1/28/2024 0 Comments Seeds doomsday vault![]() "And how many are there today?" Pelley asks. 7,100 different varieties of apples that are catalogued," Fowler explains. But in fact, in the 1800s in the United States people were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples. "Maybe 25, I would guess," Pelley remarks. There's Golden Delicious.' They're going to give you an answer like that," Fowler says. "If you ask somebody 'How many kinds of apples are there?' They're going to say 'Well, there's red, there's green. But science fiction aside, the main purpose is to protect against a doomsday that is unfolding right now because the plants we've been eating for 10,000 years are going extinct. If an asteroid strikes the earth, seeds to restart agriculture would come from the vault. Officially, the seed bank is the "Svalbard Global Seed Vault." It's built to warehouse backup copies of all the world's crops - 1.5 billion seeds - including everything from California sunflowers to ancient Chinese rice. Inside the boxes that came off the plane are millions of silver envelopes, containing seeds of everything from chickpeas to wheat. We wanted absolutely the coldest spot we could find," Fowler explains. We wanted to take advantage of the naturally frozen temperatures down here. "This is the coldest place in the mountain. Now they were loaded for the last mile to Fowler's frozen Fort Knox. What's in the boxes took 10,000 years to develop and 70 years to collect. The treasures that the vault was built to house came by plane and approached an airstrip at the base of the mountain nearby. They freeze it colder than the permafrost, so that if the earth warms and the power goes out, the vault will stay frozen for another 25 years. "We're going freeze it even further," Fowler explains. Inside, pipes provide additional refrigeration, despite the fact the vault is only several hundred miles from the North Pole.
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