How Baltic and Nordic countries are preparing for a crisis or war | Hacker News Reader

How Baltic and Nordic countries are preparing for a crisis or war

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48 pointsCTOSian52 comments

The ongoing Ukraine war is what prevents these countries from being invaded now. Winning that war by destroying Russia’s ability to produce conventional weapons, and exhausting its supply of military age men, will protect these countries and NATO for at least a decade. Which is time Europe needs to prepare.

NATO would already crush Russia in a purely conventional war several times over. However, posturing can be a lot cheaper than conflict.

Unfortunately it takes both (all?) sides to keep a war conventional.

>NATO would already crush Russia in a purely conventional war several times over. However,

.....no nato country (or alliance therein) wants to deal with the shitshow that would follow, immediately- or longterm, afterwards.

With the new Trump admin, it would seem more feasible for Russia to go nuclear early. Unless the UK and France decide to step in, I doubt the the US nuclear umbrella would be in effect after 1/20

We know that England and France would have crushed Hitler in 1937.

Sadly war is influenced by politics and when people want peace at any price dictators can get away with setting the world on fire.

> The ongoing Ukraine war is what prevents these countries from being invaded now.

What prevented them from being invaded before the Ukraine war?

NATO

Are you sure it wasn't a complete lack of interest in invading them?

Very sure

Pretty sure. I am from Lithuania (Baltic country) and here some reasons why Russia might find us worthy to occupy again: it is hard to defend Baltic countries from Russia, we were ruining Russia’s image before it was cool to do, Suwalki corridor

Very sure.

It does seem quite likely that, by the time Putin made the decision he did in 2022 -- if he could have also grabbed the Baltics, he would have.

"The Norwegian information also talks about how to survive for three days without power"

The prepping recommendation for Norway has been increased to a week.

That's also true in the US. FEMA says to prep for a week now.[1] Used to be 72 hours. In recent large-scale floods, which are now happening in areas that did not used to have them, areas have been cut off for a week.

[1] https://www.ready.gov/kit

Here's the Swedish pamphlet mentioned in the article: https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf

"The Norwegian information also talks about how to survive for three days without power"

I mean canned food etc is useful but you wouldn't even die from starvation if you stood outside for that amount of time.

Standing outside wouldn’t work for a good portion of the year…

In most of the Nordics a significant portion of the population would easily die after around 12-24 hours of no power for large parts of the year. It's very goddamned cold up here.

In the places where people actually live in large numbers it's not quite that severe, but yes it can get cold.

Old and young children, especially those living in cities or apartments would be in real trouble if heating cut out. They might not own enough thick blankets, and do not have alternative ways of heating their home.

Good grief. Blankets?!

I don't know anyone that doesn't have a proper winter coat, gloves, boots, hat and so on. Inside, you're away from the biting wind, and the elements.

It's literally not problem unless you're very sick.

The pamphlet mentions both warm winter clothing and blankets as good to have ready. There’s no recommendation to have one and not the other.

It's just so weird. Everyone has a blanket on their bed. If not that, a thick comforter type thing.

You can actually put on more than one shirt too. If it's super cold, you can put on more than one pair of pants. You can put on more than one pair of socks.

If you're strange and your bed doesn't have blankets, you can put clothes over your bed. Most people have 5 to 10 pairs of pants, and a dozen shirts, a few sweaters. Put those on when awake + your winter coat. Put those clothes on the bed when sleeping. Works like a charm.

“Most people are prepared” is a great situation. Regardless, we still see folks in vulnerable situations die when the power goes out in extreme heat or cold. The minority that aren’t or can’t be prepared are the ones that need these guides most.

Heat is typically a problem, you can only take off so many clothes.

Cold typically isn't when at home. That why I have this reaction. You can just put on more and more clothes. There are ways to keep warm. Most deaths from cold are outside, where there are no supplies.

It's cold here in Scandinavia. Nighttime temperatures are below freezing for half a year in a good chunk of the land. Winters are in general cold for a significant part of the population, three days without heating would be a serious danger if you don't know how to keep your home (relatively) warm in an emergency. When outside temperatures are around -15C, a house with no power can easily get cold enough to risk hypothermia. And in the winter, -30C is perfectly ordinary.

I struggle to think of a way of keeping an entire house or apartment warm without power.

Is there an actual solution recommended by the respective governments for this or was the problem reformulated into keeping one or more persons warm instead?

I figure we'd all just go to the country side, where people still have houses with chimneys that use wood for heat, and hope we fit.

