Scared of a nuclear war?

[Bjoern]

Move to Switzerland - it's a bunker paradise!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6347519.stm

[wiltzei]

Didn´t know about such law.

In a apocalyptic world depicted in 'Fallout', the Swiss would get a jumpstart, they get pretty competitive rifles to store at home when they leave the army.

Rock is a pretty good place to start building a shelter. You´d be amazed, how much equipment & supplies are hidden beyond public view. =D

[Ken Stallings]

I think concern is the operative term. We should all be concerned about nuclear war from the standpoint of trying to do what is reasonable to avoid it. Reasonable because in human nature there is always the chance that good people will be compelled to defend themselves.

Switzerland certainly has among the more ideal situations to survive such a war, horrific as it may be. Combined with mountains and tunnels, they have little risk of being directly targeting by such weapons. So, they merely have to survive the fallout.

Granite is an excellent filter for radiation.

So, their main challenge comes down to emerging to what is left of the world cultural and economic situation. Wise people avoid tyring to test the limits of human survival.

Ken

[Navy Chief]

In 1972, I backpacked all over Europe, including Switzerland. I spent one night in a youth hostel in Basel that had been a nuclear shelter (bunker).

Weird feeling. Nothing but concrete shelves to sleep on, with thin mattresses. They would close the huge doors at night, and it was pitch black darkness. Couldn't even see your hand in front of your face. And hot? Whew.......no airflow at all.

NC

[Bone]

I've driven through that tunnel before. It's quite a tunnel.

[n4gix]

That was a very interesting and informative story! Although I lived in the village of Leysin, Switzerland for four years while attending Leysin-American School, I knew nothing at all about this...

...and to the best of my knowledge, neither LAS nor the American College of Switzerland (ACS) had such shelters available.

The final paragraph of the linked article was the most revealing:



The monstrous Sonnenberg shelter though, is being gradually dismantled. But not because it has finally been deemed unnecessary: no, no, the real problem is those 350 tonne blast doors. When they were tested, they would not shut.


You mean no one ever bothered to test the doors when they were built? Incredible! :173go1:

[cheezyflier]

a friend of mine was looking at houses to buy one day. he called me up while looking at one and said "YOU HAVE TO COME OVER HERE AND SEE THIS RIGHT NOW!!! THERE'S A BOMB SHELTER FROM THE 50'S!!!" so i hopped on my bike and rode over to the address he gave me. there was a heavy steel door in the basement. when you opened it, there was a series of rungs set in a concrete shaft. after you climbed down about 20' below the basement, there was a short tunnell with a big heavy steel door. you went through the door and there was a concrete room about 20X20 with shelves (slots) built into the concrete. in the middle of the room was a pole that came down through the ceiling about 3" in diameter with a hand crank on the end of it. the other end stuck up through the yard about 6' and was disguised as the pole that held one corner of the clothes line. he didn't buy the house, but it was fun to see a bomb shelter.

[n4gix]

Back in the late fifties while my dad was teaching at the FAA Academy, we lived in a house that had a bomb shelter in the backyard. While we never used it as a bomb shelter, we did use it several dozen times as a "tornado shelter..." :bump:

[Willy]

Never been to Switzerland, but when I was there in '96, Albania was pretty proud of their bunkers from the cold war.