Svalbard: Land of Snow and Apocalypse Arks

The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard has it all: glaciers, polar bears, scientific researchers and an epic seed vault built to survive the apocalypse. Join Robert and Christian as they discuss this frigid environment and the human activities that have come to define it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Sager. Robert,
I'm I'm ready for a vacation. Yeah, it's the middle
of summer, it is. I was just reading that this

(00:24):
is not our imagination, that apparently the statistics are saying that,
like this is one of the hottest years in a
long time. This summer is brutal. I want to go
to Small Bard. That's where I want my vacation, so
so not the not the beaches of Florida, not the
mountains of of of North Georgia. But no, Yeah, I'm
definitely not a beach person. Uh. My ideal vacation spot

(00:48):
is I'd like to spend summers in Small Bard and
then winters in Tristan d'acuna. Do you know that island?
I don't think it's the small island in the Atlantic
Ocean kind of smack betwe queen. Uh North America and Europe,
and I think it might it might technically have originally

(01:08):
been like a Portuguese colony, but it's something like there's
something like a hundred people live there or something like that.
But it's its own nation. Uh, it's everything about it
sounds great. Nobody goes there, so that's where I want
to spend my winter. You like isolation, you want splendid isolation. Yeah,
I'm weird though, because I like isolation. But then I
also usually live in big metropolitan areas, so it's it's

(01:31):
one or the other. It's not in the middle, Like
suburbs are definitely not for me, but like I could
be in the middle of nowhere like small Bard, just
surrounded by ice and polar bears, or smack in the
middle of New York City. Those are like the places
I'm the happiest. Well it This reminds me of the
classic one Zevon song Splendid Isolation Whereas, which is a
really intelligently written track about this this yearning for isolation

(01:57):
and then the dangers of indulging that desire oh too much.
But there's there are lyrics about like wanting to live
alone in the desert and be like Georgia O'Keefe for
or live on the Upper East Side and never go
down in the streets. So the kind there's a certain
kind of isolation that you you can find in the
crowded um metropolitan areas that in a in a way

(02:17):
is akin to desert isolation. It is, Yeah, there's something
nice about it. Um. But I became really attracted to
Small Bard after I watched this TV show called Fortitude,
which I believe was produced by either the BBC or
maybe it was Sky. That's one of those television networks
out of Britain. And uh, there's two seasons of it

(02:38):
and it's on Amazon now and so my wife and
I just binged watched the whole thing and it's all
set on Small Bard in a small town. Uh. It's
a murder mystery and man, I recommended to listeners of
our show it tackles the weirdness of real science within
this murder mystery, and without spoiling anything, it touches on

(02:58):
so many things we covered on this show, Like they
get into stuff like shamanism, psychedelics, human experimentation, parasites. There's
just a lot of interesting stuff there. And so I
was like, Small Bard is fascinating. So what do I do.
I sit down in a google Small Bard and you
know what comes up right away? A blog post that
you wrote in two thousand and eleven about small Bard.

(03:21):
Oh yeah, yes, yeah, I wrote a piece about like
buried Secrets beneath fall Bard because I think I was writing.
I wrote several pieces for how stuff works at the
time I think about it. So I'm glad you you
brought up small Bard is something to cover because it's
one of those topics where I kind of forget sometimes
that it's it's such a cool topic because I wrote

(03:43):
about in the past, and I not that I, you know,
contain all knowledge of small Bard, but you know, I
already already hit some of the high points and I
have to to revisit it. Yeah, yeah, it's worth revisiting too.
And from the research that we did for today's episode,
what's really fascinating is how much it's changing to right
and and there's a lot of scientific research going on

(04:03):
there specifically because of those changes, because I think people
some people look at smaal Bard as like a canary
in a coal mine, no pun intended, because there's literally
coal mines all over this place, but that if stuff
starts going wrong they're ecologically it might be a sign
that things are going to change in the rest of
the world. Now, before we we push on and get

(04:23):
into sal Bard hardcore. I have two questions to ask
about Fortitude. First of all, is it supernatural in nature?
Is there some sort of a speculative element? That's the
thing is you don't know, Like I've seen both seasons
and I don't want to. You watch the first four
or five episodes and there's no inclination that you're watching
a supernatural mystery. You think it's just like a murder

(04:45):
mystery in this remote place. But then things start to
get so bizarre that you have to ask yourself is
this supernatural or is there something They do come up
with kind of quasi scientific explanations for the things, but
you're it's left up to you, the audience, to decide. Okay, cool,
that sounds good now. And then my second question, season two, yea,

(05:07):
does star Dennis Quake? Correct? Oh, yeah, yeah, they bring
Dennis Quaid in. Uh. He plays a fisherman who's apparently
he's an American fisherman that's apparently lived on the island
his old life. He's married to uh Catlan Stark from
Game of Thrones. Uh, And uh, yeah, he's great in it.
He's great. He's because the first season you're really following

(05:28):
like the this murder investigation. Stanley Tucci is the American
in that season, and then Dennis Quaid apparently was there
the whole time. We just never saw him in season one,
and they like kind of introduced him as like a
major player in season two. Well, this is cool because
we're chatting him a little bit about this offline. But
Dennis Quaid, I think we tend to sort of see

(05:50):
him as just your your average vanilla leading man type
of guy, and certainly he's done plenty of motion pictures
that kind of back that up. But he also has
this often forgotten sci fi pedigree. You know. Yes, absolutely.
One of the first movies I ever saw him in
Jaws three. That's right, he was in Jaws three. Now

(06:11):
I can't remember his Jaws What's the pot? And that
was that the one where like Jaws gets in the
water system and the Jaws Jaws invade Sea World. Is
that the plan the plot of that movie? Yeah, Dennis
Quaid is, like I believe he plays like the head
engineer at this quote unquote Sea World place that Lewis

(06:32):
Gossip Jr. Runs. Oh he's in that too, yeah. Yeah.
And then his wife or maybe girlfriend, she's like a
dolphin trainer or a marine biologist or something like that.
And yeah, Jaws gets into sea World and starts eating
all the animals and all the people swimming around stuff.
And it's in three D. Oh yeah, because Jaws three D. Yeah. Well, yeah,

(06:54):
he was I guess one of the first big films
that he was in in this ties into the science.
He was in the right off after not Gordon Cooper,
and then he went on to be and just basically
back to back three like really fun sci fi properties.
Dreamscape it's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, like a lot of
like Dream Warrior Shenanigans. You have the guy from the Warriors.

(07:17):
The Warriors come out and play quickly. He turns into
a snake man in them. And then you have Enemy Mine,
which is also yeah gossip. J plays the the alien
that Quaid crash lands on this this world with It's yeah,
it's one of my one of my favorite sci fi
that's a great movie. Yeah. And then of course Inner

(07:38):
Space that probably I would imagine Dennis Quaid's biggest movie,
or at least like most people remember him from no
pun intended biggest movie. But but I remember Inner Space
fondly because I want to say, at Universal Studios they
had like an inner space ride. You would like, yeah,
you would go in and you would get inside like
a room with like not what do you call it

(08:00):
when like the seats all move and everything together, like
you're on a journey together. Yeah, I'm sure there's an
industry term for that. And there's screens all over the
room as if you're in like this vessel and you've
been shrunken down and injected into Martin Short's body. Yeah,
that was That was such a fun film. I remember
I made so many when I was a kid. I
made so many lego submarines to go inside Martin short body.

