The Vault Inside the Mountain

On the Norwegian island of Svalbard, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, a concrete portal juts from a frozen mountainside. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault looks like a tomb — a sealed chamber buried deep in permafrost, silent, cold, and still. But step inside, and you find something astonishing. On metal shelves in foil-lined boxes, more than a million seed samples from nearly every nation on earth wait in the dark.…