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Comment by aclelland | Hacker News Reader

Yeah there are a lot of very obscure legal rules that most people aren't aware of or haven't been enforced in many years.

Not from as far back but my house was built in the early 1980's and my house deeds include the stipulation that I must maintain a garage attached to the property (so I can't convert it to extra living space) because the local government retain the right to convert the space into a decontamination shelter in the event of chemical, biological or nuclear attack. Had a good chuckle with my lawyer regarding it, don't think I'll be too concerned about where to keep my lawn mower if the city has been nuked.

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In Switzerland, the rule that every house must be constructed with an appropriate fallout shelter has only been relaxed 10 years ago.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-bunker-idUSTRE7B01R...

Years ago, I was doing some C++ training for Texas Instruments in Bedford, England. I remarked to the woman running the course how brutalistically ugly their building was. She said it was to prevent damage from earthquakes. Bedford is not exactly famous for these events, and she explained that TI simply had one (possibly quake proof) building designed, and then built the same one all over the world. She may have been pulling my leg, of course.

Interesting. I live near the TI HQ in Dallas, so I thought I'd take a peek. The Bedford location apparently still exists as "Bedford Heights," and it does look like a mini TI. The Bedford Heights website does call out the "cyclone-proof roof," which they imported directly from the Dallas HQ blueprints.

Ah, thinking back (it was a loooong time ago, and I was only on-site for five days) I think she may have mentioned typhoons.

The thing that really struck me at the time was not so much the building, but the security. There were card-access only doors every few yards, and they wouldn't give me even a visitor card - I had to be escorted to the lav and canteen all the time, which was irritating for all concerned. God knows what they were up to in there - summoning dread Cthulhu?

Back then it was a FAB - does seem excessive I have had a couple of interviews (both avowed jobs) like that.

Huntings wouldn't even let me in the main building and Hanslope Park I was escorted (its much nicer than its description in the laundry files)

Yay, Laundry Files! If you are an IT nerd into Lovecraft, you owe it to yourself to read them.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Laundry_Files

I did a two week contract for a defense research institute once where a senior staff developer had to babysit me like that. He was nice about it, but it must have been really annoying. It was simply easier for them than going through the bureaucracy of getting me a visitor pass for a contract that short.

Singapore still has mandatory bomb shelters.

The wild thing is we still have thousands of nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear-armed states has grown since then. We just perceive a lower risk now-a-days, which I hope holds up.

The number of overall weapons has decreased by thousands. The coldwar is over so the risk nuclear war is lower.

More nations have weapons but the numbers weapons they have is very low and the ability to hit the US doesn't exist for the rogue nations.

We're more aware that in a situation where a local council has to take over your garage for decontanimation

1) You wouldn't have a local council

2) You wouldn't have a garage

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