They certainly distract from the real work of the vault, and its feeder institutions: the world’s agricultural and crop genebanks. But these apocalypses distract from the here-and-now. Most of the reports of the withdrawal noted that SGSV is built to withstand nuclear war. It made its way into most of the headlines that reported the first withdrawal from the vault since its inception in 2008, made by a formerly Syrian-based regional genebank in September 2015.
Doomsday is the worst case scenario that it’s easiest to go to.