(08:22):
You know, poor Martin Shorts body. I should have mailed
him too and said, Martin Short, can you please swallow
the submarine made it for you? Yeah, yeah, you know.
And this funny thing is about with fortitude is I
haven't really thought of Dennis Quaids since the eighties because
he's mostly in things that are off my radar, right,
Like the only two things I can remember recently, wasn't
he in that movie Frequency where he's like a ghost

(08:45):
talking to his daughter through time and space through an
old radio or something? I didn't see that one, but
he was in it, which they've now turned into a
TV show, I think. Uh so, I guess it was successful.
I don't know. But then there's this movie called I
think it's called The Dog's Purpose, and it's all about
like Dennis Quaid when he's a little kid, has a
dog that he loves and it's like the best dog ever.

(09:07):
And that dog dies and he grows up and he
becomes Dennis Quaid and gets another dog. But it turns
out that his dog has been resurrected over and over
again for the last fifty some odd years and is
now resurrected in this new dog's body, and like Dennis
Quaid becomes aware of reincarnation through dogs. Wow, so it's

(09:27):
like the Dog I llama. Yeah, it's something like that.
At least that's what the trailer looks like. Looks real bad.
But uh if Fortitude he's fantastic. It made like I
had forgotten how great he was. And then you watch
Fortitude and man, yeah, I can't recommend that show enough. Yeah,
I'll have to check that out. I I really enjoyed
the Quad on two thousand nine Pandorum. I know that's
a lot of people it's a It was a like

(09:49):
a German co produced science fiction horror film with space
crazy is in it and really and like mutants on
a on a colony barge to another world. So he's
just one of these guys who kind of just jumps
around all over the place and just does does everything.
I think so, But I was looking for more sci
fi and like science oriented stuff on his resume, and

(10:12):
I didn't see a lot between the three earlier films
we mentioned and Pandorman frequency. So yeah, I wonder if
he was he was afraid of being typecast is being
like the sci fi leading man. But yeah, well now,
I mean now he's like he's coming back, is like that,
you know. I would assume he's in his late fifties,
early sixties, and he's got that like grizzled look to him,

(10:33):
you know, and in fortitude, it's like his skins made
of leather. He's like the perfect guy to be a
fisherman on this frozen island. So maybe we should get
into small Bard. Let's do it. So our our producer
Alex asked us before we came into the studio today,
what's this about? We told him, and he looked at
us quizzically right, like he didn't know what the word was.
We were even saying when we said small Bard and

(10:53):
most people don't like it's it's this place that's so
remote that most people don't even know it exists. In fact,
it's not even it doesn't even belong to a nation. Really. Um,
but let's give some brief background on it, and then
we're gonna go through and we're gonna extrapolate some of
the really cool, bizarre science facts surrounding this archipelago. Okay,

(11:16):
so this is the background from the official I went
straight to the CIA for this, the CIA's World fact
Book from twenty sixteen, so it's you know, meticulous research.
Uh They say that Small Bard was first discovered by
Norwegians in the twelfth century, and that the islands they
are served as an international whaling base during the seventeenth

(11:38):
and eighteenth centuries. Norway's sovereignty, though, was recognized in nineteen twenty,
so five years later it officially took over the territory
of Small bard Um, which I believe used to be
referred to as Spitzbergen. Uh So, so small Bard, Norway
sort of runs it, and we're not really going to
talk a lot about like the history in the politics

(12:01):
of it today. But from what I understand, Norway runs it.
There's a governor that's appointed by Norway. Norway funds a
lot of the stuff that's on the island, but it
has its own government, it has its own economy and everything.
In the twenty century, though, coal mining started because there's
a lot of coal resources available on small Bards. So
today Norway and Russia they have sort of joint custody

(12:26):
over over this land. There's various companies that are still
functioning from those nations that are mining companies essentially, and
travel between the settlements is usually accomplished by snowmobiles, aircraft
and boats. So to give you an idea, it's actually
a pretty big place between all of the islands. It's
total area is sixty two thousand, forty five square kilometers

(12:50):
and as you would imagine its climate as Arctic, it's
tempered by a warm North Atlantic Current, though so it
does have has cool summers. The winners are cold. The
North Atlantic Current flows along the west and north coast
of Spitzbergen or now Small Bard, and it keeps the
water open and navigable for most of the year, although

(13:10):
my understanding is is in the winter the only way
you can get to and from the mainland is via plane.
I don't know that boats are all that reliable during
the really heavy, you know, winter seasons. Now, small Bard
itself is actually six hundred and fifty miles or a
thousand and fifty kilometers from the North Pole. This means

(13:31):
it's the northernmost year round human settlement on the planet. Uh.
It's population is around two thousand, two hundred. That's like
right around like my peak, like right around where like
I'd be comfortable being around that many people. And you're
not even really I mean you're spreading out two thousand,
two hundred people over the sixty thousand square miles you know,

(13:52):
well they're not even right. They have one person for
every thousand squamos. That would that would be disastrous. Yeah. Um.
But recently, Smalbard tried to move its economy toward tourism
and scientific research and away from the coal mining that
supported the economy in the early twentieth century. So the
basic ideas they want and apparently this is a thing

(14:15):
now like small Bard tourism. In fact, like I found
this website called dark tourism, and it was like all
about touring places like this. Um, and it sounds like
I'm very interested in this. Actually, it sounds like you
can fly into small Bard from Norway. I think it's
like a three hour flight. Long year Bian, I believe
is like the major town that you visit. It's got

(14:37):
a couple hotels there. There's like a few museums on
the island, and you can visit these like ghost towns
that are like abandoned Russian mining towns. Yeah. But um,
one thing that's that's in fortitude and pretty heavily mentioned
in the first and second seasons that is true about

(14:57):
smaal Bard is danger of being eaten by polar bears
pretty much everywhere you go except for this long year
been place. So most people carry firearms with them whenever
they go anywhere outside of that town's limits because the
polar bears, well you know, they're hungry, so they'll pounce
on you. Yeah. I think this is one of the
wonderful details about small Bar When you start you look

(15:20):
at it and you realize this is a an unforgiving,
frigid wilderness. The most part with polar bears roaming around um,
a doomsday arc which we will get into UM and
then abandoned mining towns, abandoned minds, UM glaciers which will
be hitting next. I mean, it's just just a fascinating place,

(15:44):
especially and then when you look at the human activity
that is drawn there, it's kind of a at times,
it kind of looks like a microcosm of human interests
in the natural world. Yeah, what are you there for?
Oh well, we're here to look at it, to exploit it,
to study it, and to save it. Yeah, exactly like
we started off in the early twentieth century exploiting it,

