximately $30 million to the project. Gates has also given the Trust about $750,000 to give to South countries and CGIAR centers to pack and ship seeds to Svalbard.

The cost of getting a seed sample to Svalbard is estimated at roughly one dollar/sample, making the cost of placing a duplicate of every unique sample collected to date into the vault about $4 million.



»An example of typical seed bank facility.


The seed vault can protect at least 4.5 million samples (2.25 billion seeds) in its three man-made caverns. Caverns are protected by airlocks leading from a tunnel shaft and from the mountainside entrance. The vault is designed to protect against global-scale disasters—human or natural—that could potentially wipe out agriculture.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is meant to be the backup of last resort, stocked with copies of different crops from national seed storage facilities. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Germplasm System plans to send more than a million seeds to the vault, including sweet pepper, squash and tomatoes.

In the vault's cold isolation, the seeds can keep for hundreds and thousands of years—the grain sorghum alone can last for 20,000 years—effectively allowing agriculture to be restarted in the event of a global calamity, such as nuclear war or catastrophic climate change

»Where is the Doomsday Seed Vault

The chosen remote site lies off the northernmost tip of mainland Norway, on a group of islands called Svalbard (Svalbard is Norwegian for 'cold coast'), on the island of Spitsbergennear, near the Norwegian town of Longyearbyenis, 700 miles from the north pole, and is remote by anyones definition.

The climate is an arctic, dry, cold and wind-swept semi-desert, perfect for providing protection for the precious gene bank. About 60% of the land mass of 63,000 Km2 is covered with various size glaciers. And more than 50% of the land area is officially protected, either as national park, nature reserves or bird sanctuaries.






From 26 October to 16 February, Svalbard lies in total darkness (polar night).

Average temperature in the summer is +6C, in the winter it is -14C. Extended periods of -20 to -30C are common during the winter, added to which is a considerable wind chill factor.

Polar bears can be found anywhere on the Svalbard islands at any time and actually outnumber the local residents there and Reindeer outnumber everything!

-=CONTINUED BELOW=




[edit on 26-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

Doomsday Seed Vault, Do They Know Something We Don't?

»Where is the Doomsday Seed Vault (continued from above)

The climate – including that at Svalbard – is probably changing. Models present different pictures of the future. The farther into the future the prediction, the less precise and more controversial it is.

Nevertheless, change at Svalbard will not come particularly quickly, at least for deep permafrost areas. Thus at least for the next hundred years, it would appear that Svalbard would offer relatively stable conditions for the type of facility.


»Facility Details

The vault will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to 4.5 million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture.

I've managed to dig up the construction blueprints for the facility. The dimensions (in meters) and details of the construction in planform are shown below. The callouts and descriptions are of course in Norwegian, so if we have any Norwegian translators to help out that would be fantastic.


This is the entrance to the facility.
img186.imageshack.us...



The tunnel from the entrance to the airlocks.
img186.imageshack.us...



Here are the seed vaults themselves, 3 duplicate vaults leading form the airlocks.
img186.imageshack.us...



The blueprint architect and drawing formats.
img186.imageshack.us...


One sometimes hears the question: “Could the Seed Vault survive being hit with a nuclear bomb?” This, of course, is a highly unlikely scenario, and the glib answer is that it depends on how big the bomb is, of course.

At this time there is no missile capable of penetrating to the depth of the seed vault. Even the “bunker buster” bombs are not currently able to reach to this depth with any substantial effect.

However, bunker buster systems now under development if armed with a powerful nuclear bomb and if deployed directly at the Seed Vault, would send off shock waves that could damage or destroy the facility.


Overall layout-entrance.



Inside cross section.



Artist rendition, cutaway view.



Detail of the entrance including the artwork of the top of entrance.



Artwork active lighting.


-=CONTINUED BELOW=-

[edit on 27-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

Doomsday Seed Vault, Do They Know Something We Don't?

»Apples

Here's my transcript of a CBS interview with the 'Global Crop Diversity Trust' (GCDT) founder Kerry Fowler and CBS reporter Scott Pelley concerning apples varieties.

Cary Fowler=CF, CBS Reporter, Scott Pelley=SP

CF-If you asked somebody how many kinds of apples are there, they're going to say, well there's red, there's green, there's yellow...there's McIntosh, golden delicious, there gonna give you an answer like that.

SP-Maybe 25 types, I would guess.

