Why does Switzerland have so many bunkers?

https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/issue-27/switzerland-civilian-bunkers

by pseudolus • 1 year ago

161 172 1 year ago

Founded in the idea to make it too expensive for Nazi Germany to invade.

But in the end it was more successful to just trade with Nazi Germany, buy stolen Jewish gold and stolen gold from occupied countries, send back Jews to be killed, deliver raw material for arms and sell weapons to the Nazis to not be invaded.

[Edit] Sorry, thought this was well known.

* NYT / "The (Not So) Neutrals of World War II"

https://archive.is/kogL7#selection-275.0-275.37

* "For reasons that are still uncertain, Hitler never ordered the invasion. One theory is that a neutral Switzerland would have been useful to hide Nazi gold and to serve as a refuge for war criminals in case of defeat"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum

* "In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million (equivalent to $8.5 billion in 2024) of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold

* "Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Na...

* "The Boat Is Full"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Is_Full

* "Seven studies released on Friday by the Independent Commission of Experts (ICE) show that the lion’s share of Swiss munitions exports went to the Axis powers."

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/swiss-supplied-...

* "The studies found evidence that the Swiss authorities only superficially inspected goods traffic transiting through Switzerland allowing the Nazis to transfer essential products, possibly even war material, from Germany to Italy and north Africa."

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/wartime-probe-r...

vincnetas• 1 year ago

So basically Dwarves who were digging for mithril and other minerals and awakened Balrog. Im curious is there a map that maps Europe on to Middle-earth and what would the Baltic states be :)

eloisant• 1 year ago

I think Tokien seriously took inspiration from various European peoples to create the Middle-Earth races.

secretsatan• 1 year ago

Switzerland is more well known for their Gnomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_of_Zurich

Physkal2• 1 year ago

With such large accusations I was honestly expecting sources.

atoav• 1 year ago

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweiz_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg In German.

As someone from the region: I also have read this a few times in different sources over my life, with no controversy about it at all. This is pretty much how it is written in the history books and it also makes sense.

willy_k2• 1 year ago

I’m as much a fan of thoughtless AI forwarding as the next HNer, but this seems like a fair situation for it:

https://chatgpt.com/share/68199e8e-5ad4-8012-8026-09fa353b60...

FirmwareBurner• 1 year ago

Can you use Google or LLM chatbots? Because it's all public information everyone can find.

4ggr0• 1 year ago

I get that you want sources, but this is a veeeeery known fact, at least for europeans, I guess. That's one of the first things which gets mentioned about Switzerland if you ask others to describe it.

It's like asking for sources when someone talks about the US having been to war with [INSERT RANDOM COUNTRY].

abc05xx• 1 year ago

The problem with ChatGPT is: People who have only limited amount of knowledge should not use it. Bunkers were built in phases and many during the cold war. Bunkers in houses started in the sixties. So your statement is not true. Because Switzerland was not prepared, they had to resort to other means.

jeffrallen2• 1 year ago

This is the definitive history, as researched by an independent commission in Switzerland:

https://www.uek.ch/en/index.htm

Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy. Living with a bully next door is not.

aredox6• 1 year ago

Switzerland went above and beyond "accomodating a bully next door": they enabled its rearmament of Germany post-WW1, circumventing the Versailles Treaty; and they sheltered the Nazi networks (e.g. François Genoud) and money post-WW2, helping the neo-nazi rise in Europe and the juntas in South America - again, Germany wasn't in a position to bully the Swiss. Switzerland and the Swiss banks made absolutely no effort to come clean after 1945 until they were forced by international pressure 50 years (!) later.

And until 1997 and a famous documentary, L'Honneur perdu de la Suisse - which was censored until 2006 - the Swiss had absolutely no memory of their real role during WWII.

And see how they treated Paul Gruninger after the war: https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...

KingOfCoders6• 1 year ago

"Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy"

The report says exactly what I'm saying,

"send back Jews to be killed"

From the report: "The measures agreed in August 1938 to turn back unwanted immigrants were implemented ruthlessly; [..] It even happened that border guards struck refugees with the butts of their rifles to bar them from crossing the border"

"sell weapons to the Nazis"

From the report: By far the most arms were sold to Germany and Italy, e.g. page 200

"buy stolen Jewish gold and stolen gold from occupied countries"

From the report: "During the Second World War, Switzerland was the most important market for gold from the territories controlled by the Third Reich. Almost four-fifths of the Reichsbank’s gold shipments abroad were arranged via Switzerland."

somedude895• 1 year ago

Switzerland’s policy to provide shelter to every single resident in the event of a crisis was first enshrined into law in 1963.

