On February 26, 2008, on a rocky seashore hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened for business, receiving its inaugural shipment of seeds from around the world. Nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, the structure is built on Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, and is designed to preserve hundreds of thousands of seed types from across the globe. Created by the Norwegian government and funded by foundation donors, the vault is built to withstand centuries of climate change, natural disasters, and even a nuclear attack. Now locked in the chamber deep inside a frozen mountain are seeds contributed by more than 100 countries.
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