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Cary Fowler, right, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, talks with a television crew during a tour of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The facility inside a mountain consists primarily of a 130-meter tunnel leading to three spartan storage rooms lined with metal shelves. But portraits of a far more sophisticated and devious place are being painted by writers, filmmakers and other architects of pop culture.

It seems the Forces Of Evil, when not forging Obama's birth documents and creating more film of the false moon landing, are busy these days plotting the apocalypse in secretive research facilities in the Norwegian Arctic.

Just ask a child heroine drawn "into a savage struggle among armoured bears and witch clans of the Arctic, and lead her to a scientific research centre where experiments too horrible to talk about are being carried out." Or villains motivated by the theory "control food and you control all the people of the world.”

End-of-the-world and out-of-this-world tales are being spun into a wide variety of pop culture, including the heroine starring in a children's play based on a major motion picture and the food villains in a current bestselling novel. Much of it centers around a place bearing remarkable resemblance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - when it's not named directly - and some isn't entirely in jest.

Maybe it's due to one of the vault's nicknames.

"When opening it a year ago there was a bit of a joke in the science press: 'Ha, ha - they are opening a doomsday vault,'" said Roland von Bothmer, a professor at the Nordic Genetic Resource Center who manages public relations for the seed vault. The scientists actually involved with the facility, he added, "were very careful not to call it a doomsday vault."

Then there's the "terminator" and "zombie" seeds associated with the facility's purpose.

The seed vault, despite opening only 17 month ago, is perhaps the best-known of 1,400 such facilities worldwide for storing spare seeds deposited by countries and institutions for emergency use. The remote "exotic" location captured and continues to receive widespread global media interest, as does its exclusive status as the "backup" for other gene bank facilities with its record capacity of 2.25 billion seeds.

"If you have something as big and as important as the seed vault you will necessarily attract some weird reactions," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a foundation focusing on long-term food security in the face of escalating problems such as climate change and rapid population growth.

Another nickname for the Svalbard facility burrowed more than 100 meters into a mountainside is the "new Noah's Ark," a concept used by two independent filmmakers whose short movies fictionalize concerns about the vault. Among the issues are whether seed banks give governments and/or agribusiness excessive control of the world's potential future food supply, and if vaults create a lax attitude about preparing farmers at the local level to deal with disasters and climate change.

James Rollins, author of "The Doomsday Key," high on bestseller lists since its release earlier this year, is using his book to warn about the "dangers of rampant technology and unregulated science."

Also mentioned frequently are genetically modified crops as bioengineering seeks to create seeds adaptable to various conditions. It's a topic author James Rollins is trying to draw serious attention to during publicity tours for his fiction novel "The Doomsday Key," which has been high on bestseller lists since being released earlier this year. The book is full of his trademark conspiracies and scary creatures such as "roaming bands of polar bears" guarding his Doomsday Vault in Norway ("this little detail, by the way, is true"), but his interviews focus more on the "dangers of rampant technology and unregulated science."

"Of the 40 genetically-modified crops approved last year, only eight have published safety studies," he said in a recent interview with the Philadelphia Examiner. "Genetically-modified crops are a billion-dollar-a-year industry, and as we’ve seen with the current banking crisis, a lack of regulation opens the way for greed to overwhelm common sense. So it raises the question: What might happen to our nation’s food supply when corporations control it?"

"When it comes to playing with Mother Nature, any mistakes could have dire consequences."

Some voice concerns about misguided thinking, others see as a conspiracy by control-hungry powermongers (having the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as one of the primary funders, along with various governments, is ideal fodder). The latter group of skeptics in particular and their portrayal of the vault in popular culture isn't something supporters are thrilled about discussing.

"It just gives credence to it," Fowler said. "If you respond it makes something out of something that's not an issue."

Search for articles about the seed vault on the internet and "one thing that jumps out at you is the preponderance of positive stories - they must be running 1,000 to 1" in favor, he said.

"Last month we had the anniversary of the Apollo moon landing," Fowler said. "Six percent believe it was a conspiracy. We're much lower than that."

Among the recent, current and upcoming diversions:

• "The Golden Compass:" This 2007 movie focused one of the brighter spotlights on Svalbard despite mediocre reviews (a 42 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating). The fantasy tale centers around an orphan girl, some evildoers in the north and her efforts to track down her uncle in a quest for truth. Most of the film's controversy is about religion rather than science since the book it's based on is part of a series less than flattering to the Catholic Church (the movie heavily tones down this aspect, one reason for the poor ratings). But sinister science has a starring role as well, as the above description of a London play based on the story indicates.

