Preparation for Catastrophe - Vaults of Life

Posted by Weprint Discs on September 10th, 2019

Humankind is venturing into a spot where it is almost demolishing itself. As far as pollution and global warming are concerned, the road ahead for us is not going to be extremely smooth. The way humans are killing off forests, terrestrial, as well as marine life, is worth pondering.

The recent example of the fire to the Amazon rainforests almost spread panic faster than the wildfire itself. Not only did it destroy thousands of square miles of forest cover, but it also deprived natural habitat for the wild animals living there.

It was a bad situation to have a look at. As always, it rained in the Amazon and it, somewhat, saved the forest from further destruction. Even though governments and authorities were trying hard to contain the fire, it wasn’t going to be an easy task to put it off completely.

A massive tsunami, rising sea levels due to global warming, an increase in average temperatures in Summers as well as a decrease in average temperatures in Winters with inconsistent rains are all signs of impending doom.

Having foresight of this very thing, the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) had planned and went ahead with a Global Seed Vault.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has preserved thousands of seed types in its locked location. The entire facility is created within a granite hill that is out of danger from massive artificial as well as natural threats such as earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear attacks, etc.

The seed vault has all of these seeds and the information about the same is stored on compact discs with the help of Disc Printing as well as other sources. The information is also stored on cloud storage options. However, it is also manageable to have an offline source of information so as to quickly make use of it, just in case.

Apart from a seed vault, there are other vaults that keep cells in contention which will be helpful in case something worse happens. The things that are saved are:

• Eggs and sperm Cells

• Stem Cells

• Brain Matter etc.

Usually, all of these is stored in Liquid Nitrogen which exists at -210°C and -196°C which equals -346°F and -320.44°F. Around these temperatures, it is almost impossible for any biological matter to rot away or react to any form of microbes.

These methods are really good for preservation. As a collective effort, we do hope that we don’t have to face a situation where these vaults come into use, but as a cautious measure, it will be of great help.

The next 10-15 years will shape how our planet will be as far as survival of the animal and plant species is concerned.