CF-Good guess, but um, in fact, in the 1800's, in the united states, people were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples-7,100 different varieties of apples.

SP-And how many are there today?

CF-We've lost about 6,800 of those, so the extinction rate for apple varieties in the United States, about 86% of apple varieties lost.

SP-That pattern (of loss) exists in all crops. Estimates are that every day one crop strain disappears, and here's why, seeds used to be passed down through families, today farmers are planting mass produced industrial seeds.


»The Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), A Look Inside

The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also by Biodiversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.


Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Biodiversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO.

He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

»Donors?

Just exactly who's paying for all this? As stated above, Bill Gates is among the many donors along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto etc...Here is a chart of the donors as well as the amounts of the donation. (Click on the large image for a larger image link.)


img214.imageshack.us...


And below is a text listing of the donors:


• Australia (AusAID)
• Brazil (EMBRAPA)
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/UN Foundation
• Canada (CIDA)
• CGIAR Centres
• Colombia (Ministry of Agriculture)
• DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred
• Egypt (Ministry of Agriculture)
• Ethiopia
• Gatsby Charitable Foundation
• Germany
• Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• Grains Research and Development Corporation
• India (Ministry of Agriculture)
• International Seed Federation
• Ireland (Irish Aid)
• Italy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• New Zealand (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry)
• Norway (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• Rockefeller Foundation
• Sweden (Sida)
• Switzerland (SDC)
• Syngenta AG
• Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture
• Systemwide Genetic Resources Programme
• United Kingdom
• United Nations Foundation
• United States of America (USAID)
• World Bank - CGIAR

SOURCE: www.croptrust.org...
www.croptrust.org...


»Interesting

The following page (direct from the official crop diversity homepage) lists all of the countries that have officially signed or ratified the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Many countries are have signed and agreed to this treaty.


The following have ratified the agreement:

•Egypt 1 April 2004
•Cape Verde 1 April 2004
•Jordan 15 April 2004
•Togo 4 May 2004
•Morocco 21 June 2004
•Syria 25 June 2004
•Samoa 29 June 2004
•Ethiopia 15 July 2004
•Tonga 23 August 2004
•Peru 23 August 2004
•Mali 6 October 2004
•Ecuador 7 October 2004
•Colombia 21 October 2004
•Sweden 21 October 2004
•Mauritius 24 November 2004
•Serbia and Montenegro 24 November 2004
•Cameroon 14 February 2005
•Cambodia 6 May 2005
•Pakistan 23 May 2005
•Romania 22 June 2005
•Uganda 14 September 2005
•Kenya 15 February 2006
•Australia 1 August 2006
•Ghana 29 August 2006
•India 9 January 2007
•Switzerland 29 October 2007


More information on the signing:

The Trust welcomes further accessions by countries as a visible symbol of support. Accession to the Trust’s Establishment Agreement brings no financial responsibility, and it is also not necessary to accede to the Agreement in order to donate to the Trust or receive funds from the Trust.

Here are the documents:
Establishment Agreement: www.croptrust.org...
Constitution: www.croptrust.org...
Pointer html page for the above: www.croptrust.org...




[edit on 26-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

»Some Logos:

The Global Crop Diversity Trust was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Biodiversity International, acting on behalf of the foremost international research organizations in this field (CGIAR). The Trust is currently jointly hosted in Rome by FAO and Biodiversity International.







¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

»Doomsday Vault Videos


Earth Report Piece


Sky News Piece


Reuters Piece


NBC Piece


Crop Diversity Basics Video

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

»Links

•Global Research Article on the conspiracy aspect of the seed vault
•The Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT)
•Scientific America Article


Thanks for looking



[edit on 26-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

It's probably rather to prepare for the inevitable as opposed to something specific. Always good to be prepared with the direction we're going in..

This is a great article. I've posted somewhere around here before concerning the 'suicide gene' that many of Our store bought/ordered seeds contain. Any seed produced from these particular crops will not germinate. It's pretty freakin' terrifying to Me. I mean, how better to control people? Everyone needs to eat. Control the worlds food supply and control the world. I find it strange that the original seed bank was located in Afghanistan deep below the surface, but OOOps!! we blew that up too! HHmmm.


Peace. K*

Originally posted by Demetre
This is a great article. I've posted somewhere around here before concerning the 'suicide gene' that many of Our store bought/ordered seeds contain. Any seed produced from these particular crops will not germinate. It's pretty freakin' terrifying to Me. I mean, how better to control people? Everyone needs to eat. Control the worlds food supply and control the world. I find it strange that the original seed bank was located in Afghanistan deep below the surface, but OOOps!! we blew that up too! HHmmm.

