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BloombergBusinessweek November 18, 20191
THE LASTSTOPFOR
CIVILIZATIONBEFORETHE
NORTHPOLEISSVALBARD,
ANARCHIPELAGO NORTHOF
MAINLANDNORWAYALONG
THE 80THPARALLEL.MostofSvalbard’soldNorwegianandRussiancoal
mineshaveshutdown,solocalshaverebrandedtheir
vastacresofpermafrostasanattractiontoscientists,
doomsdaypreppers,andscientistdoomsdaypreppers.
AroundSvalbard,thingscanbehiddenfromthestresses
oftheoutsideworld.There’sa treatyinplacetokeepit
neutralintimesofwar.Inotherwords,it’sanidealspot
fora bigglobalresetbuttonortwo.
PrideofplacebelongstotheSvalbardGlobalSeed
Vault,whereseedsfora widerangeofplants,includ-
ingthecropsmostvaluabletohumans,arepreserved
incaseofsomefamine-inducingpandemicornuclear
apocalypse.Theseedvaultlookslikesomethingoutof
a movie,itsentrancea triangularobeliskjuttinghigh
outofa blindingwhiteexpanse.It sparkleswithglow-
inggreenlights.
NatFriedman,however,hasn’tcomeforthebeat-the-
apocalypseaesthetics.OnOct.24,thetall,thin,42-year-
oldchiefexecutiveofficerofGitHubInc.,Microsoft’s
world-leading code bank, hops in a van and drives about
15 minutes from his hotel to an abandoned coal mine,
where he puts on a miner’s helmet and headlamp. Deep
inside one of the mine’s frigid, eerily quiet arteries,
Friedman comes to what looks like a metal tool shed.
“It’s more mine-y and rustic and raw-hole-in-the-rock
than I thought it would be,” he says.
This is the Arctic World Archive, the seed vault’s
much less sexy cousin. Friedman unlocks the container
door with a simple door key and, inside, deposits much
of the world’s open source software code. Servers and
flash drives aren’t durable enough for this purpose, so
the data is encoded on what look like old-school movie
reels, each weighing a few pounds and stored in a white
plastic container about the size of a pizza box. It’s basi-
cally microfilm. With the help of a magnifying glass,
you—or, say, a band of End Times survivors—can see the
data, be it pictures, text, or lines of code. A Norwegian
company called Piql AS makes the specialized rolls of
super-durable film, coated with iron oxide powder for
added Armageddon-resistance. Piql says the material
should hold up for 750 years in normal conditions, and
perhaps 2,000 years in a cold, dry, low-oxygen cave.Friedman places his reel on one of the archive’s
shelves, alongside a couple dozen that include Vatican
archives, Brazilian land registry records, loads of Italian
movies, and the recipe for a certain burger chain’s spe-
cial sauce. GitHub, which Microsoft bought last year for
$7.5 billion, plans to become by far the biggest tenant.
Eventually, Friedman says, GitHub will leave 200 plat-
ters, each carrying 120 gigabytes of open source soft-
ware code, in the vault. The first reel included the
Linux and Android operating systems, plus 6,000 other
important open source applications.
Yes, this may seem like a stunt, headlamps and all.
If the world is ravaged to the point where Svalbard is
the last repository of usable wheat and corn seeds, the
source code for YouTube will probably rank pretty low
on humankind’s hierarchy of needs. Yet to Friedman,
it’s a natural next step. Open source software, in his
view, is one of the great achievements of our spe-
cies, up there with the masterpieces of literature and
fine art. It has become the foundation of the modern
world—not just the internet and smartphones, but sat-
ellites, medical devices, scientific tools, robots.
The basic idea of open source is that you write code
and share it, giving anyone else a chance to see what
you’ve done, and, if they like, to take the code and
change it and make their own thing. Over time this
vast and expanding body of work is repurposed and
improved upon and used to make innumerable soft-
ware applications. GitHub is where much of the world’s
open source software gets developed. About 40 million
people, many of them volunteers, refine the projects,
log bugs that need fixing, scan for security holes, and
track changes. Think of it as a gigantic, meticulously
cataloged library of tools that anyone can use.Other reels in the vault hold movies, land records, and the odd recipe