(16:04):
whether it was the natural resources like coal or the
animals that were there. Uh, and now we're turning around
and trying to make it something that's beautiful to look
at and that we can, like I said, it's this
Canarian coal mine that we can study and and and
save that and hopefully, you know, save the earth by
looking at Small Bard. We're gonna talk about some examples
related to possible climate change here. All right, Well, let's

(16:26):
let's talk a little bit about the glaciers of Small Bard. Yeah,
and it's this will hopefully you know, if you don't
know a lot about glaciers. Maybe this will serve as
an introduction to them. I learned a thing doing this
research that there is a job called a glaciologist, people
who just study glaciers, and apparently many of them live
in Small Bard. Yeah, I mean glaciers cover of small Bard,

(16:49):
and it's I feel like glaciers of one of these
areas where it's it's easy just dismiss them. It's just
sort of vestiges of a long departed ice age and
just think of, oh, it's just just ice sitting around
and falling into the sea, right. Yeah. In fact, the
only time we really hear about glaciers, like in the
news is when big parts of them fall into the sea,
Like was it last week? Wasn't there like a huge

(17:12):
Antarctic glacier that broke off? Yeah? Yeah, So you know,
we tend only pay attention when stuff like that happens,
when it's really when it's when it's you know, really
headline worthy. But uh, yeah, glaciers are not timeless remnants.
They're rather complex structures, and they are given to cyclical
and progressive change. So these titans advanced to the sea

(17:34):
by as much as nine ft or thirty meters. Each year,
winter births new glacial ice, and each spring these giants
bleed fresh water from their crystalline hearts. Yeah, yeah, that
is a great way to describe it. And I'll get
into this in a couple of minutes. But the glaciers,
they're like your metaphor of them bleeding is actually pretty

(17:57):
accurate because there's different types of ice within them, and
they melt at different consistencies based on pressure, not on temperature. Yeah,
different chambers and yeah, they really kind of have their
own anatomy. And this is this is how it how
it works. Just just moving a lot of water. It
roads limestone to form hidden tunnels. If you've ever gone
to on a tour of a cave or a cavern,
this has been related to you. Well, the same thing

(18:19):
happens with the glacial drainage. They forge these complex cave systems.
The melt water gouges these u coiling tunnels or the
ice and far below it flows along the rocky glacier
bed to form sub glacial conduits. And here you, uh,
if conditions are just right, adventurous explorers can traverse floors

(18:41):
of naked stone all the while you have the uh,
the lights gleaming against these uh these this ice architecture overhead.
I'll try to include an image of this or the
landing page of this episode of Seftability of Mind dot com,
because it's it's it's even more beautiful than whatever you're picturing.
You know. The closest thing I think we have to
that anywhere near us, and you're probably more familiar with

(19:03):
it than I am, since you're from Tennessee is uh
Rock City and Lookout Mountain just outside of Chattanooga. Have
you been there? Oh city? Yeah? And have you gone
inside Lookout Mountain before? Um, let's sit well, are you
talking about you're talking about Rock City? Um? Yeah, Like
on top of Lookout Mountain, there's that like a little

(19:25):
I don't know, how would you describe it. I would
describe it as a tennesseean Wagner theme, um outdoorsy. Uh,
it's like this weird village for dwarves, like our ferries
or something. You go through little caves, you go across
the suspension bridges and then occasionally there are dwarves and
there is an actual Wagner music playing over the speakers,

(19:48):
and you can take an elevator inside this mountain and
uh climb around inside it very much like what you're
talking about, except where it's not a glacier, it's an
actual mountain waterfalls. We'll imagine you're in a cave, except
only you have cave beneath you and then ice above
your How how much scarier is that? Because I went
into Lookout Mountain and it was like, it's beautiful, but

(20:11):
it's also the whole time you're in there, you're like,
what if anything goes wrong? Like I'm dead? Uh, and
in the glaciers, I imagine that's even stronger of a
of a feeling. Yeah. Also Lookout Mountain fun fact, home
to Autobot City in the nineteen eighties Transformers movie. Really
like what was out about city? Did they live there

(20:32):
that the auto It was like, Yeah, it was like
a transforming city. It was basically where Chattanooga is, and
they they lived there. Yeah. There's a whole scene at
the beginning where they're like, uh, looking at the sky
from Lookout Mountain. Crazy. Yeah, alright, so these uh, these
ice caves, these and these these tunnels beneath the glaciers.

(20:52):
Each year, researchers from the University Center in Small Bar
they descend into these uh, these glacial caves, and they
map out the tunnels and also you know, study how
glacial um hydrological systems work. Uh. But there is a
sense of emurgency and a lot of their work because
while you know, stone Cave tends to outlive any human spelunkers. Uh,

(21:17):
the melt water, the airflow, glacial surges after the ice formations.
This changes everything. So it's not one of these things
we're like, all right, we'll just come back next year
and finish his work. The entire system may have may
be different. And of course that's even when you factory
in climate change on top of that, it just adds

(21:37):
to the fragility of these environments. So this is where
these glaciers get weird though, because that they're not like
quote normal glaciers. You know, it's not like we encounter
a ton of glaciers in our lifetime. But weirdly, the
glaciers once fall Bard actually behave differently than the others worldwide.
They advance in some distance for a couple of years,

(22:01):
then they'll actually retreat like it's like they go forward
and it seems like they then move backward. They remain
quiet for fifty undred years and then they'll start advancing again.
So scientists have started studying this closely because they're thinking, well,
this could affect sea levels. We need to understand this phenomenon.

(22:22):
So these glaciers are called surging glaciers, and sometimes they're
referred to as pulsating glaciers. I like that better, so
I'm gonna I'm gonna call them pulsating glaciers today. It
brings it's it's such a wonderful mental image that used
to mind because again, we tend to think of glaciers
it's just dead ice from a primal age, just sitting around.

(22:42):
But but there is a there's a there's a dynamic
nature here. Oh totally, they're their own like constantly changing ecosystem.
Uh So one in five of the glaciers on Small
Bard acts this way, and globally, to give you an idea,
only one in a hundred act this way with the
retreating in the advance sing. Some glaciologists even claim that

(23:03):
nine out of ten glaciers on Small Bard pulsate, but
this isn't actually proven yet. By contrast, there's no pulsating
glaciers in nearby Norway, only a few in Alaska and
Iceland have been found to behave the same way, as
well as some in Greenland and in the Antarctic. But
small Bard seems to be like the place to study

(23:24):
these pulsating glaciers. Now, I read an interesting explanation by
French researcher Heidi Sevestre. I believe that's how you pronounce
her last name. Uh. This is her her theory for
what's going on with these glaciers, and it sounds plausible.
So because they have massive weight, glacier masses flow slowly

(23:46):
toward the ocean, right, this is this is what we
know about them. Most only move a few meters on
a summer day, and our classic idea of a glacier
is what's referred to as a Kelvin glacier, where the
front ends into the sea and then I detaches from it.
These glaciers are currently receiving faster than normal and they
continually lose more ice, so this is why we're paying

(24:07):
more attention to it. A pulsating glacier, though, will actually
move faster than this. It moves twenty meters a day,
for example, but they're unable to move fast enough to
dispose of excess snow that is exerted on them from
the ice caps. So while they're sliding faster, their volume

