A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 17
This is the fourth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today’s story: 9 of the World’s Most Ridiculously Secure Safes and Vaults:
Okay, you just need to check out the link to see some amazing vaults, each one a potential center point of some sort of action-thriller caper. But let me spotlight one which I had never heard of and frankly blows my mind: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault:
If Armageddon happens soon, any hope of bringing the world’s crops back is buried 390 feet under a Nordic mountain. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen currently houses over 500,000 of the world’s plant species. The vault is 620 miles south of the North Pole and safeguarded by hundreds of miles of ocean, plus a couple thousand polar bears. It’s so deep, it’s resistant to a nuclear holocaust, not to mention severe earthquakes. It also sits 430 feet above sea level, safe from any possible sea-level rise. The three seed vaults lay behind four heavy steel doors. As long as the keys aren’t hidden under a doormat, our seeds should be safe from Doomsday.
Check out some of these images:
There’s something fascinating about this. Do we go with some sort of theft plot? Or perhaps science fiction. Yes, we’ve had The Thing From Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011), each set in a remote location in the Arctic. Could we do another sci-fi flick there?
I don’t know. But I do know this is one cool-ass location. And one cool-ass vault.
So let’s talk about the seeds. What if the entire plot revolves around one seed? A seed that could grow a plant that… what? Heals cancer? Can be used to give someone superpowers? Is that seed from outer space? An alien seed?
Again, I don’t know, but there could be something here.
What would you do with this story conceit?
Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.
See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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