Two scientists trying to get to an Arctic seed vault after a nuclear war prepare for battle with a team of commandos in the 2008 movie "Frozen Seed," a nine-minute Canadian project awarded best film at the Hamilton Cinematic Festival.

• "Frozen Seed:" This nine-minute film by Canadian Tim Bissell, who wrote it after reading about the Svalbard facility, focuses on two scientists trying to cross a frozen landscape after a nuclear war to get to a seed vault so they can feed survivors in underground dwellings. But armed commandos are also after the seeds, leading to a battle between the sides. The movie received the Viewer's Choice Award in the Hamilton Music and Film Festival in April 2008, and first prize in the Hamilton Cinematic Festival in July 2008. It was released worldwide earlier this year.

• "The Nightmare Of Noah:" Another short film, shot in Longyearbyen this spring by Geneva filmmaker Pauline Julier, about a modern-day Noah who, unable to cope with confinement in the seed vault, emerges to find a world under ice and zombie-like people in the streets of town. The film is scheduled for completion this fall.

• "The Deep:" A BBC TV drama scheduled to air in five one-hour programs early next year. Little information has been released so far, but Arctic oceanographers are searching "the final frontiers of Earth for unknown and remarkable life forms. When inexplicable circumstances cause catastrophe to strike, the crew find themselves stranded...and they are completely alone – or so they think."

• "Terminal Freeze:" A just-released novel by Lincoln Child focusing on a small group of scientists studying climate change at an Arctic station known as Fear Base (in Alaska, not Norway, but close enough). They discover "a creature frozen in time (which) becomes an overblown media circus event." Plans to thaw the creature go awry when it's discovered missing, leading to accusations of sabotage and shredded bodies.

• "War Eagles:" A full-length feature film scheduled to begin production next year, based on an unfinished project in the late 1930s by Merian C. Cooper, creator of the original "King Kong." The plot features a fighter pilot who crashes while testing an experimental plane in the Arctic and "discovers a strange land inhabited by a lost tribe of Norsemen who ride giant eagles and, in a surprising turn of events, becomes America's only hope against a devastating sneak attack by the Nazis and their powerful new electromagnetic weapon." A novel of the tale written by Carl Macek was published last year.

• "Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason:"a first-person survival/horror video game released worldwide earlier this year that features a meteorologist investigating a shipwrecked nuclear icebreaker near the North Pole. But "he’s not alone and the (ship) is now plagued by dead crewmen who have undergone a bizarre metamorphosis." Those wanting more opportunities to get some in the Arctic can open fire on "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" (also in movie megaplexes everywhere) which, while mostly a militant sci-fi yarn focusing on the origins of the evil Cobra Organization, their diabolical schemes involve experts in things such as gene manipulation.

• "Venture Arctic:" Looking for a family friendly plunge into Arctic science? This "God game" based in Svalbard and similar locations provides it unless you're the sadistic sort who enjoys manipulating the elements to torture entire species of animals and plants. "Bring summer and winter to polar bears, orcas, and more...blow the smells of a beached whale to a starving wolverine, or blanket the tundra in snow and ice to weed out the weak musk ox from the strong. Experience the effects of climate change and mass extinction."

The Arctic is hardly a new setting for controversies, conspiracies and apocalyptic tales involving science - fictional and not.

The survival/horror game "Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason" puts a scientist into combat on a shipwrecked icebreaker near the North Pole.

The history of gene diversity in the far north started back in the 1920s when Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov started collecting samples worldwide in an effort to improve his country's crops, only to be arrested in 1940 for allegedly wrecking the Soviet agricultural system and dying in prison three years later. Meanwhile, his seed bank in Leningrad was preserved even when residents faced famine during World II, including an assistant of his who died of starvation surrounded by seeds, and many of his genetic samples were seized by German SS officers toward the end of the war.

The legendary 1964 movie "Dr. Strangelove" opens with U.S. warmongers obsessing about a "Doomsday Machine" the Russians are building in the polar north. The 1951 movie "The Thing," featuring scientists fighting plant-based aliens at an Arctic research station, is largely forgotten in the wake of John Carpenter's better-known but factually butchered 1982 remake supposedly occurring in Antarctica (the dogs playing a central role aren't allowed there, for starters). Even more forgotten is "The Thing" is based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr.

