3 ms·
The men who starved to death to save the world's seeds (2014)
- im3w1l 5y ago> hoard of 370,000 seeds. How many man-days of food is that?
- missedthecue 5y agoOne pound of uncooked rice contains ~29,000 grains.
- im3w1l 5y agoFound someone claiming you can survive for 8 days on 10 pounds of rice. Meaning that with a dozen scientists, the "hoard" would only last a single day.
- nsonha 5y agoIf they didn't do that, what would have happened? I don't think this is a great piece of writing as it doesn't really say much about these people's legacy. Only the legacy of one man through his entire career.
- 8bitsrule 5y agoHard to find (shouldn't be). This 1992 WaPo article names the 9 who starved (starting with Stchukin). Also mentions that under duress these people smuggled seeds out of Leningrad to storage in the Ural mountains. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/05/12/soviet-botanists-starved-saving-seeds-for-future/10840121-9058-4c1f-ae7a-22ac16a6f4de/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/05/12/s... This Springer article goes into great detail on the Pavlovsk Experimental Station's history "by 1934 Vavilov had founded over 400 research institutes, with staffing requirements of 20,000" https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40064-016-2795-z https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s4006... Looks like the story was first told here: Alexanyan, S. M. & Krivchenko, V. I. Vavilov Institute scientists heroically preserve world plant genetic resources collections during World War II siege of Leningrad. Diversity 7, 10–13 (1991).