posted
So I know I've not posted in forever but when I saw this, I knew some of you would get a kick out of it and might help with some story ideas but then again its kind of overdone I suppose.
posted
I suppose it all depends on how easily accesible you think that an isolated island some where in the extreme north Atlantic ocean is going to be assuming we need acess to them.
posted
So, apocaplyse happens and a ragged band of survivors make their way to that frozen island and eat all the seed to survive? And this would be seed adapted to modern farming techniques? Like wheat whose seed stays so attached to the stalk that it cannot naturally reseed itself? Is there also a stcokpile of modern sowers and reapers, and spare parts and instruction manuals and like lots and lots of diesel?
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard's free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust.
Somehow, this seems either pointless or self-defeating. I'm not sure which.
posted
I just hope that they don't forget to leave the key to the place under the mat when the apocalypse happens, you know? Posts: 1750 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Oh, the key will be some big riddle or treasure hunt or something. Then, when "Adam" and "Eve" find it, they can consummate the beginning of a new life on the bare soil of a place they'll come to call "Eden."
Not that this idea has been totally overdone, or anything. I just wish the Norwegians would come up with something a little more original.
quote:The seeds, packaged in foil, would be stored at such cold temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years, according to the independent Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Lovely. I can see the several-thousand-years-from-now story already.
SOWING THEIR WILD OATS
June 18, 4006, The Svalbard Archipelago: While attempting to mine an obscure island in this little volcanic chain -- a part of the Global Federation that used to be the Norwegian state in the European Union -- a drill struck what appears to be an ancient cache of seeds, exposing them to the air for the first time in well over a thousand years. Unfortunately for humanity, these seeds are wild and able to reproduce their virulent strains of grain without the normal requirements for artificial fertilization and germination. The residents of the mining community, not realizing what they were doing, sent some of them home as mementos. Some got planted. The result is rampant overgrowth of ancient foodstuffs (now barely edible to our advanced digestive tracts) and severe food shortages -- not to mention tremendous environmental disturbance caused by these self-sowing ancient weeds. Seven hundred years of ecological balance has been destroyed by the infestation.
posted
I like the part where polar bears eat "Adam" and "Eve" soon after they consumate the beginning of their new (and tragically short) life in "Eden".
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
My mind is telling me that this isn't the first of these caves. It's like a memory stripped of specifics. (I even watched Titan: AE, to see if it was that but it isn't.) Or perhaps it's the giant titanium rosetta stone in Death Valley.
(BTW I wonder if they have Bananas in there? can't build a new world without bananas.)
posted
I only recently learned that the mythology of Norway does call for the world situation to just get worse and worse until an apocalyptic war kills just about everyone, but a few survive to start the whole magilla over again.
"The Old Norse vision of the future is bleak. In the end, it was believed, the forces of chaos will outnumber and overcome the divine and human guardians of order... "Still, there will be a few survivors, both human and divine, who will populate a new world, to start the cycle anew."
posted
I think you'll find very few people in Norway these days who still take Ragnarok, and the survival of Lif and Lifthrasir in Hoddmimir's Wood, entirely seriously...
The main sign for the onset of Ragnarok, though, is the Fimbulwinter, which lasts for seven years (or three, I think, depending on the source), during which "brother will kill brother" and generally the world will go to hell in a handbasket.
Doesn't sound entirely compatible with global warming, although there are the suggestions that the Gulf Stream will shift as the polar current changes, which would leave the UK and Scandinavia entering a new Ice Age. So maybe they were right.
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I think (though I may well be wrong) that scholars believe that the rebirth of the world was a later addition to the Ragnarok story and a result of Christianity beginning to permeate Northern Europe.
So originally the world just ended.
No polar bear versions of Adam and Eve nor nuffink.
posted
They might as well go through with it...and hope that North Korea or whoever doesn't specifically target a warhead at it...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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