Other vault , like the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in the U.S. and the Millennium Seed Bank in England , are vast botanical database for investigator — and , potentially , for subsister of the apocalypse .
These are real - life story versions of the semen vault that Paolo Bacigalupi imagines for Thailand in The Windup Girl , where underground agent for agribusiness comb the earth ’s grocery assay genetically novel fruits . Because the world is pack with GMO stocks that are all vulnerable to the same rust disease , these large calorie spy hope to find disease - resistant intellectual nourishment crops .
Wired ’s Pete Brook has posted a set of amazing photos by Doherty , distinguish the vault as “ a global botanical backup system ” :
Global cause to keep seed stock for an changeable time to come are no more evident than at the Svalbard “ Doomsday ” Seed Vault , which Doherty shoot the breeze and photographed in March 2010 . Located 800 miles to the south of the North Pole , on the Norse island of Spitsbergen , the Svalbard Seed Vault is the world ’s insurance policy against botanic holocaust . The $ 9 million facility houses over 10,000 seed samples and was liken to a Bond villain ’s den when it began military operation in January 2008 . . . Not only is the vault impervious to temperature fluctuation and sea - layer rises , it can withstand a terrorist attack . “ The door is not on axis with the burrow , there is a small curved bulwark in line with the tunnel organise to scatter a blast radius , ” says Doherty .
VisitDornith Doherty ’s website .
you may read more about these facilities , and see more photos , at Wired .
Largest seed in the man , at Millennium Seed Bank .
Genetic Resource Center Seed Vials
Doomsday Seed Vault
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