I think this is a really cool idea. Good luck with your fast.
At the risk of undermining your post by second guessing the decisions of people made 80 years ago under duress, I can’t read that article without thinking “If they were needed there, alive, to guard the seeds, maybe they should have eaten some of the 370,000 seeds?” To be clear, that does not diminish my respect for their restraint (I certainly could not have done that) or Vavilov’s contributions.
They didn’t all die. I haven’t found a denominator in English sources and my Russian researcher has been busy, but my very rough guess is that <1/2 of the staff died. That seems plausibly the outcome of the correct process to me- you start out with a zero-tolerance policy because it’s easier to hold to (and because the highest-metabolism people will die first), but if you get close to having too few staff to protect the seeds, ration them out.
My understanding is that the seeds made it through the siege fine, although a good chunk were lost to ensuing neglect of the institute, so the deaths don’t seem to have hurt the goal.
I think this is a really cool idea. Good luck with your fast.
At the risk of undermining your post by second guessing the decisions of people made 80 years ago under duress, I can’t read that article without thinking “If they were needed there, alive, to guard the seeds, maybe they should have eaten some of the 370,000 seeds?” To be clear, that does not diminish my respect for their restraint (I certainly could not have done that) or Vavilov’s contributions.
They didn’t all die. I haven’t found a denominator in English sources and my Russian researcher has been busy, but my very rough guess is that <1/2 of the staff died. That seems plausibly the outcome of the correct process to me- you start out with a zero-tolerance policy because it’s easier to hold to (and because the highest-metabolism people will die first), but if you get close to having too few staff to protect the seeds, ration them out.
My understanding is that the seeds made it through the siege fine, although a good chunk were lost to ensuing neglect of the institute, so the deaths don’t seem to have hurt the goal.