Doomsday Seed Vault

[shonman]

Cool Beans!

Just in case,the annihilation of most of the human race,

a safe place to store seeds!

It would be great to get some of the shamanic plant seeds into the vault, too....

I wonder how often anyone goes there?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pictures/2012/07/120702-svalbard-doomsday-seed-vault-food-supply/

[watertrade]

I love that place - of course I have never been there but its a good idea and the architecture is so good for what it is too. I like that there is a guy with a rifle at the front door.

[endorfinder]

http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/

You can see what's in there. They have 26 cannabis samples but no caapi, psychotria or erythroxylum when I just had a look.

They have quite a few varieties of P. somniferum and a few of P. bracteatum.

[bogfrog]

I wonder if they would take donations?

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

Here ya go boggy http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/index.php?page=depositor_guidelines&PHPSESSID=og001asu814ebu3et53ufb11u3

[shonman]

I have heard there are also farms in different places

Dedicated to keeping the genes of various breeds of livestock

That have been selectively bred throughout millennia by humans

For certain traits.

In today's world of factory farming and Monsanto type companies,

Many of them are almost going extinct!

With modern technology, perhaps a vault of sealed in liquid nitrogen

Could be used to freeze sperm and eggs from these creatures.

.....In the U.S. Pacific Northwest,

The forest is almost all the same conifers,

Planted and cut repeatedly by Weyerhauser (lumber company)

Much to the detriment of diversity.

They still look nice, which they are there though!

Monoculture does have significant disadvantages, though,

which is why Mother Nature is so creative.

[Darklight]

Just in case,the annihilation of most of the human race,

a safe place to store seeds!

Heh. It's easy to be distracted by the shiny

In the event of mass population disruption there is no way in hell ordinary gardening-capable people like us would be able to access this in a timely manner. Even given the political will to do so, the logistics would be a nightmare during the initial phase. Worst case scenario is that Doomsday Vault access could be denied to blacklisted racial, social or economic groups, but it's not as likely as simply being overlooked

The safest place for storing viable seed with a view to disaster recovery is within the local community. Bonus points is that seed is likely to be locally adapted and suitable for local conditions.

http://www.seedsavers.net/local-seed-networks

The Doomsday vault should only be considered a secondary backup

[waterboy 2.0]

^ really I need a clapping emoticon for that Darklight.

Please all keep your varieties of food crops viable folks. Genetic diversity brings additional insurances.

After linking through the first National Geo. page, I came across this image - food for thought.

State of the 1983 "U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory"

[tarenna]

Wanna get a whole lotta shipping containers rigged out for various purposes. One of which is seed storage. Have ideal space for their installation - just need some more bucks to make it happen.

When I was an angry young man one of my favourite songs was "When the shit goes down - Cypress Hill"

Peace

[Darklight]

Wanna get a whole lotta shipping containers rigged out for various purposes. One of which is seed storage.

Nah. Too big, too much work to track viability, too easy for pests to get in

Save seed from ten of your favourite species and varieties. Do it properly, including turning them over so they stay long term viable as a crop

Then know someone not far away who has a different but equally well kept ten species

Twenty species or a few less with different varieties- you'd be well on your way to year-round produce

[tarenna]

^^ Thanks for these insights bro

I agree with much of your contribution.

But I got a whole lotta space and natural resources available, and I am looking well beyond food. Free/renewable energy is available in almost limitless quantities (to assist in ensuring good preservation of germplasm and pest prevention/exclusion) and there are already hermetically sealed sections of shipping containers available. The problems faced are mostly climatically related (humidity and temp variability in particular) - control within shipping containers (including buried ones) seems our best option.

I am open to any alternatives and suggestions of better approaches.

thanks

[shonman]

I was reading somewhere that this Doomsday Seed vault is a backup for the 1,500 seed vaults worldwide.

I definately would not count on getting there by any means other than airplane,

MAYBE by boat, but that would be pushing it probably.

You are right, Darklight, its not the kind if place you could just go and get seeds after the apocalypse!

But at least they would be preserved.......

Imagine if archeaologists today unearthed an extensive seed vault somehow preserved from hundreds if thousand of years ago.

.......or people in the future....."Hey, what's that funny corner sticking out if the ice?"

Definately hard to get to.......

600 miles off the coast of Norway, heading towards the Arctic....polar bears, frozen mountains, ice, snow, cold....

I wonder how the armed guard would feel if "the Apocalypse" did happen, and he was stuck there forever.

