Doomsday vault tunneled into Arctic mountain

Norway site protects millions of seeds from man-made, natural disasters.

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway – A “doomsday” vault built to withstand an earthquake or nuclear strike was ready to open deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain, where it will protect millions of seeds from man-made and natural disasters.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was to be officially inaugurated on Tuesday, less than a year after crews started drilling in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole.

The vault, which Norway built at a cost of about 50 million kroner (US$9.1 million, euro6.25 million), has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the globe, shielding them from climate change, wars, natural disasters and other threats.

MSNBC