Maybe it's not there to preserve seeds. Maybe it's there to *contain* one dangerous seed, one that, if it germinates, will devour the entire world's ecosystems and destroy all life. And there's a crack in the vault...

Ah, good one, Debbie. Like the movie Alien on Earth. The 500,000 seed thing is a ruse to shroud the true purpose: The One Seed To Rule Them All!!!

After most of the population of the Earth is ravaged by a nuclear war or a global pandemic, the only fertile seeds left in the world are storaged in the armored vault of Svalbard. Now what remains of the governments of the world's most powerful countries are competing in a race against time to send their military forces to take over the place, endangering the humankind last hope of survival.

Carlos, your take raised a thought for me. Isn't it amazing how a common item in one place and time can be perceived as something of inestimable value in another place and time. There's that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Beloq says something like, "Take this watch. Virtually worthless. Bury it in the ground, dig it up in 1000 years, it's priceless." So these seeds at one point in time - valueless. Now after a nuclear holocaust - priceless. Interesting...

For some reason, my head is going in two different directions w/ this one. On the one hand, I see a "man in a box" style horror story. A new sample is brought into the vault, and soon starts to actually grow. It's less of a seed than it is an egg and once that egg hatches...well...that's when people start to die. And on the other hand, I see this odd quirky romantic comedy set in the middle of nowhere with these two scientists that find love where they least expected it - the seed vault in the middle of the arctic.

I've had a nightmare about that vault! I dreamed we were touring the public space on the outside that's set up as an education center with my nephew, who was about 8 or 9 at the time. Just as they're closing, he takes off. I chase him. He heads into the vault. I follow. Only it's not just a seed vault. It's also a 'species vault': free range zoo.