Your rant has nothing to do with the article.

KingOfCoders6• 1 year ago

From the article,

"That DNA is inherited directly from World War II, when bunkers were already an established part of Swiss military strategy. In the early ‘40s, when neutral Switzerland was entirely surrounded by Axis powers, the army famously stocked the Swiss Réduit (“National Redoubt”), a series of military fortifications in the central Alps dating to the 1880s, with supplies and ammunition to prepare for a potential Nazi invasion."

From my post,

"Founded in the idea to make it too expensive for Nazi Germany to invade."

panick21_5• 1 year ago

I'm not sure what you mean by 'in the end it was more successful'

All these polices operate together its not like the first did one, then the other. Depending on the situation the adjusted policy many times. And they also had many polices that you didn't mention, like an active air war and air defense against Germany (and the allies at time). I don't know what you are basing the claim on that one was more successful then the others.

Also, why are you using a fictional movie as source for anything? I do not think people were actually kicked out, only denied entry. At least I have not read about that, anybody can provide a source for that?

Here some information about the denial of asylum:

"According to the Bergier Commission final report, during the Second World War, Switzerland granted asylum to 25,000 Jews while denying around 20,000 refugees (of which a significant portion were estimated to be Jewish) admission to the country in total.[42] However, Serge Klarsfeld, the French-Jewish historian, activist and Nazi Hunter stated in 2013 that the Swiss authorities rejected fewer WWII Jewish refugees than believed. Based on his own research, Klarsfeld claimed that the number of entry denials was closer to 3000."

The report on arms revealed that from 1940 to 1944, 84 per cent of Swiss munitions’ exports went to Axis countries.

Of course more trade goes to Axis in this period, as Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis on literally all side.

And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal. It would have been literally insane not to sell things like munitions to Germany in that situation.

aredox6• 1 year ago

And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal.

Switzerland went through WWII without suffering much - and never came clean after WWII until the 1990s, remaining a rear base of nazi and neo-nazi networks during the second half of the XXth century.

aredox6• 1 year ago

It doesn't excuse their treatment of "Righteous Among the Nations" like Paul Gruninger.

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...

jajko3• 1 year ago

Why the need to attack and lie? That's a poor behavior and a typical propaganda I've often seen from webs around topics like nanochips in vaccines or pro-putin ones (or simply joint work of gru and fsb massive electronic propaganda departments).

Not going to address all that bullshit since that would be a long post, just a random one - Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland and treating it similarly to Austria, simply deprioritized it. Just look at the map, everything around was firmly in Axis, they were not going anywhere, he could just starve them.

The cost of invasion for him would be massive for next to 0 gains - tons of hard-to-conquer mountains, fiercely defensive population that hates to be subjugated, and as Machiavelli said 'most free and most armed nation in the world".

They were not saint, simply neutral, it doesn't seem you understand the concept quite a bit.

Also heard about how they were accepting refugees and jews to the point of clearly facing famine (since they had nowhere to go), then famous 'Das Boot ist voll' happened, and they kept bringing them in regardless? Show me any nation in modern history when facing such existential threat with no hope that would behave so morally. Good contrast ie with current US admin treatment of almost all foreigners. Also helped secretly allies ie set up and access command post in Campione d'Italia - technically an Italian territory but surrounded by Switzerland. And so on...

KingOfCoders6• 1 year ago

If you perceive a statement of verifiable fact as an attack, it's about you not about the fact.

"lie"

Where?

"bullshit"

Not an argument.

"Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland"

Yes - see the links of my post. But he didn't. And it was not my argument.

"Show me any nation in modern history"

Whataboutism is still not an argument.

NaOH• 1 year ago

Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25331474 - Dec 2020 (119 comments)

The forgotten underground world of Swiss bunkers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12430234 - Sept 2016 (50 comments)

intellectronica• 1 year ago

And why does it have so many bankers?

ithkuil• 1 year ago

Swiss bankers live within a levenshtein distance of 1 from a bunker

iamflimflam1• 1 year ago

Underrated comment.

throwanem• 1 year ago

Only Swiss bunkers, though.

yard2010• 1 year ago

That's bonkers.

durkie• 1 year ago

This is mentioned in the John McPhee book referenced elsewhere in the thread, because there is actually an answer: when the cantons stopped fighting and Switzerland/Helvetica Confederation was formed, the Swiss finance/banking system developed to handle all the money being brought in by those folks acting as mercenaries and being paid to fight other people’s wars.

jeffrallen2• 1 year ago

Germany, Austria, Italy and France: With friends like these who needs enemies? :)

aredox6• 1 year ago

And yet it is the Swiss who waged wars in all these countries - as mercenaries.

