
Self Sabotage: The Swiss History of Rigging Vital Infrastructure to Explode - ubac
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/designed-for-demolition-why-the-swiss-rigged-critical-infrastructure-to-explode/
======
Iv
The Swiss system is soooo interesting in many respects.

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)

They also have underground air bases that allow plane to take off from
national roads and that are designed to resist nuclear bombings:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=296&v=vEOLonBfaD...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=296&v=vEOLonBfaD8&t=5m)

The main idea behind Switzerland'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.

This is really an interesting system probably tied tightly with their
democratic system.

~~~
bhaak
> Many own a war weapon at home (that is strictly forbidden to take out
> without orders)

That's not entirely true. You can take your own military weapon and use it in
your free time on a shooting range or event.

You don't even need a special permission to do so.

~~~
bayesian_horse
And those weapons somewhat regularly feature in suicides and "family
tragedies".

~~~
kenneth
No they don't. We Swiss are a little more responsible with our guns than
Americans.

~~~
bhaak
They certainly did:

> In 83.1% (n = 1112) of the 1338 suicides by firearm between 2000 and 2010 in
> Switzerland, the firearm could be categorised as an army weapon or a non-
> army weapon. The army weapon was used in 39.1% of these suicides.

[https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2018.14646](https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2018.14646)

But that is not surprising. Suicides often happen out of an impulse and then
people use the best available and easiest accessible means to kill themselves.
And an army weapon fulfills those conditions much better than anything else
people have at home.

I don't know if there are already newer studies that take into account that
the ammunition isn't storaged at home anymore.

I also couldn't find any numbers on "family tragedies".

~~~
pas
Can they simply buy ammo for it somewhere else?

~~~
bhaak
Yes, you can easily buy ammo. But again, most suicides are not really planned.
The studies about suicides are quite consistent that only about 10–15% of
attempters eventually die by suicide.

That means if you don't have an effective way of ending your life at hand,
it's likely that you will not try again successfully.

If you need ammunition, you are not likely to go out and get it. That's
inconvenient and even if you go out and want to get it, that takes time in
which you might reconsider.

~~~
pdpi
It's worth noting that this is a trend, not a black and white rule. Some
people _do_ plan it ahead of time, in some form or another.

E.g. my uncle specifically bought rope and carabiners prior to his suicide,
and, apparently, had googled instructions on how to tie a noose several days
ahead of the actual thing.

~~~
pas
I imagine it comes in waves. And even if one wave just pushes someone to the
point that buys ammo, the next has to push it only to load the gun, and the
final one just has to push it to pull the trigger a little harder. :/

Though I have no data about this.

------
marcyb5st
The article doesn't mention it, but the bunkers here in Switzerland are
serious structures. From the WSJ: "A Swiss shelter must withstand an impact of
a 12-megaton explosion at a distance of 700 meters (765 yards). ..." [1].

Also, a lot of town/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].

[1]
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304231204576405...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304231204576405700994655570)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGyHJ-
xmcuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGyHJ-xmcuc)

~~~
arethuza
A quick check on Nukemap suggests that a 12MT explosion at ground level
produces a crater 210m deep and with a radius of 0.88km at the outer edge so
that requirement seems a bit optimistic....

[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

~~~
wcoenen
Nuclear warheads are not designed to be detonated at ground level. The optimum
burst height for maximum damage (presumably not to bunkers, but to other
structures) goes up with the bomb yield. For megaton yields that altitude will
be several km.

~~~
arethuza
For soft targets (e.g. cities) an air burst would be used - but for hard
targets a ground burst (or even penetration) would be used:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_burst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_burst)

Some weapons even allowed for "laydown delivery" where weapons would be on the
ground for a bit before detonating:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laydown_delivery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laydown_delivery)

From what I recall, the really large weapons (10MT-25MT) were mainly intended,
at least in the latter stages of the Cold War, to be used against hard
targets.

------
ohazi
I'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't be surprised if it were true, but I've never been able to find a
reliable source for this.

------
folli
It's important to note that these are days gone by.

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.

Is this good or bad? I don't know. Is the threat of a war in the middle of
Europe really down to zero? I don't know.

------
hirundo
> 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

I'll now have to look suspiciously at every Swiss building I come across.

~~~
analog31
Hint: The cows that can't be tipped over, might be harboring weapons. Just
give them a good push.

