Yang Jing shook his head. "This is a violation of human rights."
Mickey shrugged and said, "We can't help it. We don't want to do this, but the natural conditions in Longyearbyen dictate that we have to do this. The temperature here is too low, and it's all permafrost. After a person dies and is buried in the ground, the body won't rot for hundreds of years. So, if a dead person carries a well-known virus, these viruses will also remain for hundreds of years or even longer. In 1918, the 'Spanish flu' that was raging in Europe spread to Longyearbyen, and seven young miners were buried here. Eighty years later, in 1998, scientists extracted precious virus samples from the remains in the permafrost."
After Mickey said this, the people around him showed a look of horror on their faces.
"So..." Mickey pointed to the cemetery vaguely visible on the hillside in the distance, "More than seventy years ago, burying the dead here was banned. In other words, even if someone died suddenly, the body would be transported back to Norway."
Everyone looked in the direction Mickey pointed, and could vaguely see dozens of white crosses halfway up the mountain. Needless to say, that must be the town's former public cemetery.
At this time, everyone finally understood why there was such an inhumane law here. It was all for the sake of the living people here!
After everyone followed Mickey around the city, they walked back. Mickey wanted to take everyone to appreciate another world-famous place in Longyearbyen, which is the "Doomsday Seed Vault" nicknamed the "Doomsday Bank".
This seed vault, which holds the world's last hope, is located on the Svalbard Mountains opposite the Svalbard Airport north of Longyearbyen Port. It is a very conspicuous building that can be seen from a distance.
"You've all seen the American disaster movie '2012' released in 2009, right? In that movie, in order to prevent the end of the world caused by a flood and the extinction of humans and other species on the earth, humans built a huge square ship 'Noah's Ark' to help humans and other creatures on the earth survive on the day of the end of the world. In fact, the prototype of this story comes from the 'Hebrew Bible. Genesis'. In the original story, it took humans 120 years to build the 'Noah's Ark'. With the protection of the 'Noah's Ark', humans escaped the disaster." Mickey asked as he walked.
Yang Jing and the others nodded. The film was indeed thrilling. The two most profound disaster films in Yang Jing's memory were "2012" and "The Day After Tomorrow". In the former, the sun showed its might and caused a major reshuffle of the earth. Although the latter was not as severe as the former, it was because of human beings' own self-destruction that caused global warming, causing the entire northern hemisphere to enter an ice age.
Coincidentally, both films were made by the same disaster film master, Roland Emmerich.
"In fact, the idea of this seed bank is even older than the movie 2012. The original idea of the seed bank was born in the 2004 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In June 2005, the Norwegian government formally proposed the 'Noah's Ark World Seed Project', which was supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The Norwegian government is responsible for fundraising, and the Global Crop Diversity Trust of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Italian International Biodiversity Academic Group provide funding. The Global Crop Diversity Trust helps manage seeds and is responsible for daily operations. The initial construction cost is about 3 million US dollars, and the annual operating cost is 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars. The official groundbreaking was in June 2006."
"In the end, the total construction cost of this seed bank exceeded nine million US dollars, all of which was funded by the Norwegian government. The ownership belongs to the Norwegian government, but the ownership of the seeds stored in it belongs to the country that stored the seeds. It is like a bank. Since the seed bank was built on February 26, 2008, ten years ago, it has stored about 825,000 species of biological seeds from more than 200 countries and regions around the world, with a storage volume of more than 80 million seeds."
Yang Jing exclaimed: "So amazing!"
"Yes, this seed bank is so powerful. In fact, most countries in the world have set up their own seed banks. There are about 1,400 seed banks in the world. But the reason why this place is known as the 'Earth's Doomsday Seed Bank' is because this seed bank is the 'absolute backup' for the other 1,400 seed banks. This seed bank is designed to store up to 3 million kinds of seeds and can store up to 1.5 billion different seeds."
PS: I would like to thank "Zi Yan Tian Jiao" for the reward of 100.
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