(24:27):
actually remains the same. So it's not that they're actually
moving forward and then retreating backward. It's that their their
volume is staying the same, and it seems like that.
So this is where these two different types of ice
I was referring to come into play. You've got cold
ice where the temperature is constantly below the melting point,
and this moves slowly. And then there's temperate ice that

(24:50):
is closer to the melting point. And what will happen
is water forms underneath this ice and allows it to
slide faster. So when a pulsating glacier becomes thicker because
of this snow melt, the theory is that the pressure
inside the ice is actually increasing and that results in
an increase in temperature. So the bottom ice starts to

(25:14):
melt and then the whole thing starts sliding faster. It
all comes down to this increased pressure atop these glaciers.
But when this melt water drains off, the friction increases
again and the glacier comes to a halt. So we're
essentially seeing like this the shift in in densities of matter, right. Uh,

(25:34):
and these glaciers can be pretty dangerous because they their
speed increases. You actually shouldn't walk on them, and most
researchers try not to when they're at this stage where
the melt waters underneath them. It's unfortunate though, because researchers
feel like they would be able to understand them better
during the advancement stage than the halting stage. Still, though,

(25:56):
the melting is super significant. There's a loss of four
point five million tons of melt water per hour in
the summer months, so we're talking about a lot of water.
They're like, I think people kind of casually talk about
glaciers melting when they're referring to climate change. When you
hear a number like that, that's massive. Now you know

(26:16):
another thing about about glaciers and just generally the ice
and the fryging nature of small bart You know, we
often think that environments like this are are pretty you know,
barren of life. You know, you had, sure you have
polar bears and birds and and whatnot, but uh, people
often overlook the the microbial life. There was a there

(26:39):
was an interesting research project in two thousand five was
called the Arctic Mars analog Small Bard Expedition or a
MACE and uh. Their purpose was, as you might guess
from the title, was to essentially test out various life
seeking technologies that we might use on Mars here on Earth.

(27:00):
You know, So you pick a you know, a sufficiently
uh you know, seemingly lifeless environment and then look for
it's uh, it's microbial life. And they made some pretty
startling discoveries, including microbial life within the blue ice vents
of the million year old seref Gel volcano. So they

(27:21):
the researchers found both microbiota, fossils and living communities. Uh.
And this painted a picture of of life's ancient colonization
of this once of these once thermal heated cracks. So
as the world cooled, these hardy organisms adapted to survive
extreme cold and thrive on ice suspended mental deposits. Okay,

(27:43):
so okay, yeah, I'm getting a pretty clear picture here
that like again, like we were saying, like it's its
own ecosystem, there's all this stuff going on underneath the ice. Now,
much of the soil and small Bard remains at or
below the freezing point year round. A thin active area
may warmed a life during the spring, but the frozen
perma frost uh tends to remain frigid underneath. Now research

(28:05):
is still catching up with the secrets of life in
that perma frost, but recent findings reveal that it contains
microbial biomass comparable to temperate soil ecosystems. Okay, yeah, so
I mean that that comparison to Lookout Mountain is probably
nowhere near accurate. But when you're thinking about it, like
outside of it being ice versus stone, there's as much

(28:28):
life probably moving around within these two things. Yeah, And
I mean the point about um temperate soil ecosystems I
think is important. I know on the show, we've talked
before about the idea of like taking earth ecosystem into space,
taking it to another world, and about how that would
inherently involve bringing dirt with you. So the the old

(28:49):
vampire myth where the vampire has to bring, uh, bring
their dirt with them in their their their their grave
dirt with them so they can you know, take up
in a new location. It's kind the same way with
humans in general, like if if, if, if we want
Earth life to succeed somewhere else, we have to bring
our dirt because there is so much life in it.

(29:09):
There's so much uh that that serves as the bedrock
for for for life itself. And that's heavily related to
the seed vault that we're going to talk about later
in this episode. But you know what, I'm gonna jump
ahead in the notes because I just have one small
thing I want to bring up here that I think
is related to what you're talking about here. So there's
this rumor, and it's perpetuated by that show fortitude, that

(29:31):
it's illegal to die in small Bard. Uh. It's not real.
That's a myth. But the the idea is that people think, oh, well,
because the permafrost, the ground is so hard all the time,
you can't dig graves in it, so that this this
myth came about, you know that that you couldn't be
buried there. Uh. There are graveyards on on some of

(29:54):
the islands. But the governor's office clarified this in and
they said the reason why is it's not illegal. But
the major town of Long year Been is not a
quote cradle to grave community is how they referred to it,
um because they don't have the means to care for
the elderly. You know, there's it's it's such a limited

(30:16):
resource area that you know, when you become a senior citizen,
it's not like the people who are working there, whether
their researchers are doing tourism or you know, in mining towns,
they also have enough of a population to take care of,
like a senior living facility. Well, they have all these
polar bears. I mean, I don't got to train these

(30:36):
polar bears and yeah, things could really really look up
for small Bard. Yeah, but I mean in terms of
like you know, end of life care. Oh, you mean
just like having them eat people. Yeah, I mean it's
one option. I'm not saying do it. I'm just saying that,
you know, one one might might think there might be
a solution there that benefits both, you know, the elderly

(30:57):
of fall Bard and polar Bear. It's what you're talking
about here reminds me of that. Um. Do you ever
read the Northern Lights trilogy that Pullman Stuffy? Yeah, one
of one of the talking polar bears in it, at
one point eats one of his friends when he dies
to take his essence into himself. Yeah, there's actually there's

(31:19):
been a polar bear cannibalism observed on small Bard. I
believe I remember from from research, but I guess I
ended up going I know this is kind of a
grizzly tangent, but I guess I thought about it because
it makes me think about burial customs in Tibet, where
you have limited burial space for obvious reasons, and so
you have this long tradition of sky burial of exposure

(31:42):
burrel letting uh the animals in this case that the
vultures um of the natural world consuming flesh. So it
seems like that would work with polar bears as well,
But it's it's hard to really kick start a tradition
like that. I would be okay with it, you know what,
Like let it be heard here and now across the

(32:02):
air waves of this podcast. If I die and I'm
in small Bard, I don't want to make it too
much of a burden on my loved ones. But if
I'm in swall Bard, I'm perfectly okay with my body
being left out on the ice for polar bears to
lunch on. That seems like a great way to contribute
to the away from the rest of the humans. A
true green burial Uh, actually, what you're just mentioning with

(32:25):
the sky burial reminds me of something I've been meaning
to mention to you, and I might as well recommended
to the audience while we're here. Um, Warren Ellis and
Phil Hester have this new comic book called Shipwreck, and
one of the issues is basically just a sky burial.
Like you're watching a sky burial take place in this
issue while these characters are having a conversation with one another,

(32:45):
So it really highlights Uh, I mean, they talk about
the actual sky burial act itself, but then you're you're
not witnessing it because it's a comic book, but it's
making you think about it in a way that like
when we just do an episode on on sky burials,
we can say, yeah, they put your body out in
a bunch of vultures riputer shreds, right, But like this
is showing the whole thing happening while these two guys

(33:06):
are just sitting there having a conversation. It's pretty interesting. Yeah,
there's like a ritual processing of the body that takes place. Yeah,
I feel like we've we've talked about sky Barrel on
the show. I know that you and I talked about
Tibetan culture and art and traditions. Yeah, I think you
did something on it before I joined the show, or
maybe there was a video that one of us did.
It's been a while. This is what happens everybody, like,

(33:28):
we do so much stuff that we forget sometimes where
we did, but we know that we've learned these things somewhere. Yeah.
I definitely wrote an article on sky burial for how
stuff works, but I do not remember any exactly what
the podcast scenario was. Yeah, well, we'll take a peek
back of the archives and if we haven't done it,
maybe that's something we need to visit. All right, Well,
let's take a quick break and when we come back

(33:49):
we will get more into the human history of small
bart than All Right, we're back now. You touched on
this a little bit. All but marauding Vikings knew the
islands of swall Bard as a swall borrow in the
twelfth century, though they had little use for it then.

