What does an explorer’s epic voyage through the icy Arctic Ocean to the North Pole have to do with a tiny cluster of islands he never even went near? And what does any of this have to do with the apocalypse and how we’re preparing for it? Continue reading to find out.
Explorers. Islands. Apocalypse. Doomsday prepping. It’s a lot to take in, but first we need to look at something that begins far, far away: solar flares.
Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections
Everyday, billions upon billions of charged subatomic particles (like protons and electrons) are ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere. These particles, collectively called solar wind, go flying out in all directions and often hit the Earth. The particles typically collide with the Earth at a constant rate that is easy for the Earth’s magnetic field to manage. Our magnetic field is like a giant, invisible set of armour protecting us from much of the solar wind zipping through space.
Normally, the magnetic field surrounding the Earth deflects particles and protects us from harm; however, the Sun can expel a violent jet of charged particles that sometimes hits the Earth’s magnetic field. This is called a coronal mass ejection. The Sun has solar flares very frequently, but they rarely hit Earth, so we don’t have to worry about them too much. Nevertheless, when a strong enough solar flare does happen to come our direction, it can have potentially dangerous consequences for us and our electronics.
In the past, solar flares have knocked out power lines, taken down satellites, and disrupted radio signals. While typically innocuous, solar flares could cause somewhat of a digital apocalypse, especially in our extremely digital society. That’s how you’re able to read this article and do so much more, and that could suddenly be stripped away from you. While all of our personal electronics would be fine, they wouldn’t be able to connect to anything for some time due to losing the signals coming from satellites. This scenario might be fine for some people, but important systems, like hospitals, are now increasingly digital and could cause massive panic if they stop working.
So you might be wondering what do solar flares have to do with anything I mentioned earlier, and we’ll get there; but, let’s take a look at some vaults.
Github Code Vault
Nestled in an abandoned coal mine on an icy, Arctic archipelago is Github’s Arctic Code Vault. Github is a platform where software engineers can share open source code, essentially giving public access for anyone to see how our technology runs. Big companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook all have open source code on Github. People might also request for the code to be made open source to ensure nothing nefarious is lurking. To preserve all of the most important projects, Github decided to create a vault that would last for thousands of years. This vault contains reels of encoded film that currently have captured over 21 terabytes of open source coded from Github (thats 1 billion megabytes, or in other words, lots and lots of data). Alongside the reels is an instruction manual for any future civilisation to decode and understand how to use the stored information.
Furthermore, the location of the vault increases its longevity. The Arctic Code Vault is located on Svalbard, a small archipelago (group of islands), which is approximately 1,000 kilometres (650 miles) north of Norway. Since Svalbard is located in the Arctic circle, the temperature is constantly freezing. The extreme cold of Svalbard helps preserve the reels of code for an estimated 1,000 years. If all goes to plan, humans (or aliens) from the year 3020 would still be able to understand how we created our digital environment in the 21st century.
So, what’s the purpose of the vault? Officially, it’s meant to preserve the ideals of how we run the internet so that humans in the future can see, but I wonder if they’re using it as a backup for some kind of digital apocalypse. Maybe my thinking is inspired by movies with super computer viruses attacking all of our technology, but you have to wonder if historical records is their only motive.
The extreme cold of Svalbard seems to make the islands an appealing place to build long-term vaults, since right down the road is another incredible, long-term vault: the Global Seed Vault.
The Global Seed Vault
Hidden behind some “cool” architecture are even colder vaults containing hundreds of thousands of seeds from plants all over the world. First opened in 2008, the Global Seed Vault is the world’s centre for storing our major crops’ seeds like wheat, corn, potatoes, and soy, as well as many more species. Currently, there are over 1 million seed samples inside, which is an extraordinary number. What’s the catch? Due to Norway’s strict policies against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) anywhere in the country, seeds from GM plants are forbidden from being stored in the Vault. The main reason for it is to ensure only natural varieties are stored due to the believed ill effects of GMOs on public health.
Like the Arctic Code Vault, the Seed Vault is aided in keeping its sealed, foil bags of seeds frozen by the surrounding frigid, polar temperatures. Even if the power goes out and the storage freezers turn off, the permafrost (a thick layer of constantly frozen ground) encasing the vault would keep it below freezing for up to a staggering two centuries. Nevertheless, even if the seeds remain frozen, it doesn’t matter keeping them if they are not viable or able to grow after being taken out of storage. As it turns out, a practicality assessment of the vault estimated that most of the seeds could be usable for hundreds of years and some of them could be viable for thousands.
So why is it there? Why have we compiled all of the major crops’ seeds into a vault that could last for years untouched? The creators designed it for what could be the end of the world: human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate change. As disasters become more severe, the planet heats up, and the seas rise, more of the world’s seed banks will be at risk of damage or destruction. Already, a seed bank in the Phillipines was destroyed due to flooding and a subsequent fire. Therefore, a central vault that is protected from the majority of risk factors was established.
Both the Global Seed Vault and Arctic Code Vault have been created as a kind of backup for the world if things go awry, but why do we seem to be so fixated on doomsday thinking?
Apocalyptic Thinking
Think about how many television shows, books, and movies are centred around an impending apocalypse, whether by technology, aliens, or some other disaster. Titles like “2012”, The Road, “Interstellar” come to mind and the list goes on.
