Oreo builds 'Doomsday' vault to protect its cookies from possible asteroid crash: 'Really real'

Editor's note: This article was originally published on December 30, 2022. It has since been updated.

In 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built to serve as the last hope in case the plant life on Earth comes to an end. The facility was made on the side of a mountain and has more than one million seed samples. But have you ever wondered what would people do if they want to have some cookies in case of an apocalypse? Oreo has already thought through it and built a Global Oreo Vault in 2020 right down the road from the seed vault, according to Food & Wine.

While announcing its Global Oreo Vault the brand called it, “really real,” though it's smaller than the seed vault. The brand said that the facility has “the Oreo recipe and a large stockpile of cookies." So if in case of an apocalypse on our planet, one could surely find cookies at the coordinates 78° 08' 58.1" N, 16° 01' 59.7" E. However, if one will be able to find milk is quite uncertain.

Oreo released a bunch of videos on YouTube about the vault. It included Oreo executives in the advertisements and the brand had gone the extra mile to make sure that the cookies are safe inside the vault. They said, “As an added precaution, the Oreo packs are wrapped in mylar, which can withstand temperatures from -80 degrees to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and is impervious to chemical reactions, moisture, and air, keeping the cookies fresh and protected for years to come.” The videos talk about an asteroid hit on Earth. It is based on NASA’s announcement in August 2020, they had said that a “very small” asteroid called 2018VP1 had a 0.41 percent chance of entering the Earth’s atmosphere in the first week of November. They had clarified that it wouldn’t be a concern as it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.

However, Oreo decided to take it seriously and built the vault. So that no matter what happens in the coming years, Oreo cookies could be safe for people to have. The brand said, "It was our civic duty to take the potential threat seriously and to work day and night to protect the future of OREO Cookies for our civilization. But how? By building an asteroid-proof vault in Svalbard, Norway, filling it with a stockpile of OREO Cookies, and documenting the entire journey along the way."

People on the internet had more questions about the vault. ” A user asked, “@Oreo how am I supposed to get into the Oreo doomsday vault during the apocalypse if there’s a secret code to get in?” Another wrote, “Oreos built a doomsday bunker… they know something we don’t,” as reported by HITC. Talking about the amazing response that they received from the campaign, the brand said, "We created more than 40 pieces of multi-platform social content which resulted in nearly 4MM organic impressions, 324K+ video views, and 178K+ engagements in only five days. Our Instagram post that showed the special OREO packs wrapped in protective casing drove 72% more engagements than OREO’s benchmark," according to Shorty Awards.