Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: Strange Facts

There have been many cataclysmic-ends predicted for mankind. Most of those predictions include giant balls of fire engulfing the Earth, while at least one of those predictions includes a giant pterodactyl pooping on us a whole bunch. Well, however the world ends, Norway will be prepared. It's begun building a 'doomsday' vault on a remote island near the North Pole; a vault meant to preserve the most important remnants of mankind (read: 'entertainment news writers') in a worst case scenario type situation. Or was it just seeds they were trying to preserve? Yeah, yeah they've only concerned themselves with stupid seeds.

As things currently sit, our sweet world may dissolve in a flash. Well, the things on it may disappear anyway – we'd be pretty hard pressed to demolish it to its core. Hopefully. But the sweet people over in Norway have taken it upon themselves to see that a whole bunch of our vegetation would live through a nuclear holocaust.

The Svalbard International Seed Vault will begin construction in March of '07, and it's supposed to open in '08. The project will cost approximately $5 million dollars to build, and will be so large three million different seed samples will fit snugly inside. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is the organisation apparently spearheading all this, and their executive director said of the project:

"We want a safety net because we do not want to take too many chances with crop biodiversity. Can you imagine an effective, efficient, sustainable response to climate change, water shortages, food security issues without what is going to go in the vault – it is the raw material of agriculture."

Sounds awesome and affordable. Might we request you make one of those super-vault thingies for hecklerspray. It's just got to be big enough to fit about 22 cubicles and a janitor's closet. We're willing to pay to scale. The world needs us, we swear. Someone's gotta be around to report all those celebrities who'll die from horrible red blistering/radiation burns. You know, with all this weird Iran/Korea nuclear mumbo-jumbo going on, we've already got that article half-written.

We just gotta fill in the blanks.

Read More:

Arctic Ice To House Doomsday Seed Vault – Guardian Unlimited