(34:09):
When Dutch explorer Wilhelm Barrens rediscovered the islands in fIF
whalers followed in his wake, so soon the shores were
crawling with semen from across Europe. All bundled up against
the chill as they cooked gore streaked slabs of blubberd
to oil and great big iron cauldron. There's something like

(34:31):
really appetizing about that. I know it's not supposed to be,
but and I'm the vegetarian on the show, but the
idea of eating blubber cooked in oil cauldron sounds awesome
to me. Well, it's it's certainly a grim scene to imagine.
I always find these illustrations of whale processing very you know,
intriguing but but grotesque. When I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada,

(34:56):
we got to explore some abandoned whaling um stations there
and it was it was pretty fascinating to just walk
through these areas that you're just completely desolated because there's
there's no reason for people to be there and remain
there if they're not processing large aquatic mammals. Yeah, it's fascinating. Uh.
My experience growing up in New England is similar, although

(35:18):
like those towns have survived and have since gone on
to you know, have different economies surrounding them. But you
see like these old seaside towns that used to like Gloucester, Massachusetts,
I think of which I believe Gloucester is what the
setting for Moby Dick was based on. I want to
say it might listeners, please correct me if I'm wrong,
but I think that's right. It's an interesting town to

(35:40):
take a look at the whaling industry. So if you're
familiar with, of course the whaling industry, one of the
one of the issues besides it being you know, eventually
largely removed from the sphere of human influence. Uh. They
also reached the point where whalers had virtually hunted many
of their these whales to the brink of extinction at

(36:00):
So when that happened around Small Bar, they left for
other waters and then fur wrapped hunters. They were pretty
much the only ones there for a while, and then
the world kind of forgot about Small Bard until the
coal rush of the twentieth century, and then you had
settlements popping up across the islands, mining shafts sinking down
like roots into the perma frost. Now and today, the

(36:20):
coal industry still continues on Small Bard. Uh, and uh
it still reshapes the environment to a certain degree. You
have you know, underground tunnels that span for miles through
the mountains of Long year bin and uh the mouths
of abandoned mines pots the hillsides. And then you also

(36:40):
have this situation where near active minds you have fans
of coal dust that drift through the air, and you
have black snow heaps uh, you know, along the roadsides. Uh.
And also like tracking back to the communities that that
that staff these mines. I find the whole coal mining
history of Small Bard really interesting, especially in light of UH.

(37:03):
So we're recording this in the summer of twenties seventeen.
There's a lot of talk about coal mining going on
again here in the United States, whether we should do it,
whether we should support the mining industry, whether we shouldn't
support the mining industry. A lot of the stuff that
I thinks fall Bard kind of went through already again
maybe a Canarian a coal mine for the rest of US.
Um So, outside of the coal industry, as I mentioned before,

(37:25):
there's this big science industry that's going on there now too,
and there is a main research station for that that
is called knee Oldsend uh. And there's a lot of
strange symbols over the phonetic lettering there. So I hope
I'm getting that right. We looked it up ahead of time,
but I'm not great with my Norwegian. So this place

(37:46):
was formed in the mid sixties. It reminds me of
when we did our episode on academic Garadoc uh in
the former Soviet Union. Now knee Oldsen is actually a
research station for scientists from ten different nations and they
study environmental and earth sciences there. But it's actually owned
by King by a s which originally was a mining

(38:08):
company and now it provides infrastructure to this area. Uh.
The aim is to keep the local human impact on
the environment as low as possible using sustainable operations for
research and monitoring. So that's kind of fascinating that this
company that started off as a mining operation in the
middle of these icy wastes has evolved over the decades

(38:30):
and said, Okay, we no longer want to participate in that.
What we're going to do now is shift our resources
into building the sustainable infrastructure for science. Yeah. I should
also throw in that astronomy is another area of interest
in Svalbard. You know it is It's generally is the
case when you have, you know, research areas that are
far removed from human activity. They say, the northern lights

(38:53):
there are phenomenal. Uh. So there's a committee that operates
as a forum for exchanging in formation. Uh. This is
basically exchanging scientific information between all of these ten nations
that are together there at this research station. Then there's
another committee that basically delivers advice and tools to people
who aren't on Small Bard but want to do research there.

(39:16):
So this is something you're interested in, your scientist, UH,
go check it out. Actually, King's Bay dot No Slash
Research is where I found this information, and all the
contact information for people who want to go study there
is available there. One other thing I want to add
quickly again related possibly to climate change. There was a

(39:36):
freak weather incident in Small Bard just recently in January
of it had this unusually warm winter, and what actually
started happening because of this unusually warm winter was that
the perma frost started to melt in the winter. Subsequently
there was an avalanche and then all of this plus

(39:58):
the rainfall that came when the during the warmer season,
instead of there being snowfall, all of it refrozen to
ice instead of snow. So the terrain became very treacherous.
It was like even more treacherous than it already was like,
imagine you're studying those glaciers that we're talking about, they're
moving twenty meters a day, and then all of a
sudden everything's covered in like slick ice. You know, it's

(40:21):
just sounds like a nightmare. Now, even to the point
that certain shrubs on the islands that reindeer eat froze
over and the reindeer couldn't get to like the grub
or the berries I guess that are on these shrubs
that they used to survive. So they found dead reindeer
all all over the place that it's starved to death.

(40:44):
So this was reportedly a once in a five hundred
year event, although some of the scientists are concerned that
climate change may bring more winters like this too small
barred in the future. So again, you know, like we
talked about climate chain John the show, occasionally it comes up.
You know, it's not always like a topic we're tackling.

(41:04):
It's usually related to the topics like small bar that
we're talking about here. But this seems like a perfect
microcosm example of like people say, well, what's the what's
the harm in climate change? This is a very small
example up in one of the you know, northernmost parts
of the world, but you can see how quickly it
affects the ecosystem. Yeah, indeed, Yeah, this is definitely one

(41:24):
of those um canary coal mine situations, UM, which reminds
me of coral being another one. Oh yes, summer we
talked about at about coral reefs and uh, the loss
of coral reefs you know oftentimes, uh you said, we
remember we were talking about the bleaching that occurs there
generally just due to a very small increase in sea temperatures.

