It’s a little like when people put their valuables in a locked safe to protect them. In this case, the valuables are seeds.

Worldwide, more than 1,700 banks hold collections of food crops for safekeeping. Yet, many of these are vulnerable. They could be exposed to natural disasters or war. They could suffer from lack of funding, poor management, or even lack of power. Something as simple as a broken freezer can ruin an entire collection.

Not at Svalbard. No other seed bank protects its seeds as well as this place. Partly that’s because of the way it was constructed. The vault is inside a mountain. Even if the air system were to fail, the seeds would stay cold for awhile because the vault is underground, packed in rock and ice. The rock that makes up the mountain is geologically stable. The vault is well above sea level, so there is less danger from flooding.