Inside mysterious 'doomsday vault' created to save life in apocalyptic event dubbed ‘modern-day Noah’s Ark’
Hidden in the Arctic is a mysterious ‘doomsday vault’ that was created to save life on Earth in the event of an apocalyptic catastrophe.
The bunker has been dubbed as a ‘modern-day Noah’s Ark’ and has often become the subject of internet conspiracy theories.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is co-owned by the Norwegian government and is situated on a mountainside on Spitsbergen, in Norway's Svalbard archipelago.
The vault is home to a whopping 1,214,827 seed samples from countries all over the world, and it is so vast it’s said to have space for millions more.
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The vault is also open to the public thanks to a virtual tour that gives people an inside glimpse into the mysterious Arctic structure.
It was first opened in 2008 after the Aleppo seed bank was destroyed in the Syrian civil war, and accepts new deposits three times a year.
As explained by the non-profit Crop Trust, the aim of the vault is to ‘safeguard as much of the world’s unique crop genetic material as possible’ - protecting different crop species from being permanently wiped out after events like natural catastrophes or war.
Particularly as climate change threatens different plant species, it's going to become more vital than ever in the coming years.
The vault in the Norwegian Arctic, is closed to the public and is often featured in internet doomsday conspiracy theories as people have wondered what really might be down there.
But, for its 15th anniversary, it virtually opened its doors to give people a look inside the vault that is buried deep in the mountain behind five sets of metal doors.
The tour takes you down a long tunnel and you eventually arrive at three seed chambers, each storing nearly 3,000 seed boxes which are sealed in an aluminum airtight bag and organized by country.
You can then click on each country and learn more about its agriculture.
The vault is designed to last forever - and the seeds are meant to be safe, because they are buried so deep in the permafrost - but even Svalbard isn't immune to the changes in weather.
In 2017, the entrance to the vault was flooded after a heatwave melted surrounding ice - but luckily the seeds weren't harmed.
But just in case, samples are replaced every few decades. And just to give you a real insight into how cold it is up there, if the air con - currently set at -18C - ever did fail, it would reportedly take hundreds of years for the temperature inside to rise above zero.