The last two wars between the Swiss and their neighbours were in 1531 and during Napoleon - who in the end admired the Swiss confederacy and helped rebirth it in its modern form.

lazide2• 1 year ago

Being the source of mercenaries is literally the opposite of waging war as the country.

That they weren’t waging war does result in excess men who someone else can pay to wage war for them though.

PicassoCTs2• 1 year ago

Thats the fate of all mountainous countries with population surplus? They used to send children to work abroad in medieval times. They often were used as cannonfood armies and mercenaries. Same thing in Afghanistan. Should have introduced the canton system to the taliban. Much more reasonable model for that area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_children

mytailorisrich• 1 year ago

Mercenaries were very common at the time and Switzerland shares the languages of its neighbours, which probably makes it even easier to seek "employment".

panick21_5• 1 year ago

Switzerland waged wars with all of these 'countries', before the were primary mercenaries.

aivisol• 1 year ago

That is how you ensure your neutrality.

alexey-salmin• 1 year ago

Not directly related, but I don't that model works anymore. Switzerland is landlocked and surrounded by the European Union that unlike the independent neighbors of the past applies pressure coherently. Over the years Switzerland seems more and more aligned with both EU and US and I don't think they have much of a choice.

input_sh2• 1 year ago

Austria is also militarily neutral. Not a part of NATO and >60% of Austrians were always against joining NATO.

senderista2• 1 year ago

Surely this is related to their (brief) Soviet occupation? I always thought it was a miracle that they didn't end up behind the Iron Curtain.

fasouto• 1 year ago

This is a bit random, but when I was an intern at CERN I spent a summer living in an old civil defense bunker near Geneva.

Short-term accommodation was notoriously expensive for students back then (probably even worse now), and I didn't hesitate when they offered me this unconventional housing opportunity.

The bunker had a decontamination zone, air filtering system, massive concrete doors, a large communal kitchen, and numerous small bunk beds. It was adequate for short-term use, but we encountered two main issues:

- It's remarkably easy to lose track of time without natural light cues

- Even with the air filering system wet clothes wouldn't dry properly inside

bschne2• 1 year ago

I'm in civil protection service in Switzerland and occasionally spend a few days at a time in one of these doing basically office work or running refresher courses etc., definitely agree on the losing track of time thing --- can't count the number of times I've come up at 4--5pm and been extremely surprised by how light or dark, sunny or rainy it was

amelius3• 1 year ago

Of course there's a technical solution:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43497394

pjmlp• 1 year ago

It was already a pain in 2003 and the whole process looks like hunting for a job with interview process and everything.

For us it was a schock, versus the usual "you can pay it is yours", first come first served that we had back in Portugal.

However while not living in a bunker, we did have parties in some somehow converted into clubs.

firefax• 1 year ago

while not living in a bunker, we did have parties in some somehow converted into clubs.

Apparently in Bratislava, there is a club inside what was a fallout bunker underneath what was the king's palace but now serves as the residence of the... PM I think? Maybe president? My memory is hazy.

(Not due to the technobunker party sadly -- I was passing through on a weekday and it was sadly closed, so no uhn tiss tiss for me.)

baxtr2• 1 year ago

Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?

jamiek88• 1 year ago

Time is a feeling too, it’s the sense of time that goes awry. Like casinos attempt to mimic.

rollcat• 1 year ago

Your body will disagree with the watch at some point.

Imagine being stuck sick at home or in the hospital for an extended period of time - you will lose track of which weekday it is.

udev4096• 1 year ago

Past, present and future is nothing but a stubborn illusion!

palmotea6• 1 year ago

Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?

No, just like the existence of books or the internet doesn't relieve you of needing to know stuff.

Everyone has internal sense of time that relies on external natural cues. A watch is a kludgy bolt-on that's not well integrated with one's awareness.

AStonesThrow2• 1 year ago

26 years ago I was interviewing for a sysadmin job in an academic setting. And I was invited to my prospective coworker's office. He was a software developer, mostly, but jack-of-all-trades for the office systems. There was a lot of data processing involved.