Home design helps. I'm in a very old earth bermed home and even if the temperature outside is -25F (-31.3C) the coldest it gets if I don't have the heat on is about 42F (5.5C) and that's just because my windows are really old and the door weather strip is decomposing. If I throw a few logs in the wood stove it can get too hot. I doubt there are many earth bermed apartments however. I would probably just put on my snow pants, jacket, hat. Snow rated clothing make a big difference. That is what I would stock up on along with other layers underneath. If I had to sleep outside I would add a tarp, a lot of rocks and some paracord. Not saying it would be fun.

> If I had to sleep outside I would add a tarp […]

Outside you need to add something to insulate you from heat loss to the ground or it is colder than you would want.

Instead of rocks (I’m sure that was a joke), add closed cell insulation, like polystyrene. Five cm of that beneath you, and you will sleep warm and toasty.

Instead of rocks (I’m sure that was a joke)

Not a joke at all. If the tarp is big enough, fold it into a half tent and put rocks at each end, then cover them in snow to create a mini-wall and hold the tarp in place from wind. The tarp itself needs to point up-wind to block it. It will block the wind and new snow. If wearing the right snow clothing the only killer is wind. The snow below the tarp will be fine, again if wearing the right snow clothing. Adding layers above the tarp is great if it's an option. I was just basing that on what can be easily carried in a ruck-sack as I assume the only people sleeping outside can't afford lodging. That insulation roll can be rolled up and attached under the ruck-sack if it is small enough and/or flexible enough.

[Edit] For completeness sake, if they are homeless and do not have good snow clothing then the first thing they should be doing is begging, borrowing or stealing their way onto a train heading towards the equator.

We have winter sleeping bags for the whole family. Although we don’t live in Northern Europe it is good to have them at home.

You can't keep it warm but you can conserve heat as much as possible. You're supposed to add extra insulation by covering the windows with blankets, pick a space in the house where everyone will be and additionally insulate that main space from the rest of the house, use candles as it's safe to.

Our houses are generally quite well insulated due to the climate. Government preparedness info says a modern house (~15 years old) can go four full days in -20C weather before inside temperatures drop to 5C. A typical 70s row house would drop to that after 48 hours but a 70s brick house can drop that low after just 24 hours. So depending on your house and location, the specific plan for a 3-day outage can range from "you'll be fine as long as you have blankets" to "you need a fireplace or other heater with fuel for at least a few hours a day".

In Canada, things called "storms" sometimes knock out power lines. The result is no power!

I've been without power for days in the cold, and have been compelled to put on my coat... inside! Most Canadians do this, rather than trying to keep an entire house warm at -40C.

It's really a non issue.

Worried?

* Buy a few large candles. Just one provides a lot of warmth if you cup your hands around it.

* Eat more. You need 2x your calories when it is cold. Food means life in the cold.

I don't know about houses but I've camped a while in those temperatures and with heavy down sleeping bags, suits and insulated boots it's fine. I never really felt cold.

> you wouldn't even die from starvation if you stood outside for that amount of time

Right, you would die of hypothermia much earlier

They're not worried about you dying in five days. They're worried about breakdown of law and order.

What we really need to become as prepared as we once was is mandatory conscription. It used to cover almost all men, today I think it covers 7-8 percent of those in the right age. Without having seen the defense from the inside, it must feel foreign and abstract. But it concerns us all and should not be something for a just a few.

In mandatory conscription armies, soldiers deliberately miss the shots because nobody wants to suffer from remorse

While I am firmly of the belief that volunteer armies are preferable to conscription, I would wager the number of conscripted folks willing to shoot at someone invading their homeland is high enough for this to not matter.

For a modern war in europe? Seems to me you need air superiority more than you need warm bodies with three weeks rifle training. And not much more the nordics can do for that considering they are allied with the US already and would allow them to use all ports and air strips.

The ukraine situation is a little different specifically because the US doesn’t want to destroy all russian air forces in a day like in desert storm and escalate things further.

NATO does not have unlimited, or even especially deep, precision munition depth. There is absolutely a need for warm bodies manning anti-tank, artillery, and now FPV drone (10-20km range), positions.

Conscription in Sweden is 9-12 months, depending on role. In 2023 it was 6000 men and women. Much fewer than when I did my service in the 80s, about 35 000/year then. The length is similar though.

The European defense in general hasn’t switched to drone based defense at the same level that Ukraine seems to have done relatively successfully.

My point is that you need it for mental preparedness.

As long as it's equal and not sexist.

Why should I have to sacrifice a year or two of my life being bullied and abused, while in my country women get to retire five years earlier?

Biology

And in which case a society that accepts this is bound to open Pandora's box.

What comes out of the box?

That is how every society was pretty recently, how is that a Pandoras box? We know exactly what that looks like.

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