The forgotten underground world of Swiss bunkers
swissinfo.ch
swissinfo.ch
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarinabergets_skyddsrum
Google translate link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev...
In a typical Swedish utilitarian way it was designed with two uses in mind:
a) peace-time: parking cars
b) war-time: securing people
Here's a sketch: http://hjak.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/kbgt-ritn.jpg
[1] http://yablor.ru/blogs/vorota-v-podzemnuyu-citadel/1000940 (in Russian, but images are self-explanatory).
I hope that the swiss spirit is not submerged in the ever-rising tide of internationalism.
Anyway, some people would argue that strong privacy protections are a good thing even if they help bad guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money#Black_money...
The Swiss made their fortune on the misfortune of others from Nazi gold to modern dictators they have an entire industry around cleaning effectively blood money.
You could make the same invalid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H argument for encryption.
FTFY
Indian politicians used it for decades to hide their money
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money#Black_money...
denial != debunking
> it can be seen that bank deposits of Indians in Swiss banks have decreased from ` 23,373 crore in year 2006 to ` 9,295 crore in year 2010.
> the share of Indians in the total bank deposits of citizens of all countries in Swiss banks has reduced from 0.29 per cent in 2006 to 0.13 per cent in 2010.
You think they not culpable for the past because money got move around? Or that they are not guilty because the numbers are not astronomical.
Why do you think India is bent on AEOI with the swiss. Just to spite them?
On the other hand, it's hard not to see at least some banks as (still) having a culture of helping foreign customers evade their governments. E.g. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/herve-falcianis...:
"Birkenfeld himself had provided a variety of “concierge” tax-evasion services: he once bought diamonds for an American client, then smuggled them into the U.S. inside a toothpaste tube.
"A 2014 U.S. Senate report describes a Credit Suisse banker travelling to America to meet a client for breakfast at a Mandarin Oriental hotel, and passing along an issue of Sports Illustrated in which account statements were concealed between the pages."
Who needs a bank in Switzerland when you can just have a 50 character long private key?
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, and it definitely did happen, but Switzerland is no longer the place where dark money is hidden -- that's moved on.
We also went on multi-day hikes, and we'd stay in some of these bunkers in the mountains (the whole of Switserland is mountains, but I mean far away from villages or houses - smack dead in the middle of the mountains). We got a tour once from the 'grounds keeper' as it were of the bunker we were at. In the kitchen was a hatch in the floor; it was an air tight hole to put bodies in, because it was quite likely that people would die while inside (either because of pre-existing wounds or due to the stay in there). It never made much sense to me that you'd put such a hole right where you'd normally be cooking (how would that work - 'hey guy peeling the onions, move other because we have another one here'?), but it was too deep to be a storage hole, didn't have anything that indicated being water storage like pump holes or so, so I just nodded and thought 'not sure if surviving a nuclear holocaust is worth it, if you have to spend 6 months in this place for it - and then go out and have to rebuild the world'.
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Hotel_Review-g198848-d306983-...
There has to be at least one, right?
"None" is the wrong answer for the US as well (but the number might be approaching it). In the 50's and 60's the Civil Defense group published books on how to convert a basement into a shelter, or dig one in the back yard. Faced with the immense cost of building community shelters, they instead went about identifying which buildings would be designated as shelters (with minimal-if-any engineering work to see if they'd hold up under the air pressure of a nearby blast). You would see the shelter signs pretty frequently, along with their designed occupancy. A few shelters were stocked with food, water, radios, Geiger counters, and so on. But even that expense was deemed too great. These days the signs are very rare.
Oh, and lots of propaganda films were produced to assure people that nuclear war was survivable.
The approach to this in Manhattan in NYC was beyond farcical. Yes there were shelter signs at various buildings. Presumably their basements would be able to hold a few hundred people each. But consider:
1) what would an H-bomb or two do to Manhattan?
2) if alive, how do several million people survive in Manhattan if there is no water supply?
3) even if there is water, for how long will a few cases of moldy food feed them?
4) what about waste and hygiene? That many people will produce a lot of poop. Does it all stay in the basements if the sewage system isn't functional?
5) etc. As I said, the situation couldn't have been more absurd if it was deliberately written to be a farce. Manhattan wasn't the place to be hunkered down during a nuclear war. The movie Escape From New York depicted a Utopia when compared to what reality would have been.
Thankfully we never had to use any of those shelters during a real war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-28
It's also possible that with today's precision guided bombs that successive impacts of "ordinary" 2000-lb bombs on the same exact spot could destroy a bunker.
From what I can read, it seems to be mainly Switzerland and Scandinavia.
In Sweden during the cold war it was a requirement for many building permits to add a bunker to the basement, so we still have 65,000 bunkers with about 7 million seats. It's very common to go into the basement of e.g. a library or apartment building and have to pass through massive protection doors with air filters. I doubt any of them are still stocked with food/supplies anymore though.