View Shopping Cart
The Destination Guide Map
Get Connected
Subscribe to Our Articles, Sell Your Items, Publish Your Work, Advertise Your Business, Share Your Ideas!
With earthquakes, tsunamis, and Jersey Shore terrorizing the planet these days, it is perfectly advisable to contemplate a plan were the end to suddenly come upon us. Pyrodes has been shopping around for an Armageddon hideout, and I think we found just the place. Nestled and cozy on a tiny, frozen island in the polar bear dominated prefectures of Norway is a rather random door (pictured above). Were you to enter this door and descend 120 meters underground into the base of the adjacent sandstone mountain, you would find perhaps the only underground facility not dedicated to sewage, nuclear weapons, or Dr. Evil. Welcome to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or Doomsday Vault, as it is lovingly called. The Vault is an subterranean home to all the seeds this world has ever produced. Think of it as a veritable insurance policy for humanity itself, providing a back-up were any one crop ever to go extinct on planet earth, courtesy of our Norwegian brethren. It is a most interesting place, so…details, maps, history, and, most importantly, directions….after the jump.
The Vault opened its doors in 2008, after a 9 Million USD construction project to update an old mine in the region into a modern, state of the art facility. Norway fully funded the endeavor with the help of none other than Bill and Melinda Gates (hmm, wonder what they know that the rest of us don’t), and the local governor actually has the keys to this place (and human future as we know it) in his desk drawer. The Vault itself works kinda like a bank. Nations from around the world can contribute seeds to the Vault, and they technically own the rights to those seeds. Think of it as security deposit box for paranoid Secretaries of Agriculture worldwide with a withdrawal policy governed by a host of international treaties. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault’s actual mission is to provide a safety net against accidental loss of diversity in traditional genebanks. While the popular press has emphasized its possible utility in the event of a major regional or global catastrophe, it will certainly be more frequently accessed when genebanks lose samples due to mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts and natural disasters. Such events occur with some regularity. In recent years, national genebanks have also been destroyed by war and civil strife. And since everyone loves Norway, and it is just not balmy enough for a civil war, this locale is a pretty safe bet. To make matters even better, Spitsbergen, the island that hosts the Vault, ain’t that bad of a place to cool down either.
As an island that sports the world’s northernmost full service hotel, some of the best sledding and snowmobiling around, and the chance to meet bears, wolves, and (maybe)a human or two, it’s truly not that bad of hang out for the extreme traveler. The capital of this little burg has about 1000 residents all told. It is mainly a coal mine, but tourism has become increasingly important. During high season there are (fingers-crossed) daily flights from Tromso, and almost anything (clothes, polar equipment, food…) can be purchased there. The area itself is a duty free zone, which make some Norwegian high quality products very attractive buys here. Out of the capital there is the arctic desert, and it is not possible to go around without meticulously organized trips. The environment doesn’t allow room for error and polar bears will mess up your day pretty quickly. Check around town for good (and armed) guides to take you out into the white yonder. All in all, it is a trip that few take, so if you find yourself passing through Scandinavia and get a bit hungry, go ahead and put the Doomsday Vault on your to-do list.
The Capital of Spitsbergen
If you do head north, let us know about it, and, as always, Happy Travels.
Check out our destination guides at the PYRODES MAP.
Check out our unique products at the PYRODES STORE.
1Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
[...] Pyrodes.com, a travel blog started by a federal prosecutor. You can get tips on traveling to a doomsday vault hidden away in the arctic wasteland, where the population is lower than the temperature, or learn how to sneak into North Korea, where [...]