His office featured a Sun workstation on his desktop, and a desk piled rather high with paperwork and whatnot. There was absolutely no wall clock anywhere to be found. His workstation's desktop also did not feature a clock. There was really no indication of the passage of time in that space.

I drank in the import of this, and I asked him if it was true, and he agreed readily. I was sort of amazed. But it was also quite humbling that he could construct such a space, where he could basically throw himself into his work and dedicate as much time as necessary, until his stomach or fatigue drew him back into the real world.

Onavo• 1 year ago

How do you deal with the mold problem?

seb1204• 1 year ago

Control moisture in the air?

AStonesThrow2• 1 year ago

In high school we were having growing pangs, and so several of my classes were held in temporary trailers that had been hauled onto campus for that purpose. They were serviceable and not particularly hostile, and arguably more modern than the existing classrooms we were using anyway.

Then I graduate and enroll in a cushy university (UCSD) and come to find out, they're also having growing pangs, and so in the middle of campus we found ourselves taking classes in Quonset huts. These Quonset huts were bona fide military surplus, though it was already 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut

The Quonset huts were extraordinarily different from the classrooms and lab facilities we used on campus; they were, of course, comparatively set out in the wilderness, and very rough accommodations overall.

However, I was a commuting student, and nobody was living in Quonset huts, so after our hourlong class was dismissed, I was able to retreat to the relative comfort of home, or the Theodore Geisel library.

bschne2• 1 year ago

In high school we were having growing pangs

weren't we all...

linksnapzz• 1 year ago

I worked at UCSD in one of the "temporary" classroom/offices next to the Eucalyptus Point dining hall. We had a family of raccoons under ours for several years, which I blamed on the questionable shoring and piers that supported those.

In addition, one of my co-workers was heavy enough such that he could deform the floor in one just by standing up and walking around, so much so that pens/markers would roll off nearby desks as he went past.

elashri2• 1 year ago

Summer students at CERN lives in CERN Meyrin hostel nowadays. I heard that this make life much easier for them. But it is more affordable than anything in Geneva or Meyrin. And definitely would fit the low O(2) accepted students. At the expense of "gently" kicking everyone else.

rz2k• 1 year ago

Hopefully the students weren’t low O_2 when they lived in bunkers.

thatfrenchguy• 1 year ago

- It's remarkably easy to lose track of time without natural light cues

What was wild to me moving to the US from France was how many office buildings have many rooms without windows: you could be in your office or in meeting rooms and there are just zero natural light. Same in doctor's offices where you're always seen in a windowless window. Would drive me crazy if I had to work there all day.

macNchz• 1 year ago

Windowless office spaces are so miserable to me. Often under-ventilated and overlit with unpleasant artificial light as well.

On this topic, something window-related that’s common in France but rare in the US is functional shutters—it’s so nice to be able to completely close a shutter outside your bedroom window and have pitch blackness, regardless of the light outside. The best you get in a typical American house is "blackout" curtains or shades that leak tons of light around the edges.

dekhn• 1 year ago

I strongly prefer windowless offices for work. The outside looks distracting (enticing), people walk by, the light is bright, etc. My ideal work environment would be a small room with a door that closes and excellent sound isolation and ambient lighting control. But I am definitely not typical.

pyuser583• 1 year ago

More modern buildings are nothing but transparent glass. It feels like working in a fishbowl.

sschueller• 1 year ago

I recently found out there in a command bunker (K85) smack in the middle of Stadelhofen, Zürich. It was only declassified in 2009. The primary access is via the tunnel. The 30m shaft was originally used while constructing the tunnel but was never filled in and turned into the bunker. It went into operation in 1989 and closed in 2009 but is still used as an emergency tunnel exist in case of a fire etc.

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@mikealpharomeotangoindia/video/74960... (in Swiss German)

LooerCell• 1 year ago

If you want to read more about the topic and about the readiness of the Swiss army, I can recommend a short book by John McPhee called La Place de la Concorde Suisse

bilekas• 1 year ago

Fun fact, Finland also has a lot of bunkers, for more obvious reasons, enough I believe to host their whole population.

The TLDR : they are obliged to have bunkers for a given population in an area thanks to Russian military aggression over the years.

Finland has around 50,500 civil defence shelters with space for about 4.8 million people

https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410869/finland-has-civil-def...