(41:47):
So it doesn't take much to begin to to put
certain organisms out of balance, and then you can have
this cascading effect. It's really in these remote, exotic places
around the world where we're starting to the the impact first,
you know, or at least maybe we look around ourselves
in our industrialized society and we we don't necessarily realize

(42:09):
the impact. In these places, you can see it because
there aren't as many humans there. Of course, it's kind
of ridiculous, right when you look around ourselves in a
drastically reshaped um environment, and then we and then to think, well,
how can humans possibly change the environment? I mean, looked
at the Testament to it, look at the artificial mountains
that we've built up into the sky, and it's it's

(42:32):
uh to me, it can feel a bit ridiculous. Yeah, well,
hey again, I don't know if it's climate change or not,
but it has been a hot summer. It's been unpleasant
and it's so it's been on my mind. And that's
why you want to go to small bar absolutely. Now
speaking of environmental issues here, it's it's worth noting that
there are there are some really interesting environmental programs going

(42:53):
on on small Bard. One of them is a subterranean
CEO two storage so rising carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere.
These are worried climatologists for years. It's fall Bard, for
all of its delicate natural beauty, is home to Norway's
only coal burning plant, which supplies local residents with most
of their power. And these processes in turn release carbon dioxide,

(43:16):
which contributes to the earth screenhouse effect. Now, fortunately, Small
Bard also boasts an excellent place to store the emissions.
Remember those minds that we were talking about, Well, roughly
three thousand two untern eighty feet or a thousand meters
below the city of Long Year been beneath the perma
frost and the warrant of mining tunnels. Researchers have discovered

(43:37):
an ideal storage site for carbon dioxide, so here coal
plants would be able to inject emissions into poorous sandstone
um above which you have a thick layer of slate
which would act as a lid ceiling deep in the earth.
And this measure is part of a broader university center
in small Bard. Emission to make the islands carbon neutral

(43:58):
by lead is the estimate. In addition to carbon capture,
the plan also calls for the increased use of biofuels
and a switch from gas powered cars and snowmobiles primarily snowbils,
to hydrogen fuel equipped transportation. So there's actually another gas
related issue in and arounds fall Board, especially related to

(44:20):
carbon UH. There's reports that there's methane bubbling up from
the bottom of the sea that surrounds the archipelago UH,
and it's caused some anxiety. People want to know why
this is happening. There's plumes off the coast of small
Board that have actually been present for thousands of years,
and measurements show that what's going on is the methane

(44:42):
gets trapped in these water columns and they bubble up
from ice like crystal lattices down below called hydrates. But
when these melt, it releases methane and that percolates up
above and subsequently releases into the atmosphere. Now here's where
it gets really interesting, and it's really added to that
carbon storage you were talking about. The carbon that's in

(45:04):
these gases seems to be consumed by microbes. So again
microbial life and s fall Bard really seems to be
running the show. We're talking about algae, phytoplankton here, stuff
like that, and it's using photosynthesis. But wait a second.
If these microbes are eating parts of methane, how much

(45:24):
carbon are they pulling out of the atmosphere in this
process of photosynthesis? What researchers have found that around the
deepest seeps of methane there there actually wasn't an excess,
and this indicated to them that the microbes below were active.
But if you look at the shallow seeps around s

(45:44):
fall Bard, there was a measurable release and some of
this can be found drifting into the East Siberian Sea
where there are similar methane bubbles that have been found.
Measurements though show that fall bards area isn't creating a
net addition to the greenhouse effect. And this is fascinating,
especially in relation to what you're talking about with mining

(46:05):
and storing the carbon, right, Why why would that be?
You would you would assume they've been burning coal, they've
been mining coal, all this stuff. What's going on here? Well,
it seems that the organisms that I referred to earlier
actively sucking up the carbon dioxide. So while methane may
be bubbling up, carbon dioxide is being absorbed twice as much. Now,

(46:28):
this is good news for the greenhouse effect, because methane
actually traps thirty times more heat in our atmosphere than
carbon dioxide. Luckily, a recent study, and by reason I
mean like this is like two months ago, found that
a thousand nine dred times almost two thousand times more
carbon dioxide is being absorbed than methane is actually being

(46:49):
emitted from these these seeps. So it's benefiting the atmosphere
instead of contributing to the warming effect. And the same
physical force that is it pushing the methane bubbles up
is also providing this nutrient rich cold water from the
seabed up to the surface, which fertilizes the phytoplankton and

(47:09):
then they bloom and they soak up c O two.
So this is really unique to this area and it
can't necessarily be counted on wherever there's methane seeps around
the world. But in fact, even in this area, it
can change with the seasons and only be present during
the constant sunlight of their Arctic summer. You gotta remember,
when they have summer, it's sunlight all day long. The

(47:33):
sun doesn't go down. Likewise, they have a period of
the year where it's just dark all the time. So
they said, when it's dark all the time, this might
be the opposite. We need to do further testing. So
the idea is they're going to test these some more,
and they're gonna test other methane seeps around the world,
but they're thinking that this phytoplankton might be a key
to combat in climate change. Alright, we we're gonna take

(47:56):
one more break and when we come back we will
discuss the doomsday vault. Alright, we're back, and yeah, I
feel like for a lot of people, when you say
small Barred, if they do recognize the name, they're going
to think of the Doomsday Vault. Yeah, especially for you know,
those of us who do the kind of work that

(48:16):
you and I do. Hey man, how many times does
the seed Vault come up around here? I want to say,
like almost every show at How Stuff Works has done
an episode on the seed Vault. Probably it's one of
these like areas of fascination that that we all have,
those of us that study kind of the the nonfiction
weirdness of the world, right, yeah, yeah, I mean there's
a How Stuff Works article about it, there's the Stuff

(48:38):
you Should Know episode based on it, and uh, and
I feel like it's come up on this show in
the past as well, but I figured we'd roll through it,
talk about it a little bit and talk about why
it's interesting. I mean, it's on one level, it makes
for great photos because they have a great entrance to
it looks like it's kind of like a part of

(48:59):
a spaceship poking out of the snow. Totally. It always
brings to mind the spaceship and the thing for some reason,
you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like this, I guess. Uh.
I encourage those of you listening to go look at
a photo if you haven't seen this, but it looks
like this long concrete hallway is pushing its way out
of a mountain towards a beach. Right Like you can
see the ocean isn't that far from I would say

(49:21):
it's like maybe fifty meters from the door to this vault. Uh.
And it's very modern looking. The place was built in
two thousand and eight, and it's got this interesting glass
configurations embedded in the concrete. And there's um like led
lights that you can see that look really beautiful at night. Yeah. Yeah,
so it is I should if you should back up
and just say, I guess what exactly it is. It

(49:41):
is a seed vault. And the idea of a seed
vault is is nothing particularly new. I mean, as long
as we've cultivated crops, as long as we've had m agriculture,
you know, we've have had farmers set aside seeds, focus
on other seeds and uh and as and as the
centuries and centuries have rolled by, we've had various lessons

