by Jessica Reed
Some people are already plotting to retreat to the Canadian prairies and learn farming in preparation for Doomsday/the Apocalypse/Armageddon/The new Mel Gibson movie (pick your favourite world-wide catastrophe). The serious ones are even buying acres of land similar to Bush's Texas Ranch ( all 1583 acres of it - admire the aerial view).
But all those plans pale by comparison with the new Norvegian secret "doomsday vault", which design has been uncovered yesterday...
The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change. Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008. The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples.
My favourite quote has to be this one:
"Somebody will go up there once every year to physically check inside to see that everything is OK, but there will be no full-time staff," he explained. "If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then you cannot actually have too much dependency on human beings."
