Switzerland is spending millions revamping its vast network of bunkers | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland is spending millions revamping its vast network of bunkers

washingtonpost.com

68 pointsbookofjoe29 comments

I'm pretty sure my shelter is under the grocery store across the street from me but the annoying thing is that they don't tell you where your shelter is until you need it. The locations are somewhat secret. I know the location of another civil shelter farther away with the entrance under a highway because it has signs saying it's a shelter...

When I lived in Washington DC instead of shelters everyone had an assigned route for escaping the city by car.

We have an interesting app here in Switzerland - AlertSwiss. It uses your location to warn you about local dangers, like toxic air from a building fire, to landslides, to bad water warnings... you can also see all alerts in Switzerland on a map of the country. Currently there are a couple of landslides and some fires.

Interesting, in Finland we have a much more open approach. Shelters [are clearly marked](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4est%C3%B6nsuoja#/media/...) both on the door itself, and with signs leading to them.

[The large public ones](https://palvelukartta.hel.fi/fi/service/815) are even on published maps. There are lots more than these, though, as any residential building with enough residents need to have their own one built. This means that virtually all buildings have one, though usually it is only up to spec of the year when the building was built. I once lived in a building built in the early 1900s, and even it had a bombshelter in the basement, though very crude by todays standard.

I'm curious, what makes it crude vs. modern? e.g. Construction materials, floorplan, utility systems, amenities? Are the modern ones built stronger?

The article talks about the standards that modern shelters are built to (reinforced concrete, air filtration, water, etc).

Just guessing here. But a shelter need to have mechanical ventilation, and a way to escape if the main door is blocked. So modern shelters usually have a plate at a wall, below ground, and when removed, lets dirt from the outside fall in and provides a way to leave the shelter. Such things may not have existed around 1900.

> plate at a wall, below ground, and when removed, lets dirt from the outside fall in

..collapsed parking garage with four stories above you of reinforced concrete rubble and knotted, melted, corkscrewed rebar? Respect the Swiss, they have a history of collectively trying harder than anyone else.

That's a really good idea I might never have thought of. But I hope they include a shovel or pickaxe or something in the shelter. I'd be worried about the soil in front of the entrance being hardened or full of tree roots.

Yes, according to information I found, shovels are part of the kit.

Newer ones in Finland tend to have these smaller escape hatches + tunnels that lead away from the building. The main blast door being inside the building

How was escape by road was supposed to work? Wouldn't everyone be stuck in traffic as the bombs were falling?

Yes. Almost certainly, the result would be gridlock that would appear chaotic if not for how static and unchanging it is.

So maybe the scenario you describe was always the plan.

After all: Publishing a plan that instills a feeling of preparedness is a lot less costly than building a system that actually works.

In case of nuclear attack, hide under your desks.

That was the feel-good non-starter that I got taught in school (in the US, in the 1980s). We learned it, class-by-class, from then-old film reels projected on a relatively big screen in a relatively small classroom.

So sure, why not?

[1]: https://footagefarm.com/reel-details/nuclear/atomic-bomb/duc... is an example of a tired old film, and I distinctly recall it being shown to my class in a public school sometime in the 1980s. Even though big parts of it were already rather outdated by that time.

Even though neither I nor my classmates were never alive and aware at a time when Civil Defense was a thing.

(Thattaboy, Tony.)

In a major US city? More a coping mechanism.

I was caught up in an evacuation situation on Hilton Head Island where a hurricane turned unexpectedly and the island was evacuated. We were literally packing up to leave for our scheduled departure, so we were close to the front.

Within 15 minutes, the roads were bonkers. Gas stations were out of gas within an hour, and the traffic was beyond insane took about 3-4 hours to get out.

This was in the Fall in a well connected vacation town, not even peak season. People were not panicking. The police and fire departments were present, prepared and professional.

If it were an initial war scenario, maybe 5% of people would get out, and once electricity was disrupted, the whole thing would immediately freeze.

The Swiss/Finn model is the only credible one and addresses only certain threats. They’re looking at protecting against fallout and conventional bombardment. All of the old US civil defense plans were designed around the notion of Russian bombers attacking US cities with atomic bombs, and said bombers getting intercepted by nuclear SAMs and nuclear air to air rockets. NYC, for example, was ringed with Nike batteries so in a war scenario you’d be looking at fallout (even if every bogey was intercepted) and and a disrupted power grid. It went to the wayside once the Soviets deployed ICBMs and hydrogen bombs.

I grew up right next door to a Nike base outside Philadelphia. I don't remember personally but apparently soldiers would have manoeuvres on our property from time to time.

For anyone in the Bay Area there is a Nike base north of the Golden Gate that has tours once or twic a week.

When I was a boy in Milwaukee in the early 60s we often went to play 9-hole short course golf at Lake Park, near Lake Michigan. There was a Nike Minuteman missile silo right next to the course and a big sign that said so, I suppose to make us feel safer.

In Texas, they implement "hurricane lanes," which just means during disasters, you can legally drive on the shoulder. In practice, I've seen it where all lanes are made outbound-only.

If you live within 10 miles of a US Nuclear Facility like me, NRC requires they send an annual calendar marked with siren-testing dates and escape-route maps. You can request free iodine tablets, for use while you're irradiated in traffic.

But IMHO both examples are mostly just coping mechanisms, designed to give panic direction.

https://archive.ph/idfzp

War seems like an unlikely possibility for Switzerland, they are surrounded by the European Union and every nuclear power depends on their free ports to store artworks.

Ports in Switzerland?

Geneva Freeport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport

Big part of Tenet (Nolan movie) plot line

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war"

Germany seriously considered invading Switzerland in 1940 and plans were drawn up. Operation Tannenbaum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum

> every nuclear power depends on their free ports to store artworks

Am I misunderstanding this? Why would artwork stop a war? If I’m fighting a war, I would not flinch at destroying eg the Mona Lisa, and I’m fairly certain heads of state wouldn’t either.

Not neutral?

Sorry, I'm genuinely really trying to understand what you're saying here. Can you elaborate a bit? Are you asking if I personally am neutral? Are you meaning to say that your comment should have said "neutral power" instead of "nuclear power"? Are you trying to say something else? I just cannot understand this thread. Do you genuinely believe that art can stop war? how?

Yes, nations go to war against neutral banking nations all the time, but not without withdrawing their artwork first. /s

I could elaborate the entire context of my past comments, but that wouldn’t be communicating, that would be writing a dictionary.

https://wapo.st/3Lc6YlH

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