This glittering concrete monolith is a lot like that still-sealed emergency survival kit languishing in your basement since 1999: Reassuring to have around, but a bummer when you actually have to use it. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault—better known by its cute nickname, the "Doomsday Vault"—was established on this far-northern Norwegian isle in 2008 to archive frozen genetic copies of seeds already housed in seed banks around the world: a backup of all the backups. Kept at minus 0.4 degrees F within the seed vault, precious botanicals from food to fibers to flowers are safe from disasters, even of the apocalyptic variety. Lucky us: It"ll take a healthy diet of veggies to fight off the zombies.
Even nature needs a backup plan…
Today in History
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Aw shucks, it’s oyster season in Galway
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Black Fell in England s Lake District
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World Lizard Day
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A cliff-hanging complex of temples
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‘The memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever’
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The Easter Bunny’s story
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Cheese! We ll go somewhere where there s cheese!
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Manatee Awareness Month
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International Day for Monuments and Sites
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National Park Week: Guadalupe Mountains National Park
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The Guggenheim turns 60
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Happy 300th, NOLA!
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St. Patricks Day in County Waterford, Ireland
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Isla del Pescado on the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
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Train crossing the Tadami River in Japan
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Boating on the Bojo
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A day to take a moment
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The Hermitage of Santa Justa
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Siblings Day
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Springtime in the Mediterranean
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Paradise, found
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Mountain mists over Bavaria
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The scene of a literary crime
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Desert rose of Qatar
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The dog days of summer
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Smoking nights in Austria
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International Day of Color
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Does this chameleon look a little insecure?
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Keyholes to the kingdom
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Badlands National Parks 45th anniversary