PicassoCTs2• 1 year ago

Its the hood that maketh the bunker a good idea..

diggan• 1 year ago

Similarly, my home country Sweden also has a bunch of civil defense shelters, built during the cold war if I remember correctly, as we've been scared of the Russians for a long time too.

There are around 64,000 civil defence shelters in Sweden, with space for around seven million people. Shelters can be found in various types of buildings, such as residential and industrial properties, and are marked with a special sign. In peacetime, a civil defence shelter can be used for other purposes.

https://www.msb.se/en/advice-for-individuals/civil-defence-s...

Anyone growing up in Sweden would recognize these orange/blue triangles indicating a shelter, and the large metal doors in your apartment-building cellar, where you store old shit you no longer use.

t1E9mE7JTRjf• 1 year ago

Wait until you see Albania.

surfingdino• 1 year ago

"Concrete military bunkers are a ubiquitous sight in Albania, with an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square kilometer (14.7 per square mile)."

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania

CTDOCodebases• 1 year ago

For anyone interested this the bunkers and their history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bPIaHg11mI

eternaut• 1 year ago

Because they are a rough state, with a banking system needed by organised crime as well as dictators, warlords etc. All those bunkers because they rightfully fear to get pay back for centuries of being the "Schurkenstaat" that they are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

palmotea6• 1 year ago

I envy these European countries, who can manage to do things collectively that make sense to do collectively.

Vs. America, which is all just "hooray individualism: you're all on your own."

mlinhares2• 1 year ago

There are places where it happens in America, its just very hard to do that in such a large country without leaders that want to make it happen. Its much more profitable for politicians to have a population that doesn't want to work together and keeps fighting each other for transgender rights when they can't make ends meet and are one step away from being homeless.

I think the last chance we had for a politician that was somewhat visionary was with the first Obama term but he was too entrenched in the politics to actually drive any real change, with all that bipartisanship bullshit. Now they will just continue to invest in driving a wedge between the population to prevent them from noticing they're in a class war.

amiga386• 1 year ago

Another way to look at it is through the lens of nationalism. Other countries, which have formed around nations (which are groups of people with a collective identity), have an inherent need to care for "their" people. Slovakia is 83.8% Slovak. Portugal is 87.8% Portuguese. Poland is 98.8% Polish. [*]

America is a country of immigrants. Apart from the brutally oppressed indigenous population, everyone is from somewhere else. Hence the Americans' obsession with heritage (the Italian-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the Black Americans, etc.), and even grouping as blocs based on their ancestry - it is because they don't see themselves as being an American nation?

[*] This can be a problem in its own right, e.g. the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnians by Serbians, the players in the Balkan war each wanted "their" people on "their" side of the border, and murdered or displaced others to make it so. Also, to be fair, a number of European countries no longer collect nationality/ethnicity, including the Swiss, possibly because they don't want such maps to exist for any future nationalists to make use of.

psunavy032• 1 year ago

That's a fairly sophomoric take, to be honest. Not only is Europe a large place which can't be homogenized into one culture, so is the US. Unless you really think California and Texas will approach a problem the same? Or New York vs Alabama?

And a lot of these "collectivist" things in Europe are being proven to have been underwritten by the US defense budget, and now that that's no longer the case, uncomfortable conversations are starting to occur on the eastern side of the pond.

an0malous• 1 year ago

Do you have examples of the underwritten things? I haven’t heard of this

Synaesthesia2• 1 year ago

The US achieved a lot collectively, they created a really public education system for instance.

k4rli• 1 year ago

US colleges however seems about the same level of education one receives in the 3 yrs of high school in Europe.

yodsanklai• 1 year ago

My impression is that "public" is a very politically charged term in the US. Lots of people are suspicious of anything "public".

jsbg• 1 year ago

Vs. America, which is all just "hooray individualism: you're all on your own."

Switzerland is about half the size of Maine. Not everything is about your perceived failings of American culture.

brummm• 1 year ago

What does size have to do with it? Switzerland also has less GDP, less tax revenue and less people to build things.

palmotea6• 1 year ago

Switzerland is about half the size of Maine. Not everything is about your perceived failings of American culture.

But this is. This is about attitudes, not size.

herbst• 1 year ago

Switzerland has 4 languages and even more highly different cultures and yet ...

BjoernKW• 1 year ago

Switzerland is one of the few examples where such collective large-scale (i.e. state-run) endeavours still work.

