Doomsday Arctic seed vault suffers breach
The vault contains almost half a billion seeds which represent around 880,000 different crops.
(Web Desk) – Many have referred to it as a vault that will ensure humanity’s survival. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an underground vault built in the Arctic to house seeds of the millions of plant and crop species as a means of protecting them in case of natural calamities and man-made catastrophes.
The aim of this ‘seed bunker’ is to help them survive events like floods, disease or nuclear war. In case a disaster like a huge flood due to global warming or a nuclear holocaust destroys crops around the world, this vault will play a vital role in humanity’s survival. The seeds stored here can help grow crops that have been lost. The vault contains almost half a billion seeds which represent around 880,000 different crops.
The ‘doomsday vault’, as it is referred to, is the ultimate mechanism to ‘start over’ after an apocalyptic event. It is buried deep in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic region, away from the dangerous arms of humanity and nature both. However, the usefulness of this vault has been put in question after it was breached by a flood caused by melting Arctic permafrost.
According to reports in foreign media, the melting of the permafrost (frozen rock or soil) resulted in a sudden upsurge in water levels that gushed into the tunnel entrance of the vault. A Norwegian government official Hege Njaa Aschim informed The Guardian, “Soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that.” She further informed the newspaper that a lot of water went into the entrance of the tunnel and then froze into ice.
It has been reported that the seeds for now are safe as the water did not reach the vault. Moreover, the seeds are kept in moisture-proof bags. However, the flood breach has put doubts on the safety of the vault and has raised fears about future breaches that might be much larger than this one. Aschim said, “It was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day.”
The breach of what was meant to be a secure place for plant seeds is a worrying sign for the vault operators. When it was built, it was touted as having the capacity to preserve seeds even in the face of forces such as global warming. But temperatures in the Arctic have been increasing rapidly, and according to US scientists, the region has shattered heat records in the previous years. Apparently, the result of the increase in temperatures is this event, and it has been proven that the vault is not failsafe at all.
It is a disconcerting fact that melting of ice on such a small scale has resulted in a breach in the Doomsday Vault. In case of large glaciers melting in the Arctic, the vault might not hold up at all. In an age when the climate is experiencing rapid changes, the world’s failsafe mechanisms might not protect us after all.