Twnety years later, people show up....but he boiled and ate all the seeds!

Edited April 19, 2013 by shonman

[El Presidente Hillbillios]

i think the worldwide seed vault project is the called arc project, if i remember right its funded by the Natural history museum in London. We made some parts at work for the one at Mt Annen in south west sydney. I dont know when its due to be completed but we made the parts a few months ago

[gwalchgwyn]

I appreciate the cautions of Darklight & Waterboy's addition from NatGeo's own archives - not to put a Doomsday Psyche on top of another. If there is a foreseeable problem, then the best solution is to not put all of our eggs (seeds) in one basket.

[shonman]

Definately good to have your own backup seeds as well!

"Doomsday Seed vault is a backup for the 1,500 seed vaults worldwide."

[Bigred]

This is a subject that i spend to much of my time on. To do it properly you need to breed the seed in sterile

conditions and then check for contams etc . To get them to the long term storage phase takes a lot of work

and time . So when preping for your bug out you have to travel light . so learning bush foods is good to

as the seed can be collected in the bush. but if your in your bunker for a few years would be cool to have

a tissue culture bank as well keep you occupied. Building a bunker is very hard as i want mine to be able to

handle a 20 megaton blast . Plus keep my peeps food, water, sewage , medicine, entertained, oxygen, the list

goes on and on and the $$$$$$$ on buiding expeneses goes up and up. Some people call me crazy then i say

its my money fuck off at least im not wasting it on coke and hookers. Dont come knocking on my door

[Darklight]

but if your in your bunker for a few years would be cool to have a tissue culture bank as well keep you occupied.

No. Don't bother. Most species in tissue culture have to be subcultured regularly even when they're in a maintenance medium designed for slow growth. After a few generations, some species or strains will lose viability ( some cases within 2 years, some in ten IME ) and you will have no material to propagate from for the next generation

There are protocols for some species where you can store some cultures in -80C conditions and regenerate from a few cells of that culture- carefully- but your chances of regeneration success are only as good as your protocol and species response- ie you may well get 2-15 years good quality regeneration out of a culture but it could fail on the 11th year. You won't know about that til it actually happens Then what do you do?

Add to that the need for a constant reliable power source for your fridges, -20 and -80 freezers, flow hood, climate control and lighting ( difficult under survuvalist conditions ) , and you're waaaaaayyy better off spending that time and energy on saving seed and other genestock by more conventional means

[shonman]

Nature did it right!

Imagine trying to invent life, and the seed...to sustain and self replicate,

Gather its own energy, heal itself up to a point, etc.....

[Bigred]

My bunker will have a power supply, as long as there is sun and wind ( and there will be a generator back up )

I aim to eat a lot of fungi as the are a good food source and not much electrical energy is needed for there growth.

I have seen some commercial seed kits that preppers use and they have a ten year storage life. My big concern

would be what crops i can do in my grow room that are so efficient. an equation like watts/space/yield/o2/waste

has to be developed when choosing what to grow. Its a huge task

[Darklight]

Nature did it right! Imagine trying to invent life, and the seed...to sustain and self replicate, Gather its own energy, heal itself up to a point, etc.....

Hell yeah! And the more science I get into around this all, the more I appreciate the wonder and complexity of nature

My bunker will have a power supply, as long as there is sun and wind ( and there will be a generator back up )

I aim to eat a lot of fungi as the are a good food source and not much electrical energy is needed for there growth.

I have seen some commercial seed kits that preppers use and they have a ten year storage life. My big concern

would be what crops i can do in my grow room that are so efficient. an equation like watts/space/yield/o2/waste

has to be developed when choosing what to grow. Its a huge task

OK, I still would not recommend the above. Except maybe in the case of mushrooms. We are working on a reliable protocol which would have minimum requirements for power- not much beyond a fridge and cooking gear. If it works, go for it

As for TC, I still wouldn't. The amount of effort you would need to train and upkeep stocks, the eventual decline of many chems in long term storage, the requirement for backup gear in case of failures- how much space would your bunker have for backup refrigeration, say?. Also consider the time to make sure your trained ppl have backup skills in case of redundancy or injury... would be better spent learning and upkeeping on say, monitoring of air, soil or water quality ( in case of environmental disaster ) and/or raising, butchering and preserving meat for storage. As an example.

Suitable crops? Better kept alive or in suitable storage. Pick twelve. If you can maintain their viability and genetic consistency over five years, my hat goes off to you.