In many other countries it’s rather crumbling infrastructure and massive public spending and bureaucracy with little to show for.

dmje• 1 year ago

My (probably naive) take on this is that America / the American Dream is founded on this principle of individualism / "boy done good" / "everyone can make something of themselves", and thus maybe a deep fear of collectivism? So:

1) wide dislike of any sort of social support mechanism (no public healthcare, poor support for the elderly / infirm / etc)

2) long history of anti-socialism and major fear of anything more radical, "reds under the bed" etc etc

3) little funding going towards big public infrastructure projects - I had a link to a well researched article - but can't now find it - talking about how US roads, powergrid, etc, is all crumbling away because nothing has been invested in significantly for decades

4) things like private prisons, all with profit-making as motive rather than anything wider such as societal good being considered

As a lefty, this all makes me chuckle - the idea that anyone could be foolish enough to think they can do anything alone without a huge lifelong support network just seems ridiculous. Even the most "self-made" founder who "came from nothing" has had to lean heavily on buses, trains, schools, universities, medical aid, electricity, their families, friends, the internet...

As someone once said, no man is an island - or I guess "it takes a village to raise a child" - so paying it forwards or backwards in taxes is a no-brainer if you think about it rationally.

Here endeth the socialist lesson.

mig39• 1 year ago

I'd love someone to explain HOAs to me. They seem very prevalent in the USA. And it's the opposite of "freedom."

stronglikedan• 1 year ago

Considering that America has contributed much more good to the world in general than any other country, I'd say whatever attitude America has is the right one. But I can say that it's not the attitude that you claim it is.

chrisdhoover• 1 year ago

The US had civil defense, air raid sirens and fallout shelters. Students practiced duck and cover. The paranoia was real. It led to the star wars defense program and out spending the Soviet union until they collapsed.

Switzerland is surrounded by belligerents who have historically been at war with each other. France vs Italy. Italy versus Austria and Germany against everyone.

Your take ignores the history of accomplishment in the US. The founding, the constitution, settling the continent , building great cities, industrialization, defeating Nazis, building the Interstate highway system, landing on the moon and placing satellites in space, creating world changing technology to name but a few.

rapjr9• 1 year ago

This raises a question in my mind as a US citizen. The US is planning on spending a trillion dollars to update our nuclear weapon stockpile. Are we also spending another trillion to update our civil defense shelters? One doesn't make much sense without the other.

Synaesthesia2• 1 year ago

During this Russo-Ukrainian war I was astonished that civilians will emerge from bunkers after some really intense fighting in a city, like Avdiivka or Bakhmut, fights where the entire city was leveled. I didn't think anyone could survive in there.

Turns out not only were Soviet structures all reinforced and even able to survive nuclear blasts, but they also have bomb bunkers underground.

Tade0• 1 year ago

Subway stations all over the eastern block were built to serve as bomb shelters when needed.

Nowadays this is used mainly during heavy rains, as the gates are watertight:

https://bi.im-g.pl/im/0/9990/z9990270IHG,W-srode-Jarek-Kowal...

When this picture was taken the trains would skip this station, but were otherwise functioning as normal.

stuff4ben• 1 year ago

This is my reminder to add to my family's emergency stockpile for the month. Probably should do some rotating of my stock too.

kjkjadksj• 1 year ago

Isn’t the move to never rotate stock? You’d probably be happy with that 10 year expired can of beans if you were reduced to just that in your resource war scenario.

Fairburn• 1 year ago

Russia. Thats the answer.

fsckboy• 1 year ago

FTA: Switzerland, population nearly 9 million, has more bunkers per capita than anywhere else in the world — enough to guarantee shelter space to every single resident in the event of a crisis. (Sweden and Finland are a close second, covering all major cities.)

well, using the 1-based index as they have chosen above, and as a good C programmer preferring 0-based indexes, I'll have to put Israel as number 0 on the above list. In the Israeli building codes, every home (i.e. every apartment too) has to have a bomb shelter, and as a result, they all do.

quibble: they are not necessarily "underground" depending on your definition of bunker, bomb shelter, etc; so for example they are contained within apartments, a bit like a "panic room", or really exactly like one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkhav_Mugan#Types

----

quibble 2, entirely different subject but while I'm here, what "everybody" calls a "sand trap" in golf is not called a "sand trap", it's called "a bunker" in golf.

Why does Switzerland have so many bunkers?

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