Building Noah's Ark
The current topic challenge is apocalypse, so I figured I might as well come up with a question about surviving one.
A man named Noah somehow learns that there will be a large flood within one year, which will cover most of the world. He also learns that it is - for some reason - his task to load one male and one female of each species of animal in the world onto an ark, within which they shall ride out the flood.
Realizing that there exists an uncountable number of species on the planet, he take a shortcut and chooses a select few, which, by a staggering coincidence, just so happen to represent every species contained in the Bronx Zoo.
Noah sets to work designing this ark. He understands that he's dealing with a complex web of animal interactions. He has to keep all the animals alive (i.e. stop them from killing each other) for a long period of time, and he has to keep them healthy (i.e. able to reproduce at the end).
He doesn't want to cram all the animals into stalls, which would be the easy way out. Animals need to run free once in a while, so they need to be in a place similar to their natural habitat. He therefore decides to replicate the nine biomes of the world, as given in the Walter system. Animals will be placed into one of these biomes.
Can Noah recreate all nine biomes on board his ark?
I should add that, to make things feasible, Noah has a net worth of ten billion U.S. dollars and all of today's technology. He needs to keep this whole thing quiet, so the only people working on it will be him, his wife, and his ten sons and daughters.
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