While There's Life There's Hope

An existential argument by 19th-century Danish philosopherthere’s Soren Kierkegaard that most humans are in self-denial about death, and that only those who truly embrace this fact can live a life of passion and meaning, has been one ofthere’s the greatest opinion dividers among intellectuals. But few things are more powerful in this world than a sliver of faith and optimism to counter all foreboding thoughts.

- Alywin Chew

ENTOMBED 120M WITHIN A MOUNTAIN IN THE FROZEN RECESSES OF THE ARCTIC SVALBARD ARCHIPELAGO IS A MODERN DAY NOAH’S ARK, A SYMBOL OF HOPE SHOULD CATASTROPHE BEFALL HUMANITY.

Known as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, this facility holds the world’s backup supply of crop genetic material should other gene banks around the world be destroyed in the event of a disaster.

It currently contains around 900,000 seed samples from around the world such as maize, cowpea, sorghum and wheat that are protected by special foil packets and kept frozen in the vault at sub-zero levels.

Even if the facility’s power supply is cut off, the permafrost and rocks enveloping the vault act as a natural freezer to ensure that everything within stays frozen for at least 25 years.

Some have already starting calling the seed bank a “doomsday vault”.

Over in Pasadena, California, staff at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program office have their eyes peeled for incoming asteroids that could wipe out mankind. It is perhaps unsurprising that humans could have come up with such save-the-world initiatives. Self-preservation, after all, is one of our most fundamental instincts.

But as much as humans are driven by an innate desire to stay alive, it could also be said that they too are obsessed with the exact opposite – death, or in the case of the two aforementioned examples, the complete annihilation of the human race.

A 2012 poll by wire news agency