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Switzerland is spending millions revamping its vast network of bunkers

(www.washingtonpost.com)
66 points bookofjoe | 8 comments | 25 Oct 25 18:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.858s | source | bottom
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comrade1234 ◴[25 Oct 25 19:44 UTC] No.45706462[source]▶
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.

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1. TheOtherHobbes ◴[25 Oct 25 20:37 UTC] No.45706784[source]▶
How was escape by road was supposed to work? Wouldn't everyone be stuck in traffic as the bombs were falling?
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2. ssl-3 ◴[25 Oct 25 20:52 UTC] No.45706874[source]▶
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.

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3. Spooky23 ◴[25 Oct 25 20:53 UTC] No.45706882[source]▶
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.

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4. Cpoll ◴[25 Oct 25 20:56 UTC] No.45706897[source]▶
In case of nuclear attack, hide under your desks.
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5. ghaff ◴[25 Oct 25 21:30 UTC] No.45707146[source]▶
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.

6. bookofjoe ◴[25 Oct 25 21:41 UTC] No.45707218[source]▶
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.
7. ProllyInfamous ◴[26 Oct 25 02:41 UTC] No.45708734[source]▶
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.

8. ssl-3 ◴[26 Oct 25 06:35 UTC] No.45709602{3}[source]▶
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.)