I have heard of the genetically altered seed varieties that basically do not germinate (like normally occurring natural seeds). This would serve dual purpose to the companies producing the seed for the farmers crops:

1) Farmers need to keep on buying from the same company (the only company) in order to plant next seasons harvest of crop.

2) Control the crop, who gets to purchase, whlo gets to grow the specific crop. Dont play ball? No seed for you! (like the soup nazi, seinfeld, but this would be the seed nazi)

Do you have a link to your ATS thread? Thanks and glad you guys like the thread, lots of research there...I'm stil digging so if you come across any new info please post.

I'm really glad they are doing this. Here's what I'm wondering though...how on Earth is someone supposed to trek up to the tundrid wastes of Svalbard if the fit really hits the shan and get the seeds they need?

Whenever you're speaking of individuals involved in the world trade market, who are billionaires by suspect device or are otherwise 'elite' - we can't be positive that they know something that we don't... in this case Microsoft and Bill Gates, having donated towards this project, might not be in on anything dark or clandestine.

However, when you're speaking of individuals who are both billionaires through suspect devices and are in cohorts with the industrial military complex you can be damn sure they know things that you do not.

If there is a doomsday event due for the planet, they are not telling us - and every other sign is. If they are preparing for the event, it is only by successfuly draining us of money and shackling us from the coming shift.

A little vault of seeds in the ground means nothing to me. These demons are trying to tuck away acorns for the winter that will never see the light of day.

[edit on 26-3-2008 by NewWorldOver]

Originally posted by NewWorldOver
However, when you're speaking of individuals who are both billionaires through suspect devices and are in cohorts with the industrial military complex you can be damn sure they know things that you do not.

If there is a doomsday event due for the planet, they are not telling us - and every other sign is. If they are preparing for the event, it is only by successfully draining us of money and shackling us from the coming shift.

A little vault of seeds in the ground means nothing to me. These demons are trying to tuck away acorns for the winter that will never see the light of day.

Yea I'm trying to formulate some scenarios as to the purpose, the sequence of possible events, what they know and we don't etc as to the real purpose of the seed vault.

There are a few possibilities. One sequence would be:

»­­Catastrophe hits the planet, an extinction level event hits (the previous extinction level events (ELE) hit 5 times in the past, the most recent large scale event wiping out of the dinosaurs, clearing the way for mammals, and eventually us). ELE wipes out 80-90% humans, 50-60% of all species - sucks for us ()

>The K/T Mass extinction was 65million yrs ago, wiping out the dinosuars
>The most recent mass extinction was the Holocene era, wiping out the
megafauna, mammals, around 12000 yrs ago

»Globalists and elite are tucked away safe, knowing this in advance, wanting a new society to grow from the catastrophe, a phoenix from the ashes, a UTOPIAN society- they plan ahead...

»This new group emerges from there caves and now control the worlds only supply of food replenishment in the world...

I think that means a lot of control for them in my view
There are other scenarios as well....



[edit on 26-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

In the event of an ELE. They got all these seeds stored, but what about bees? Also, having these "original" seeds, maybe it'll be easier for them to get permission to perform certain experiments and try to play God? If some GM experiment goes wrong and the seeds needs to be "reversed", maybe they believe they have a backup with this seed bank? However, are they sure they have everything covered? Some GM crops/plants may have unpredictable effects on certain insects and plant eaters. They might end up messing up the whole system. The seed bank might be a false security. Of course, it's better to have this backup than nothing at all. But I wonder if they might have a hidden agenda, and are planning to play God...

reply to post by Hellmutt


There was a wheat strain that was found by Jack Harlan (sp) in the 1940's in Turkey. At the time the wheat seed variety was deemed useless, a hopelessly pathetic variety strain of wheat. That seed strain became famous and is known as PI 17-83-83, being breed into wheat strains today to fight wheat diseases.

It would be a nice thing to have a catalog of all the worlds strains of food seeds in one place, to experiment, to hold the 'cures' for any future outbreak of disease striking wheat, rice or other staples of food supplies for the world.

Like the Irish potato famine, what if something like that hit today, only hitting say the worlds rice crops, and the only possible 'cure' was in the possession of the Global Seed Vault. Hmmm, 'food' for thought.