It's easy to overlook tales of Arctic madness since there's dozens, if not hundreds, of lesser-known films and other projects. Like Antarctica - apparently a prolific place for UFOs - the far north is a naturally appealing place to indulge in the apocalypse.

"I suppose it's very convenient few people go to the Arctic," Fowler said.

The real-life drama of a planet in peril is also increasingly grabbing people's attention, noted Ola Westengen, the coordinator of operation and management for the Svalbard seed vault, in an e-mail interview.

"I would not underestimate the effect of the comeback of global warming on the international agenda," he wrote. "The 'An Inconvenient Truth' film is an incredibly strong narrative and the effects of global warming are best seen in polar areas. In some ways I think Svalbard has become a kind of global 'showroom' for the effects of global warming and, if the effects are not yet so visible, it is a place people visit with a sense of imminent environmental danger."

Those wondering what secrets the seed vault holds can't see for themselves since it's closed to the public. Bothmer leads four to six press tours a year into the mountainside, but only as far as a temperature-controlled airlock where a chain-link fence separates the media from the rows of seeds on metal shelves.

"If you let people in there's a problem with the temperature," he said.

Dignitaries were allowed into the storage room on the one-year anniversary, but Bothmer said that was an exceptional case that might be repeated only every other year in the future.

Presenting a wealth of scientific data isn't always effective in countering skeptics, as those fighting about the reality and causes of global warming can attest. But Bothmer said publicity is helping the general public become more accepting of concepts such as seed banks and genetically modified crops - if not the hardcore opponents.

"Whatever you say cannot convince the other party," he said, adding "You have fears of conspiracies everywhere."

Some of the most detailed opposition is found at GRAIN, which describes itself as "a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems." Its Web site (www.grain.org) features essays and links to documents ranging from detailed scientific analysis to conspiracy theories about those in power plotting a course of action to cause doomsday.

The organization's leaders aren't polar opposites of seed vault advocates, agreeing a diverse approach to future food problems is ideal. But they claim political realities are causing a "single focus on ex situ seed storage (that is) fundamentally unjust."

"It doesn't address, much less solve, what is driving farmers and their communities to lose control over, and rights towards, biodiversity in our food systems much as it may talk about serving farmers or even 'the poor,' the organization wrote in a May 2008 essay. "It basically puts seeds away, for safe keeping. Yet we live in a world where corporate monopoly rights and restrictive seed marketing legislation seriously limit farmers and other food growers in what they can do with their seeds, and where commercial interests in plant breeding are radically shifting agriculture, agricultural policies and the research that underpins it all, towards their own private agendas."

GRAIN claims to have an annual budget of €900,000 (about 8 million kroner) and there are numerous other organizations involved in similar campaigns. But vault advocates question how receptive the general public is to such efforts.

"I do not think we will see any serious campaigns against the seed vault," Westengen wrote in his e-mail. "We certainly have not seen any such thing yet. On the contrary, on the narrative level, we think the seed vault has been the best communication vehicle ever for our overarching cause which is conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources."

Another factor that may ultimately deflect attention from Arctic armageddon is real and fictional doomsday scenarios are becoming both more common and exotic. A just-published Wall Street Journal article notes "a flood of postapocalyptic stories is now headed toward movie theaters and TV screens."

"In 'The Book of Eli,' a movie scheduled for January, Denzel Washington plays the fierce protector of a book that holds the key to mankind’s redemption in an American wasteland created by a war 30 years earlier," the article notes. "'Day One,' a series coming to NBC in March, follows a handful of neighbors trying to survive and understand a calamity that erased the world’s infrastructure. 'The Colony,' now airing on Discovery Channel, is a reality show set in an imagined end-times period in which contestants hunt for food, water and shelter after a presumed disaster. No humans at all survive in the blighted world of '9,' an animated film produced by Tim Burton in which mechanical dolls learn from the mistakes of their extinct creators."

Back in the real world - sort of - proposals are being floated for a "doomsday ark" on the moon containing biological matter (extending to things such as human DNA in addition to seeds), historic relics and data on hard disks. Advocates say the vault would be buried beneath the surface and tended by robots.

In this instance, it's the Svalbard seed vault advocates who are skeptics.

"It might be doable, but that's a hundred years away," Bothmer said. Also, "I don't see a need for it. I think you have to think very carefully what you can do with it."

All contents copyright 2009 by Icepeople or other copyright holders. Icepeople material may be reproduced elsewhere free of charge for noncommercial use. Contact Mark Sabbatini at marksabbatini@yahoo.com for information about anything else of seeming importance.

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