(50:03):
in what happens when you depend too much on one crop,
if you have a mono crop culture, and then that crop,
that crop is all the more susceptible to disease. UH.
To some to any kind of blight that might take
it out. And therefore it's it's great to have diversity,
genetic diversity, um, crop species diversity, and uh, and where

(50:29):
are we going to keep it all? There's like two
different levels here that you can sort of focus on.
One is, hey, we love potatoes. If something happens to
this potato, we need alternate potato genetics to turn to,
which is exactly what's going on with bananas right now.
So that's one level. And then the other level is
we just have like rich biodiversity anyway, and there there

(50:50):
are potential answers in that biodiversity that we don't even
we don't even know we need yet with the questions
haven't come up or we're not we're not matt shing
them up correctly. And therefore we need to safeguard this,
this treasure, this this this rich bio diversity in this
case of a plant life of seeds, often with a

(51:10):
focus on on on food crops. But we need to
have that saved safe somewhere so we can we can
seek it out when we need it. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh.
This small bard Global Seed Vault is actually this massive facility.
It's built into the side of a mountain and the
the ideas it's designed to keep the entire world's food

(51:31):
supplies safe in the face of climate change, but also
other threats. Uh. Really interesting example that came out of
I watched a YouTube video that Veritassium did where the
host of Veritassium went to Small Bard and went inside
the seed vault. It was fascinating and I'll talk a
little bit about that more. But they actually have already

(51:51):
had to withdraw seeds from there because in Syria when
Aleppo was bombed, they lost access to the seed vault
that is there, so they needed to replenish it with
what Syria had already sent to Small Bard. So this
is I mean, this is real important stuff here. Yeah.
Now you mentioned that the various cataclysms it's made to survive.

(52:13):
I've also read that it is made to survive anything
short of a direct nuclear strike. And I think if
you're if you're launching a nuclear missile at the small
barred global seed vault, that's that's kind of a digma. Yeah. Well,
here's why I can't imagine that ever happening. Again. From
that Veritassium video, this fascinating example. The United States in

(52:38):
North Korea. The seeds that they sent together to the
small barred seed vault sit on the same shelf. So
they literally show in this video. I encourage you to
go watch it. Uh the different boxes in the North
Korean boxes are all handmade. Uh and and but they're
just all right there next to each other, like two

(52:58):
nations that we think of as being quote enemies have
their seeds in the same place to make sure that
everybody can eat. That is the most comforting news of
US North Korean relations that I've heard, and quite sometimes, Yeah, yeah,
it's nice. Maybe we need to remind our global leaders
of these seed boxes. Yeah, I mean, you know, in

(53:20):
a in a way like that sums it up, right,
I mean, like, this is the stuff we depend on,
this is the stuff we come from, this is this
is these are our treasures as a as a people,
and this is what is is more important. Yeah, absolutely so. Actually,
around the entire world there are seeds from nearly ten
thousand different crop varieties, and we're talking wheat, barley, chickpe, eggplant, whatever.

(53:44):
But when you consider it, there's only actually a hundred
and fifty or so crops that make up what people
mainly eat today. That's kind of fascinating. I hadn't really
thought about that. Uh, you get your like your your
blue apron shows up at home. This isn't a plug
for one of our sponsors, but like I've been eating
blue apron lately. And you get a couple of different seeds,

(54:04):
you get your you know, your veggies, whatever you're gonna
put your meal together with. You don't realize it's really
only about a hundred and fifty different combinations of these
of these particular vegetables that you can work with. Uh,
And that doesn't count all the varieties though. Okay, so
there's a hundred and fifty general crops, but then when
you count all the varieties, then you're looking at a
hundred and twenty thousand different varieties. And then when you

(54:27):
take in seed samples as a whole, what you're talking about.
We've seen estimates of four point five million. Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. So the actual vault it was built in
two thousand eight and it is designed as a backup
to a pre existing loose network of other seed banks
that exist around the world. Norway paid nine million dollars

(54:48):
for the construction of this. It's a thousand square meters
and it's got three separate secure underground storage chambers and
they're kept at either negative eighteen degrees celsius or you know,
for comparison for those of us in the United States,
zero degrees fahrenheit. Uh. But it's surrounded by perma frost.
They purposely built it in so the perma frost was

(55:08):
all around it, and this naturally keeps the temperature down
to negative six celsius. So the idea here is that
even if there's a power outage, it will naturally keep
these seeds cool no matter what. Now, I'm glad that
you brought up the fact that there are other seed
vaults that feed into small Bar, because it's important to
note even though the small Bar tensity is the most

(55:29):
the most press it's just one of the shining stars
among various gene banking efforts around the world. Multiple organizations
are are working to preserve organisms of all forms against
the dangers of extinction due to climate change, pollution, habitat loss, etcetera. Like.
There's actually a wonderful New York Times article that recently

(55:50):
came out titled Arcs of the Apocalypse by Malia wolan Um.
I'll try to remember to include a link to that
on the landing page for this episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind dot Com because it discusses fall Bard
a little bit, but it also discusses San Diego Zoos
Frozen Zoo UH, the National Ice Core Laboratory, and Lakewood,
Colorado Smithsonian's National Zoo. They have some efforts to uh

(56:13):
to this is this is pretty great. Maintain the largest
collection of frozen exotic animal milk uh, the Coral Restoration Foundation,
the Florida Keys, the National l Average Genetic Resources Preservation
in Colorado. Uh. These are just a few. So, um,
it's fall barred again. It's kind of the superstar. But

(56:33):
there are a lot of scientists around the world that
are saying, yes, there's our bio diversity is precious, let's
preserve what we can. Yeah. In fact, there's a thousand,
four hundred other gene banks around the world in a
hundred different countries, and securing diverse crops like this is critical.
Why so that we have strong, healthy crops that supply

(56:55):
the world with steady food going forward. Right immediately, Like
as I was doing the research of this, I have
a little notebook where I write down ideas for potential
stories and I was like, ah, like, this is a
great idea for story, although somebody's probably already written this
five times. You're in a future dystopia. The world's running
out of food. There's no longer like a industrial transportation.

(57:15):
You got to send a mission up to small Bar
to break into the vault and get those seeds out
so you can feed the world. Yeah, I feel like
small Bard comes up in the novel The Wind Up
Girl by author Paolo Bagala COOPI he um tremendous book.
It's kind of a post environmental disaster, uh science fiction novel,
really wonderful read. But I believe there's some mention of

(57:38):
SMaL Bard because basically nobody can fly anywhere anymore because
the we've were post oil at this point, everyone's having
a resort to clipper ships again to to navigate the world.
And at least small Bard comes up because there's a
lot of there's also this it's like a post GMO
apocalypse kind of a scenario as well. Well. I mean

(57:58):
that sounds like, yeah, exactly right. So it sounds like
that author did their research, especially because you've got countries
and research universities and other organizations that are all sending
their prepackaged seeds up to this vault in these boxes
that are stored on these shelves. And the thing is
is how long the seeds can stay there is varied actually,
Like it's you know, we we hear people talking about

(58:20):
this seed vault all the time. It's easy to think like, oh,
they just sit there forever and then they're fine, But
actually there's a completely broad variety of how long they'll
last in that cold. Some will last for up to
a thousand, two hundred years, others only last for eighty years.
So this is something we need to keep maintaining as well.
It doesn't just like go away, you know. Yeah. Uh.

