

The doomsday vault: seeds that could save a post-apocalyptic world - jgrahamc
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/20/the-doomsday-vault-seeds-save-post-apocalyptic-world

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keithpeter
If I have read the OA correctly, the vault depends on electricity supplies
from the local community, has freezers running without spare parts (I'd have
expected a complete duplicate freezer unit kept as parts with regular swap
outs for more recent designs after a certain number of hours). The data about
the samples is not attached to the samples themselves _as well as_ being
indexed off site, and there appears to be no viability checking.

I my understanding is correct, then perhaps agencies should be funding other
kinds of activity such as that outlined later in the article.

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dm2
It's not critical that the seeds are kept at that temperature, it's just to
maximize the amount of time they last.

If the freezers fail then it will take several weeks for the temperature to go
from -18C (freezer) to -4C (ground temperature), and after that the seeds will
still last a very long time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAcyJxIguA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAcyJxIguA)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault)

~~~
keithpeter
Thanks for clarification on that one, the dramatic opening paragraph seemed to
suggest that the sky would fall if the freezer was not repaired immediately.

Edit to my original post: the project should be funded _along with_
complementary approaches.

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benbreen
The feature photograph and the architecture of this place is remarkable. I'd
love to see it integrated with some future iteration of the Clock of the Long
Now: [http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)

