They’re stored behind heavy doors covered in a layer of glittering ice, in three big rooms deep inside the mountain. An Ark for FoodĬurrently, the facility holds around 930,000 seed samples representing 5,000 plant species. As the globe warms, this small ditch is not enough to protect the warehouse from surface runoff. This has meant warming temperatures, avalanches, rain and, most damaging for the seed vault, melting permafrost. In a cruelly ironic twist for what is meant to be a doomsday backup for civilization, climate change is working faster here than in many other places around the world. Svalbard was thought to be the perfect place to preserve and store seeds because it is a polar desert-cold and dry, with little snow and not much rain. Twenty years ago, this trench might have been sufficient. “I think that's quite a good comparison.” But now, on its tenth anniversary, the initiative is confronting one of the very forces it is meant to protect against: global warming.Ī small drainage ditch in front of the entrance diverts rainwater streaming down the cold rock of the mountain.
“People call the vault a Noah’s Ark for seeds,” says Asdal, a biologist and agronomist. The storage vault-in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago 800 miles above the Arctic Circle-was designed to ensure that nature’s vast array of genes is not lost.Īt the entrance tunnel to the warehouse, the wind is drowned out by the roar of a cooling system that deepens the freeze in the space to minus 18☌ (0☏)-a temperature ensuring that seed samples stay viable in the event of a global cataclysm. Today the wide range of plants that humans have relied on throughout history is threatened by the clones of modern industrial agriculture, new diseases, and climate change. “The main reason we have civilization is that humans developed ways of using seeds,” says Asdal, the operations and management coordinator of the facility, as he peers over the steering wheel through the haze. #1 share of voice on social of all brands in OctoberĪnd at a time when the world seemed more divided than ever, we gave people one thing to agree on – that if the world ever ends, there’s no better place to be than up in the Arctic Circle, stuffing your face with OREOs.Longyearbyen, SvalbardThe windshield wipers on the SUV work overtime as Åsmund Asdal zigzags up the fog-covered mountain to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. We even sent our most loyal fans and Instagram influencers apocalypse-proof packs of OREOs designed to survive extreme heat and cold.Ĥ15+ earned media placements (during Election Week) 100+ million impressions (more than a Super Bowl spot) 20+ major brands asking to join our vaultħ5% more engagement than a standard OREO post 286% ROI Norway went as far as turning it into an official tourist destination in a tweet.
#DOOMSDAY VAULT VIDEO CODE#
Our followers and dozens of brands immediately wanted in, going as far as searching for clues about the door code within the mockumentary – a search we happily indulged by dropping clues and, eventually, making a real-time response video that revealed it.Īnd they were asking to help, so we held security guard interviews on our DM’s. We then revealed the OREO Doomsday Vault project on Twitter and YoutTube with a long form film that documented the design and construction process, shared the vault location, and invited fans to visit in case of impact. We began teasing the idea on social and then went dark – something OREO has never done. Inspired by the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, we ventured up to the Arctic Circle and built a real apocalypse-proof vault to safeguard OREOs for all eternity. So when a fan alerted us that, on top of everything else happening, an asteroid was coming towards the Earth and could destroy OREOs (along with the world), we couldn’t take any chances. In the midst of an intensifying pandemic, nationwide protests and the craziest presidential election of our lives, the world’s most playful cookie decided to give the world some much-needed relief.
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