The ultimate seed vault is being carved into a frozen, Arctic mountainside. And it will be guarded by polar bears.

The Norwegian government finally announced plans this week to build a Global Seed Vault, a seed bank that's been in the works for more than a year. The seed vault will be built on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, which lies 600 miles from the North Pole, and will be designed to protect the world's crop seeds in case of some sort of global catastrophe that destroys all agriculture. Seed banks already exist in several locations around the world, but this one aims to be a back-up in case all those others are also destroyed by this nameless global catastrophe.