If you haven’t heard of the Doomsday Clock, click here for an explanation of it, or check the Wikipedia entry.
This symbolic clock was designed in 1947 to represent just how close the world was to nuclear war. If you see the clock at midnight, that means you probably have about 3 hours to live, as nuclear war would be in the process of being waged. It has fluctuated over the years, and it is currently at 7-mins to midnight. It’s furthest distance from midnight was 17 minutes from midnight in 1991, when the U.S. and the former Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Since then, geopolitical events have pushed the clock back to midnight. It has remained unchanged since 2002.
Anyway, a bunch of people had a good idea. According to this BBC news article, a bunch of people are getting together to make a “Doomsday Seed Bank”, which will contain seeds from all known variants of crops. This will then be stored in a remote, secure location. So, in the somewhat unlikely event of thermonuclear war with 90% of the countries destroyed, or in the liklier event of an ice age, there will be a “time capsule” of sorts burried so if dug up, people can grow crops again.
That, is what I call planning ahead.