The last few months have brought a steady stream of end of the world related press releases and innovations, fed mostly from the pessimism of the past two years of COVID, but perhaps strangely from an optimism and determination that no matter what we will survive, even if who or what survives is not exactly what it it used to be.

In this week regular radio segment Hong Kong Radio 3’s Phil Whelan and I chat about the world’s black box that is being developed to outlive humanity and record and store end of the world data, should the worst happen.

This impenetrable indestructible black box, which looks like an upside down pyramid, is the brain child of Tasmania University, Clemenger BBDO and the Glue Society.

It comes complete with internet and solar panels to ensure continuous storage (assuming the sun’s still around) and instructions on how to open the box and what it is.

This kinda sounds Mayan temple, Stonehenge, pyramids to me, but its a noble cause, so I’ll go with it.

More interestingly though is the Svalbard Global seed vault, that’s been in operation for a number of years with the purpose of collecting and storing the world’s largest collection of crop seeds, for future use, should crops, for whatever reason become extinct.

The vault currently has 1,000,000 samples from almost every country, and has capacity for another 3.5 million.

Listen to our chat to find out more.