Switzerland is prepared for civilizational collapse

Saturday, December 16th, 2017

Switzerland is prepared for civilizational collapse, Alex Tabarrok notes:

All around Switzerland, for example, one can find thousands of water fountains fed by natural springs. Zurich is famous for its 1200 fountains, some of them quite beautiful and ornate, but it’s the multiple small, simple fountains in every Swiss village that really tell the story. Elegant, yes, but if and when central water systems are destroyed these fountains are a decentralized and robust system for providing everyone with drinkable water.

The Swiss political system is also decentralized. If the central government fails, the Swiss might not even notice. The mountains and valleys also mean that Swiss towns and villages are geographically independent yet linked in a spider-web of robust connections.

Despite being at peace since 1815, Switzerland is prepared for war. Swiss males (and perhaps females in the future) are required to serve in the military (those who cannot, pay a special tax) creating a robust reservoir of trained citizens ready to serve in an emergency.

The Swiss have been tunneling the Alps for hundreds of years creating innumerable secret hideaways for people and stores.

As a further example of how ridiculously well prepared the Swiss are for any and all threats, there are things like hidden hydroelectric dams built inside of unmarked mountains so that in the event of mass bombings, they’ll still have electricity from these secret facilities. And, remember, these are the things the Swiss government has let us know about. It is thought that there are probably more fortifications and hidden goodies scattered about the country’s landscape.

In addition, to thousands of military bunkers permeating the Swiss mountains there are several hundred thousand private and public fallout shelters the largest of which can hold some 20,000 people. Some of the largest installations have been decommissioned and even turned into museums but there is little doubt that they could be rapidly re-purposed.. As the Swiss continue to improve their already fantastic railway system it’s standard practice to convert old railway tunnels to security shelters.

Buried deep alongside the hydroelectric dams, shelters and food stores, the Swiss also have libraries ready to reboot civilization.

I thought secret Swiss forts were impressive. I wasn’t expecting secret Swiss hydroelectric dams. The Swiss military system is fascinating.

I really should read John McPhee’s La Place de la Concorde Suisse.

Comments

  1. Grasspunk says:

    You should read a lot of John McPhee.

  2. Dan Kurt says:

    La Place de la Concorde Suisse, if I remember correctly, having read the piece when it was published as a book many years ago, represents a glacier or the junction of two glaciers.

  3. Bomag says:

    I didn’t know governments prepared for future calamities. From my experience, they just apply the boot to a face.

  4. Kirk says:

    Along these lines, you should note and support the efforts at Open Source Ecology, where they are trying to organize an “industrial civilization in a box” kit of tools and technologies such that anyone could rebuild things with what they find laying around junkyards and ruins. Interesting concept, that…

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