The Norwegian government is planning on building a "doomsday" seed bank in which as many species' seeds as possible will be stored. The Norwegian government will be building this bank by hollowing out a 120-meter tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of -6 degrees Celsius, refrigerating it to -18 degrees Celsius, and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world. The proposed bank will have top security blast-proof doors and would have two airlocks. The number of seeds stored will depend on the number of countries participating in the project, with the first seeds arriving in 2008. The initiative of this project is to prevent needed plants (wild, agricultural, etc.) from going extinct due to a global catastrophe such as climate change (the tunnel is 130 meters above sea-level) or nuclear war.