[edit on 26-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

Here's a reference for further reading for the above:

Jack Harlan was completely committed to the concept that ex situ conservation of crops was necessary to capture the products of millennia of crop evolution. These genetic resources may not be used for a long time to come in plant breeding or other studies, but the use of even one of the thousands of accessions he collected justified the whole effort. Jack enjoyed telling of a nondescript wheat he collected in eastern Turkey:

“The potential value of a collection cannot be assessed in the field. Perhaps this statement could best be illustrated by PI 178383, a wheat I collected in a remote part of Eastern Turkey in 1948. It is a miserable looking wheat, tall, thin-stemmed, lodges badly, is susceptible to leaf rust, lacks winter hardiness yet is difficult to vernalize, and has poor baking qualities. Understandably, no one paid any attention to it for some 15 years. Suddenly, stripe rust became serious in the northwestern states and PI 178383 turned out to be resistant to four races of stripe rust, 35 races of common bunt, ten races of dwarf bunt and to have good tolerance to flag smut and snow mould. The improved cultivars based on PI 178383 are reducing losses by a matter of some millions of dollars per year.” (from Practical problems in exploration: Seed crops, 1975)
www.bioversityinternational.org...

www.gatesfoundation.org...
The website of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation article on the Global Seed Vault donation...

...and the 2006 annual report covering the donation -->www.gatesfoundation.org...


[edit on 27-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

People need to stop thinking about seed vaults as some large elitist conspiracy to kill us all. They are simply collections to prevent the loss that is occurring now.

And don't even get me started on so called terminator technology. It is not in use.


I could grow wheat, put it into a coffee roaster and sterilize it. You could eat it, but it would never grow.

If someone wanted to kill us all by controlling the food, they could have done it years ago. Its not that hard.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
If someone wanted to kill us all by controlling the food, they could have done it years ago. Its not that hard.

Nah, I'd say it's borderline IMPOSSIBLE to control the food. How are you going to control the fish, how are you going to control the game, how are you going to control the seed (not all seed is GM, mind you).

reply to post by Hellmutt


Seeds of Future Agriculture Enter Doomsday Deep Freeze

The positive:

The vault is designed to protect against global-scale disasters—human or natural—that could potentially wipe out agriculture. Similar local seed banks have allowed farmers to recover from recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as provided new varieties capable of growing in changed conditions, such as rice strains that thrive in fields that had been inundated with saltwater after the Asian tsunami in 2004.

The negative:

In the vault's cold isolation, the seeds can keep for hundreds and thousands of years—the grain sorghum alone can last for 20,000 years—effectively allowing agriculture to be restarted in the event of a global calamity, such as nuclear war or catastrophic climate change.

They don't say anything about the frankenfood scenario.

Escaped GM grass could spread bad news

The strain, which was growing in a test plot in Oregon and hadn't yet been approved for use by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), has now been detected in the wild, up to 3.8 kilometres outside the test area. While the transgenic component of the plant might not in itself pose a problem, the hardy strain could replace many other native grasses if it gains a foothold, ecologists say.

I recently re-read the following book (received a nice electronic copy from a friend) and came across some interesting quotes (that I can now copy and paste):

It must be remembered that the first job of any conspiracy, whether it
be in politics, crime or within a business office, is to convince everyone else
that no conspiracy exists. The conspirators success will be determined largely
by their ability to do this.

That the elite of the academic world and mass communications media always
poohpooh the existence of the Insiders merely serves to camouflage their
operations. These artists hide the boy, the cart and the donkey.

>>quote by Gary Allen, "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"


[edit on 27-3-2008 by battlestargalactica]

Battlestargalactica, when quoting sources outside of ATS you should use the external quote tags, which are [ex] and [/ex], as you did further up.

My take on it is that they wouldn't have called it the Doomsday Vault if it had a malevolent purpose. It would have had a much more flowery title.
I agree with Hellmutts take, that this could be used as an excuse to modify seeds as they have the originals backed up.

reply to post by battlestargalactica

Somehow it reminds me of a japanese animation I once saw. There was a spaceship that also contained things from earth and they sparked it to live and created a new earth after the original one was lost.

I think with several species of plants getting lost it's a good thing to have a doomsday vault. You never know right? I don't know if they know anything we don't but if they do then they will have a good reason to make that thing.

Now I'm waiting for an animal dna database.