Safeguarding the Genetic Future of Mankind

Deep inside Platåberget mountain in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the North Pole, stands the world\'s most secure agricultural safe: the **Svalbard Global Seed Vault**.

Designed to survive nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, asteroid collisions, and global pandemics, the vault holds duplicate backup copies of over **1.2 million unique seed varieties** collected from nearly every sovereign country on Earth.

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Built for Eternity

- **Natural Permafrost Cooling**:

Sitting 130 meters inside the sandstone mountain, the ambient rock temperature stays below freezing. Even if mechanical cooling systems fail, the permafrost will keep the seeds frozen at -18°C (-0.4°F) for decades.

- **Elevated Above Sea Level**:

Located 130 meters above ocean level, the vault will remain dry even if the polar ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland melt entirely.

- **The Syrian War Withdrawal (2015)**:

In 2015, researchers from ICARDA made the first-ever seed withdrawal to regenerate genebanks destroyed during the battle of Aleppo, Syria, proving the vault's critical role in global survival.