Louis-Henri Delarageaz, commander of the civil protection in Vaud, Switzerland, stands in the hospital room of the atomic shelter underneath the civil protection building in Gollion.<\/p>\n
There’s no point in having a nuclear bunker beneath your home if boxes of old Christmas ornaments are blocking the door.<\/p>\n
That’s not an uncommon scenario in Switzerland, a country with a vast network of Cold War-era nuclear shelters, both public and private, many of which double as storage units and have fallen into disrepair.<\/p>\n
But a rise in global conflict, paired with an increased reliance on nuclear energy, has the country once again preparing for a worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n
Switzerland is spending 220 million Swiss franc ($354 million Cdn) to make sure its shelters are in tip-top shape and ready to accommodate all nine million Swiss residents, should the need arise.<\/p>\n
“Pretty much all Swiss people have a bomb shelter, which has been used for a long time as their storage unit,” nuclear expert Stephen Herzog told As It Happens <\/em>host Nil K\u00f6ksal.<\/p>\n “Now there are reasons to rethink this.”<\/p>\n Herzog is a professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., who previously worked for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.<\/p>\n Nuclear bunkers, he says, are “built into the Swiss psyche.”<\/p>\n According to 1963 Swiss law, all of the country’s residents, including refugees and foreign workers, are guaranteed a spot in a bunker to protect them from bombs and nuclear radiation.<\/p>\n “Generally, if you live in Switzerland, you know where your shelter is, you know where your neighbour’s shelter is, you have your assigned place,” Herzog said.<\/p>\n Some of those bunkers belong to public networks, but many are private and built underneath people’s homes.<\/p>\n “Over the decades since the ’60s, when it was mandated to have these shelter spots that are built into every home in these private shelters, they’ve taken on new meanings,” Herzog said.<\/p>\n “People use them as wine cellars. People use them as woodworking workshops. People use them as storage for Christmas decorations.”<\/p>\n Asked if he’s been in a Swiss bunker himself, Herzog replied: “Of course.”<\/p>\n “If\u00a0you’re at a party and someone says, ‘Will you go to my wine cellar and grab the next bottle of wine?’ you’re going to the shelter,” he said.<\/p>\n But in recent years, global conflicts and changes to the country’s energy policies have changed people’s priorities.<\/p>\n Nearly a third of Swiss electricity production comes from nuclear power. And this summer, the country’s Federal Council reversed a 2017 decision to exit nuclear power.<\/a><\/p>\nNuclear resilience ‘built into the Swiss psyche’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Prepared, not paranoid<\/strong><\/h2>\n