As if there’s not enough to worry about these days, NASA has reported that an asteroid is headed toward Earth on November 2. Although scientists have predicted that, at its closest, it will still be 419,130 kilometers from the Earth’s atmosphere and that the likelihood of it hitting us is pretty small (0.4% to be precise, and that’s the worst-case scenario), you still wonder. I mean, 2020 has really been a doozy of a year. And there are still two more months left.
So some people are not taking any chances. And by “some people,” I mean the manufacturers of Oreo, the world’s most beloved mass-produced cookie. (Fight me.) Once they learned the asteroid was coming, via Twitter, they panicked. What would happen to the Oreos? But then they learned about the Global Seed Vault, a concrete bunker in Svalbard, Norway, far above the Arctic Circle, which contains seeds of every plant grown in the world so that if catastrophe does strike, we’ll be able to rebuild again. (It’s also built into a mountain, so if global warming succeeds in destroying the Arctic, it won’t sink to the bottom of the ocean.) Why not do the same for Oreos?
This morning Oreo announced that it has completed the Global Oreo Vault, a concrete bunker filled with Oreos and powdered milk (that can be mixed with snow). It is also in Svalbard, just down the road from the Global Seed Vault. Oreo also produced a making-of video to show the genesis of the Oreo Vault from start to finish.
Is this a cheesy marketing scheme? Yes. But would I rather be thinking about this for five minutes than anything else in the news? Also yes. I have learned from Google that there are tours through Svalbard (both on foot and in motorized vehicles) that take you to the doors of the Global Seed Bank. If I ever happen to find myself on one, do you think I’ll be looking around for Oreos, sort of like the way, one December when I was on a plane flying over the North Pole, I peered out the window for evidence of Santa? You’d better believe it.