Self Sabotage: The Swiss History of Rigging Vital Infrastructure to Explode

The Swiss system is soooo interesting in many respects.<p>Most citizens are army reserve and regularly go for training. Many own a war weapon at home (that is strictly forbidden to take out without orders)<p>They also have underground air bases that allow plane to take off from national roads and that are designed to resist nuclear bombings:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?time_continue=296&amp;v=vEOLonBfaD8&amp;t=5m" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?time_continue=296&amp;v=vEOLonBfaD...</a><p>The main idea behind Switzerland&#x27;s defense is that it is doable to conquer it, but it is very costly for very little gains. It is said that banks vaults of gold are mounted on trains that are designed, in case of alert, to run into underground tunnels that collapse behind them. Taking months to recover.<p>This is really an interesting system probably tied tightly with their democratic system.

The article doesn&#x27;t mention it, but the bunkers here in Switzerland are serious structures. From the WSJ: &quot;A Swiss shelter must withstand an impact of a 12-megaton explosion at a distance of 700 meters (765 yards). ...&quot; [1].<p>Also, a lot of town&#x2F;cities have a fully redundant water distribution system. In Zurich, for instance, the water coming out of the 100s of fountains you see around town comes from either of these and they are swapped regularly [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;SB10001424052702304231204576405700994655570" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;SB10001424052702304231204576405...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TGyHJ-xmcuc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TGyHJ-xmcuc</a>

I&#x27;ve heard rumors that Taiwan does something similar in preparation for an invasion by mainland China. Specifically that sensitive areas within TSMC facilities are lined with explosives. It makes for a great story, and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it were true, but I&#x27;ve never been able to find a reliable source for this.

It&#x27;s important to note that these are days gone by.<p>The majority of these bunkers and forts are dismantled, the size of the army has gone down to 100,000 people (from 600,000 in the 50s, while the population has almost doubled), tanks and artillery are outdated (infantry is kept quite modern, to be fair), the support of the army in the voting population has also decreased.<p>Is this good or bad? I don&#x27;t know. Is the threat of a war in the middle of Europe really down to zero? I don&#x27;t know.

&gt; vernacular architecture has also played a prominent role in Swiss defense. Across the countryside, many structures that look like quaint barns or traditional homes were designed to house everything from bunkers to anti-aircraft guns<p>I&#x27;ll now have to look suspiciously at every Swiss building I come across.

A few years ago they did a military exercise where France, in a state of civil war&#x2F;secession following a government bankruptcy, used its military to try and loot Swiss wealth.<p>French authorities were not amused.

Bridges along the eastern border of West Germany were at least be built to be rigged with explosives too. What looked like drain covers were actually the lids of the explosive chambers. For pictures see [1] (article is in German).<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sperranlagen.de&#x2F;bruecken.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sperranlagen.de&#x2F;bruecken.htm</a>

I served 25 years ago in a unit with civil engineers (I’m not one). At this time, it was already a project in one of the yearly training courses, which infrastructure should be disarmed because a destruction would have impact on other infrastructure (e.g. tape water supply).

the author mentioned, john mcphee, is my favorite nonfiction author, and i couldn&#x27;t recommend him more highly. i was disappointed to see that the now surely out of print <i>place de la concorde suisse</i> was not easily available on the usual ebook resources, but he&#x27;s an author worth paying for.<p>another excellent book of his that would likely line up well with hn-adjacent interests is <i>the curve of binding energy</i>, written in the early 90s about a physicist&#x27;s concern with the risk of nuclear proliferation among nonstate actors:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;54968.The_Curve_of_Binding_Energy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;54968.The_Curve_of_Bindi...</a>

The history of Switzerland the country is also very interesting. Basically a bunch of high-altitude towns that were rivals got together and decided to fend off their common enemy: low land despots.<p>Initially, it was just a few hundred merchants and peasants banding together and using home-made poles with sickles on the ends to fend off armored knights. But by the end of the rebellion thousands of people from dozens of hilltop villages had joined together.<p>That kernel formed an informal alliance that grew into Switzerland over time.<p>Even today, the various Cantons see themselves as kind of independent of each other. They copied the US constitution, but while the US became a more centralized and despotic state ... the Swiss kept the original federalist design of the US constitution.<p>Individual cantons have their own public or private health systems. They have their own education budgets. There is a huge amount of variation between the cantons. And basically Switzerland refuses to join most European efforts to disolve national boundaries.

Then there&#x27;s the (deliberate?) railway incompatibility between germany and moscow.

I&#x27;ve often wondered if we should follow the Swiss&#x27; example on a planetary scale.<p>It&#x27;s not that an alien invasion is particularly likely, but, just in case, we might want to plant a few nukes here and there, in strategic locations. That is, locations selected to make it very clear to any potential invader from the stars that sending an interstellar invasion armada to Earth would be all cost and no benefit.<p>I mean, we already have all those nukes lying around, ready to blow the planet to smithereens. We might as well put them into use as actual &quot;deterrents&quot;.

And now I expect that Swiss schools have students learn secret underground base design in Minecraft.

As a side note, this site has _very_ interesting podcast episodes. Just yesterday I listened to the one from last week [1] about stamps from the GBLA [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;great-bitter-lake-association&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;great-bitter-lake-ass...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shipsonstamps.org&#x2F;Topics&#x2F;html&#x2F;gbla.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shipsonstamps.org&#x2F;Topics&#x2F;html&#x2F;gbla.htm</a>

This is an old strategy, nowadays the army works differently. But still, these are interesting tidbits of history. Many old bunkers have been decomissioned and taken over by associations preserving them as museums. Others are opened for the public like the Great War&#x27;s bunker just below the top of the Sigriswiler Rothorn (Schafloch). Instead of hiking over the top I just went through it with my son. It was very dark, labyrinthine and scary. My son loved it.

I believe rigging bridges was widespread throughout europe

How do explosives and their associated equipment do as far as long term exposure to the elements?

This subject has fascinated me for a long time. One of the best books about it is called &quot;La Place De LA Concorde Suisse&quot; it&#x27;s actually in English and well worth a read.

Where does this paranoia come from?

&gt; many military structures above ground and below have been declassified and sold off for reuse as homes, data centers, even cheese factories<p>Or have they? 8-)