Oreo Built a Doomsday Vault in Norway for Cookies to Preserve Them for Generations to Come
Asteroid 2018 VP1 is scheduled to graze Earth on Nov. 2, the day before the US elections. It has a real but exceedingly slim (0.41%) possibility of entering our planet’s atmosphere, at which point it would harmlessly disintegrate. But Oreo isn’t taking any chances. The company has built a concrete doomsday vault in Norway to house its cookies.
The vault design is inspired by the famous seed vault in the Arctic that’s meant to preserve the world’s botanical legacy against natural or human-caused disasters. Oreo’s version is much smaller, but it shows the cookie company’s commitment to riding out a truly epic PR stunt.
A video (filled with actor portrayals and one real astronomer) shows off the vault, which is located on permafrost at the coordinates 78°08’58.1″N, 16°01’59.7″E, not far from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.