Harvesting incase of disaster

As I was reading over some websites about current events I found this one. I read this article and was very nervous. Its a little scary (to me) that they are starting to harvest seeds of plants "just in case". I know that the government does alot of sneeky crap, but do you think that if something was going to happen soon, that they wouldnt tell us? I hate not being able to answer that securely. I was just wondering what everybodys thoughts were about this subject. I have posted a link to the article. And if this is not the right place to post this please feel free to move it to where it belongs. And one more thing, if anybody has any other information about the government harvesting ANYTHING, I would love to have the info.
news.bbc.co.uk...

I heard about this a couple months ago I believe, from an article on digg.com. It leads me to ask, "What do they know that we don't?". Seems like a huge undertaking to do just for the hell of it, while it may not be tomorrow it's obvious to me they expect somethingworth spending the time and money here.

Maybe Norway plans to have world domination after "doomsday" since they hold the vault!

The seed vault project is co-operative with several participating nations
including at least Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark adn Iceland.

Nothing shady about it, it's mainly just a scientific precaution and a genebank for future.

As an investment it's not very large and it has been planned for a long time.


Btw it has the best security system in the world:
"The area is filled with polar bears"

[edit on 21-6-2006 by northwolf]

For me its more common sense than a warning of doom.

Lets be honest, the history of the planet is fraught with disasters, so why shouldnt we 'be prepared'.

Though this has told me one thing. If there is a World Wide disaster which people can survive, this is the place we should all head for. Lets be honest, its the one place that is gonna be guarenteed to have personel.

This is Very similar in Principle to something that i read a while back (Cant find the Link, sorry) about putting one of these things on the MOON, with not only seeds, but Human sperm and Eggs, DNA samples, animal DNA, with the hopes that during a Natural disaster on earth the Samples would be protected and then we can pop up and get them back, Probbably wouldent happen for like another 50 years or so though

Thanks

Jason

Originally posted by JebusSaves
For me its more common sense than a warning of doom.

Lets be honest, the history of the planet is fraught with disasters, so why shouldnt we 'be prepared'.

Though this has told me one thing. If there is a World Wide disaster which people can survive, this is the place we should all head for. Lets be honest, its the one place that is gonna be guarenteed to have personel.

I agree, in that they are probably doing this not because they think or know of some doomsday event, but because plants could be attacked by diseases, insects, fungus etc.. and a seedbank is cheap insurance to make sure nothing is wiped out for good

Just for thought:

The US has several programs already in place doing this. Established in 1990 the National Genetic Resources Program is tasked with "acquire, characterize, preserve, document, and distribute to scientists, germplasm of all lifeforms important for food and agricultural production"

There is also a National Seed Storage Laboratory