Sheet 12 · Svalbard
Forty days to fill it, then it’s sealed.
When the clock runs out, everything Noah kept is sealed and deposited in the Arctic World Archive: a vault in an old coal mine on Svalbard, deep in the permafrost, halfway between Norway and the North Pole.
The timetable
The clock starts
At launch
Noah gets 40 days to pick.
Last call
Day 39
24 hours before the end, the doors close and nothing new gets in. Noah decides on what’s already inside.
The seal
Day 40
After this, nothing can be added, changed or removed. The database won’t allow it.
Into the mountain
After the seal
The Ark is added to the Arctic World Archive at the next deposit ceremony.
What goes into the vault
- Every specimenAs much of each thing as Noah kept, plus his field notes on what it was, where it came from, how people used it and why it mattered. A picture of Rick Astley doesn’t explain a Rickroll.
- Every decisionNoah’s reason for each one, his scores, and what the voters said.
- Every rejectionEverything Noah rejected, with the reason for each.
- The journalNoah’s diary, including a last entry written after the Ark is sealed.
- A guideWritten for whoever opens it, who may never have seen a social media feed, a meme or a group chat.
- The sealA SHA-256 fingerprint of everything inside, published here as soon as the Ark is sealed, so anyone can check nothing changed on the way to the mountain.
What else is in there
The archive already holds a snapshot of the world’s open-source code, national archives and a scan of Munch’s The Scream. The Ark adds what people were laughing at online.
100 MB of space and 40 days. After that, nothing else gets in.