(58:43):
And speaking of maintaining, I know some of you may
have caught news of this earlier in the year, so
I do want to mention that, yes, earlier this year,
news came out that the vault experience flooding due to
excessive rainfall during what should have been uh you know,
well below freezing weather. The water that flooded in shorted
out the electric pumps they would have been used to

(59:05):
prevent this. But it's important to note the seeds stayed
dry thanks in Part two, efforts from firefighters and locals. Um.
But still it's a it's a troubling development in the
grander sense when you start speaking of you know, climate
change and its effects on the natural world and everything
we're trying to do. Uh, but it's important to the

(59:26):
seed vault itself. Was fine. Yeah, and that is related
to the freak weather incident from I was talking about too.
So they're experiencing this like unprecedented warm flashes apparently. Uh.
Now a couple of fun facts that I learned from
that veritassium video as well. So only the depositor can
open the actual boxes that have the seeds in them.

(59:47):
So the people at the seed Vault who run it,
they can't open those boxes. They don't even know what's
inside them. They assume their seeds, but could be something else.
Who knows, Like maybe Jimmy Hoffa's in one of these
boxes and it got sent to the small bar seed vault.
You don't know, the world leader clone. Um, yeah, maybe
that's what's there. I should mention that there is an
international treaty, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for

(01:00:10):
Food and Agriculture, and that's what governs access, right Uh.
And so they have a couple of rules. They don't
allow drugs to be stored there, so any so for instance,
like marijuana seeds are not allowed to be stored there
UH or any genetically modified seeds either. They have to
be UH seeds from one of the twenty five crops

(01:00:30):
that are considered to be the most important for global
food security. So we're talking about stuff like rice, maize, potato, bananas, plantains, etcetera.
And they've actually, this was a funny bit in the
video too. They receive letters from men who want to
put their genetic material in there. So they're like, oh,
is this a place where I can just store me

(01:00:52):
so for you know, for future needs if I ever
need to access my d n A. I can't. That
is ridiculous because there are places they do. They're like,
if that's your thing, there there there are services, there
are establishments that make that their their business. Why would
you contact vall Bar. Maybe you're very mismistake and I
it's like saying, Hey, I've got some ice cream? Can

(01:01:13):
you store it there? I hear you have a place
that is cold, and I don't know where else in
the world I might find such a place. We should
write them a letter asking if we can put our
ice cream. But yeah, it seems odd to me as well.
Apparently they just don't even bother responding to these requests,
which I think is probably the right move. Yeah. It's

(01:01:33):
like when you get like a nasty Facebook comment, they
just leave it alone, don't don't, don't engage. Yeah, so
that's the seed Vault. We've pretty much hit, uh, you know,
most of our most of our tourist spots. The things
I'd want to hit when I go to us Fall
Bar the seed Vault. I want to see some glaciers
climb around in some CEO two tanks. I might go,

(01:01:53):
h go first swim and some methane seeps. You know,
I think that would probably kill Oh man, they should
really do a death metal music fest. They're part of
this whole what you said, the dark tourism. Yeah, if
you imagine it with like people were mah ing, polar
bears are picking off people on the outside, it sounds
like a metal Oclilypse episode. Yeah. Um. There is a

(01:02:14):
scene in Fortitude, which again you know me, caught my interest. Uh.
It's like the first or second episode, the one of
the characters goes down to like there's like a small
bar that's basically like the only bar in the town, right,
and there's like a death metal band playing in this
tiny bar, and there's like fifteen people all like rocking
out to this death Is it anyone we would know?

(01:02:36):
It's not like Trip to con or anybody? Is it?
It's not, But it's a real band. I went and
looked up online. I forget what their name is, but yeah,
they were like, yes, we are the band that's in
that episode from Fortitude. Now did it side TANGI did
it feel believable that this band was playing in a bar? Uh? Well,
my first thought was like, man, it must have been

(01:02:57):
expensive to fly this band from wherever they were just
fall Bard and bring all their equipment with them. But
I'm assuming in the context of the show, these are
a bunch of small Gardians that just played death metal
there every night. I don't know. Well, hopefully it's more
believable than it was. A true Detective. Season two, there's
this recurring bar scene where Vince Vaughan's characters hanging out

(01:03:20):
and there's a very I don't wannacall her name, but
there's a very talented musician playing. There's playing the saddest
songs in the world, and I'm just I'm torn out
of the viewing experience because I'm like, who would who
books this artist to play here? This is man that
season of TV it's something else. But yeah that I
saw that as well, and it those scenes kept yanking

(01:03:42):
me out. It felt very much like, um, they were
trying to do what David Lynch does. Actually, oh yeah,
the nine is Nails thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the
new season of twin Peaks, every episode has a performance
by a band uh in it. Usually it's it's right
at the end credits. Uh. And this felt very much
like that, or like in Mulholland Drive, David Lynch, you know,

(01:04:04):
inserts music in certain places where you're watching performances, and
that felt like it was trying so hard to do
that and true detective, but it was just it was painful,
but fortitude not painful. You're giving it a strong recommendation, Yeah,
I loved it. The first season is better than the
second season, but they're both fun. Uh, And yeah, I
I can't recommend it enough, especially like if you are

(01:04:28):
a listener of our show and you've listened to multiple episodes,
I think you'd find it delightful because they tap into
all of these things that we've covered over the years. Cool. Well,
we'd love to hear from Fortitude fans that have some
thoughts on the Small Bard issues here. And if you
have been to Small Bard as a working professional, as
a tourist, as a polar Bear, then let us know

(01:04:49):
because we would love to hear your account. Yeah, definitely,
I'm I'm planning my Small Bard vacation right now, so
please let me know if you've been there and uh
what I need to prepare for and you know, maybe
in the next five years or so, I'll finally make
it up there, all right. Well, in the meantime, hey,
if you want more stuff to blow your mind, go
to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is

(01:05:10):
our mothership. That's where you'll find all of our little
podcast episodes. Who find some videos. You'll find blog posts
as well as links out to our various social media
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far as Facebook goes, we did we were currently experimenting
with a Facebook group there. So if you've been to
our Facebook page and you want, like I don't know,

(01:05:32):
you want more involved conversation. You want to share something
with us, Uh, that's one avenue to do that. Yeah,
you just go to the discussion group and you ask
to join in. One of us or the other moderators
will let you in and you can participate in the
conversations going on there. It's like a message board. It's
like we're back to the nineties of internet era. But

(01:05:53):
I like it. It's it's a more tight knit community
on Facebook than our our huge audience that subscribe up
there right now. Yeah, it's an experiment. We're gonna see
what happens with it and if it if it it's
a module attached to the motor shift, if you will
and if it, if it works, will keep it. If not,
we'll jettis it into the into the cold unforgiving black
hearted space. And if you want to write us the

(01:06:15):
old fashioned way, you just want to get in touch
with us directly, you can write to Robert, Joe and
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(01:06:36):
Does it how stuff works dot com