While poking around Treehugger the other day, I came across an update on the Svalbard International Seed Vault, which is better known to the pessimists amongst us as the Doomsday Seed Vault.

Maybe you remember this Norwegian project, which is being built so that we'll have a variety of seeds in the event of a global catastrophe. The idea is to safeguard some three million seeds in a very secure, very permanent underground vault. This way, people will have access to a variety of seeds, particularly food crops, should we ever have to bounce back from, oh say, an asteroid strike or nuclear war.

The scientists behind this project have spent an extraordinary amount of time devising ways to preserve the seeds. They are detailed in this BBC News. Some highlights include:

• To prevent seeds from germinating, they've opted to build it into a frozen mountain on a remote island near the Arctic Circle.
  
• After creating climate models, they anticipate the rising seas and have housed the vault high above the coastlines.
  
• They've devised ways to ensure temperatures that remain below freezing. There are reinforced doors, concrete-lined doors, maybe even a secret password. (Tomato? Rutabaga?)

Plus, they counting on polar bears to fend off any unwanted intruders. (No kidding, it's all part of the vault's security system. As far as we know, they will not be armed.)

All things considered, this sort of advance planning is the kind of thing that could one day save countless lives or ensure our survival of our species. It may one day be considered as important as the use of vaccines or antibiotics.

Still, it kind of amuses me to think about all the challenges those intrepid folks will be forced to deal to fetch those seeds: Freezing seas, frigid temperatures, polar bears, and the likelihood that, in the event of disaster, Google Maps might not function as needed.

To help solve the latter dilemma, the vault planners are opting to use triangular-shaped reflective panels to catch the summer midnight sun so that it will “emit a quiet glow so that you can sense it in the landscape.”

And once we can sense something in the landscape, who needs Google Maps anyways?