“My God, They’re Dead. They’re All Dead…Well, At Least We Have Billions Of Seeds.”
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
In a move straight out of Science Fiction, environmentalist scientists in the Norwegian government have built an immense underground “Doomsday Vault” inside a frozen mountain on a remote island as a bulwark against the inevitable nuclear apocalypse.
But rather than hunkering down in said vault with porno mags, cans of beans, and the complete Lost on DVD, the Norwegians are doing something even crazier: filling it with seeds. And trust me, it’s way less arousing than it sounds.
Scientists have collected, frozen, and entombed more than 2 billion seeds from millions of plant species, hoping that in the case of a War Games scenario, the vault can be opened and provide humanity with instant food. Well, “instant” give or take a few seasons of cultivating fallow, irradiated soil with no tools while trying to fend off hordes of shambling mutants.
It’s kind of like the Veggie Tales version of Noah’s Ark, except with more seeds and without being a laughable superstition. No, you know what it’s like? It’s like Titan A.E. What? No one saw Titan A.E.? Okay, moving on.
This is a failure. Not in planning or engineering, but in imagination. You’ve got the world’s biggest time capsule, and you’re going to fill it with seeds? Seeds? Come off it Norway. I can think of ten things off the top of my head that would better occupy a Doomsday Vault. And here they are.
Who, you ask, is Umberto Billo? He’s an ex-porter at a Venetian hotel who was recently fired for being “too exhausted to carry customers’ luggage.” Why the exhaustion? Because he was busy bedding 8,000 women over the course of three years. If there was ever a man fit to repopulate the Earth, it’s this guy. Just throw him, Gene Simmons, and Wilt Chamberlain’s corpse in there and bring on the nukes.
I’m not saying it’d be particularly useful, but it sure is meta, and Jesus what a mind-fuck. I mean, what’s inside that vault? Another, even tinier vault? Dare we find out?
In the Fallout games there’s a thing called the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, which does exactly what the name promises. Don’t you think maybe instead of focusing our scientists’ efforts on harvesting seeds, we should be investing some time in perfecting this fairly straightforward instant Eden technology? I mean, the design’s already there, they just need to build the thing! Now I’m not an idiot; I know the difference between fantasy and reality. I’m just saying, let’s ask Batman about it. That guy has the hook up.
