system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 How do plant seeds still work after hundreds or thousands of years?
gpt
Most plant seeds will not live that long. They have a finite amount of chemical energy stored within them and no way to get more; while their metabolisms are *nearly* zero, they aren't completely dead, and will still use up that energy.

That said, seeds are basically hardy batteries of chemical energy that the un-germinated plant uses *very* slowly until it's time to sprout. They can survive extreme conditions and don't really need to do anything, so they can wait a very long time. Under ideal conditions, such as the Svalbard seed vault, the cold slows the plant metabolism down much further, even pausing it. As long as conditions don't change, the timer on their expiration date is effectively paused.