Psychologically, there’s a couple of reasons why we often think about the apocalypse. One explanation is that there’s comfort in knowing when the end is coming. Having a definite date can often make it less scary. If you ask a friend or sibling to punch you on the shoulder, you’ll find that it hurts less when you know when it’s coming than when you’re waiting for it to come at a random time. Similarly, when there’s less uncertainty about important things in life, we can often feel less stressed. The same idea goes for the end of our life or even the end of the world.
Another reason why we think about the apocalypse so often could be because we romanticise the post-apocalyptic world. Steven Schlozman, a Harvard Medical School child psychiatrist says his patients think that living in the world would be much simpler and more connected to nature after an apocalyptic event. A world where we live off the land and lack the problems of our modern society could be an enticing one for a lot of people.
We have this bizarre need to prepare for the end, whether digital or physical, but it seems that it’s actually founded on how our minds work.
Svalbard
So we have constructed these vaults on the archipelago of Svalbard, but why there? When I was researching, I kept thinking, what makes these hunks of rock in the frozen Arctic so special? It turns out, Svalbard’s like the Garden of Eden for storage vault-makers for a few reasons:
- Svalbard’s latitude of 78º N, inside of the Arctic Circle, provides the facilities with the advantage of consistently cold temperatures that are ideal for long-term storage of items such as seeds and reels of coded film. The average summer air temperature is just above freezing at about 6º C (43º F) and 60% of the landmass being covered by glaciers ensures the vaults stay cold.
- The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 made the archipelago of Svalbard a demilitarised zone, meaning it is devoid of any military activity. This prevents the creation of naval bases and other fortifications from being made on the islands and therefore reduces the chances of involvement in conflict that would jeopardise the safety of the vaults.
- When looking at a map of all the earthquakes that have happened, most of them happen along a series of lines that are the edges of the tectonic plates. The lack of tectonic plate margins near Svalbard makes the chances of earthquakes or volcanoes erupting there very minimal. This protects the vaults, which are dug deep in the earth, from being crushed or filled with lava.
- The topography (or arrangement of features) of Svalbard allows the vaults to be located at about 130 meters above sea level, on the side of a small mountain. This means that even if the polar ice caps were to melt entirely, the vaults would remain dry.
- Due to the warm-water currents that come from the Atlantic towards Svalbard, the waters around the islands remain relatively ice-free and open for travel by boat to and from the islands. This allows the vaults to be accessible at any time of year.
- Fun fact: The population of polar bears on the islands (~3,000 bears) exceeds the population of people on the islands, keeping the vaults isolated from people and somewhat naturally protected. If you plan on visiting or conducting research, you are required to care a firearm for protection.
All of these characteristics seem great for vaults, except there’s one huge drawback.
The Sad Irony of Svalbard
If Svalbard seems like such a perfect place to construct a long-term storage vault, then what’s the problem with it? For a group of islands with only ~2,500 people, the coal mining industry produces millions of tons of coal every year. In 2007, the island alone generated over US$200 million in revenue from coal mining. All of this coal then gets burnt to create electricity, producing a medley of greenhouse gases that increase the rate of anthropogenic global warming.
Remember the explorer I mentioned at the beginning of the article? His name was Fridtjof Nansen. In 1983, Nansen attempted to voyage to the North Pole. His method was to get his ship stuck in the pack-ice of the ice cap and let the ocean currents transport him to the pole. He never made it all the way, only getting as far north as 86º N instead of the intended 90º of the North Pole. Nansen’s expedition serves here to show just how difficult it used to be to get to the North Pole by ship. Now, with the ice caps melting at a staggering rate, that same expedition would have been much more simple for Nansen to achieve.
It’s tragic how a place so beautiful and barren as Svalbard could be contributing to its own demise, but with the ice caps melting, Svalbard acts as a gateway to an untapped reservoir of oil, coal and gas in the Arctic. An estimated 90 billion barrels of oil are locked away in the Arctic, as well as 25% of all untapped natural gas resources. With Svalbard continuing to produce coal, it even hit it’s record high temperature ever recorded in 2020 at 21.7ºC (71º F). Plus, using the Arctic’s resources would only help speed up how fast these temperatures are rising. That is absolutely insane for a place where the temperature should be freezing year-round.
The final problem is that due to all of the warming, the glaciers on the island have been melting at such a rate that it has jeopardised the waterproof integrity of the vaults. In recent years, the entrance to the Global Seed Vault required reconstruction after being partially flooded on several occasions.
A Conclusion
What does this mean for you and I, likely sitting far from the Arctic Circle and Svalbard?
For starters, the code that runs our technology and the plant seeds that feed us are currently safe and will be there if we are ever in a dire enough position to need them.
No matter where we are in the world, we will end up feeling the repercussions of climate change, which Svalbard’s continued coal production and usage is not helping.
Global warming and climate change are likely to get worse if countries decide to capitalise on the Arctic’s largely untapped wealth of fossil fuels.
Even though the world might seem like it’s ending, we might find some comfort in knowing how and possibly even when.
Finally, the things that terrify us can also be magical and beautiful:
Auroras
Earlier, we learned about how large solar flares could cause a digital apocalypse by shutting down our satellites, radio, and electricity. This is quite terrifying, but the constant, low-level emission of charged particles creates something super magical in Svalbard. It’s like the icing on the cake that is the beauty of Svalbard. Those charged particles hitting different gases in the atmosphere give off a variety of colours of light, making a magical spectacle usually only seen in the night sky: the aurora borealis or Northern Lights.
