A gleaming portal that catches the northern lights and low-angle midnight sun. A 400-foot tunnel into the permafrost. A chamber holding priceless treasure — three million samples of seeds that grow all our crops, fruits and vegetables.

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Drawing of Svaalbard Global Seed Vault

A Norwegian group has released a design for a “fail-safe” doomsday vault on Spitzbergen Island of Svalbard to forever protect the world’s agricultural heritage against extinction and calamity: global warming, rising sea levels — even nuclear war.

“This design takes us one step closer to guaranteeing the safety of the world’s most
important natural resource,” said Dr. Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.


The entrance to the facility will be more than 400 feet above sea level, high enough to avoid flooding even if the Greenland ice sheet melts away. Its inner chambers will be tucked so far into the permafrost that they will endure centuries of surface warming. It will have blast doors, airlocks, video security.

But it won’t be a secret.

“We decided early on that there is no point in trying to hide this facility from the public,” project manager Magnus Bredeli said in the group’s release. “Instead we will rely on its presence being well-known in the local community, so if the public sees something suspicious, they will react to it.”

Announced Feb. 9 by the Norwegian government, the design of the Svalbard International Seed Vault reveals a futuristic facility so striking that it might well become some sort of tourist attraction. Or, at least, a postcard.

The group writes:

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.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust, devoted to preserving agricultural diversity to ensure the survival of humanity, will co-fund the vault’s operations with the Norwegian government and pay for the preparation and transport of seeds from all developing nations to Spitzbergen.

“Every day that passes we lose crop biodiversity,” said executive director Fowler. “We must conserve the seeds that will allow agriculture to adapt to challenges such as climate change and crop disease. This design is as awesome physically as it is attractive aesthetically, and both are fitting tributes to the importance of the biological treasure to be stored there.”

Construction is expected to begin in March and be done by September 2007, with the vault officially operating by late winter of 2008.