Nobody is permitted to die...

Welcome to Longyearbyen (literally the city of the long year), a town that's so pro-life that nobody is permitted to die. In fact, it's illegal for anyone to die in this peaceful little Norwegian town, and should anyone break that law they'll find that they wont be buried as the town's graveyard stopped taking bodies over seventy years ago. A strange effect of the cold weather there means that bodies don't decompose, being preserved in permafrost along with any diseases they may have had. Anyone that does take a walk on the wild side of the law and passes away has their body shipped to another part of the country to be buried...

Situated near Longyearbyen is the "Doomsday Vault", an arctic safe capable of storing and preserving millions of seeds. The "Doomsday Vault" is one of many contingency plans spread around the world to help humankind survive something akin to a massive meteor hit or nuclear war.

So it goes, at least according to a rather old, but arresting, post by The Dark Furie that I came across recently. I'd quibble with the phrase "strange effect of the cold", though - there's nothing very strange about bodies failing to decompose in the chill of the Svalbard permafrost.