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
I mean, that's all cows. Cow tipping is a myth.

...

Oh god, you mean, the entire swiss dairy industry is a front?

~~~
masonic
If cows were given fair wages, tipping wouldn't be necessary in the first
place.

------
pnako
A few years ago they did a military exercise where France, in a state of civil
war/secession following a government bankruptcy, used its military to try and
loot Swiss wealth.

French authorities were not amused.

~~~
ur-whale
> France, in a state of civil war/secession following a government bankruptcy,
> used its military to try and loot Swiss wealth.

Not a particularly far-fetched scenario, if you ask me. Except for the last
part, coz there ain't enough money left to run a military organization.

~~~
Bayart
It's more or less what happened when we invaded Switzerland in 1798.

------
weinzierl
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).

[1]
[http://www.sperranlagen.de/bruecken.htm](http://www.sperranlagen.de/bruecken.htm)

~~~
mxfh
This was a general countermobility NATO policy, the field manual goes into
great detail about it:

[https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-
archive/fm5-102%288...](https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-
archive/fm5-102%2885%29.pdf)

Regarding Switzerland, there is this absurdly high production value propaganda
Triptych-Cinerama-short produced for the 64 swiss national expo. _Fortress of
Peace_ ( _Wehrhafte Schweiz / La Suisse vigilante / La Svizzera vigilante_)
with countermobility action all over the place and prominently in this
section:

[https://youtu.be/mXWUCmeUF9o?t=1230](https://youtu.be/mXWUCmeUF9o?t=1230)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_of_Peace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_of_Peace)

------
abc03
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).

------
nyolfen
the author mentioned, john mcphee, is my favorite nonfiction author, and i
couldn't recommend him more highly. i was disappointed to see that the now
surely out of print _place de la concorde suisse_ was not easily available on
the usual ebook resources, but he's an author worth paying for.

another excellent book of his that would likely line up well with hn-adjacent
interests is _the curve of binding energy_ , written in the early 90s about a
physicist's concern with the risk of nuclear proliferation among nonstate
actors:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Bindi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968.The_Curve_of_Binding_Energy)

~~~
stateofnounion
agreed, mcphee is excellent. encounters with the archdruid left an indelible
impression on me.

~~~
greesil
I enjoyed The Curve of Binding Energy

------
TheMagicHorsey
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.

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.

That kernel formed an informal alliance that grew into Switzerland over time.

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.

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.

~~~
rspoerri
> They copied the US constitution, ..

How would switzerland (1291) copy the US constitution (1789)? Do you have any
references on this?

~~~
lawl
The swiss constitution has been revised a few times. The Switzerland from 1291
is different from the Switzerland now.

> The creation of a bicameral assembly was consciously inspired by the United
> States Constitution, the National Council and Council of States
> corresponding to the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution)

Also, copy is probably a bit too strong of a wording. It's definitely not a
1:1 copy, but yeah, inspiration.

------
m463
Then there's the (deliberate?) railway incompatibility between germany and
moscow.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I've often wondered if we should follow the Swiss' example on a planetary
scale.

It'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.

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 "deterrents".

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

------
ericol
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].

[1] [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/great-bitter-lake-
ass...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/great-bitter-lake-association/)

[2]
[http://www.shipsonstamps.org/Topics/html/gbla.htm](http://www.shipsonstamps.org/Topics/html/gbla.htm)

------
_nalply
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'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.

------
DoctorOetker
I believe rigging bridges was widespread throughout europe

~~~
jeanpierre2
The plan for West Germany in case of a sudden Soviet invasion was to destroy
bridges and railways, render tunnels unusable by dropping huge concrete blocks
on the entrances or – my favourite – filling them with foam so Diesel motors
would suffocate while driving through; and destroying many roads.

All just to buy a little time to be able to mount an actual defence against
the invasion in France.

~~~
fatbird
The plan for West Germany was to use nuclear land mines in the Fulda Gap to
both destroy whole divisions en route and to create massive geological
barriers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition)

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

~~~
londons_explore
Some types of explosives are effectively waterproof and element-proof.

The igniters and wiring are probably most vulnerable, but they can be
constantly tested with minimum effort, and replaced as they fail.

------
secfirstmd
This subject has fascinated me for a long time. One of the best books about it
is called "La Place De LA Concorde Suisse" it's actually in English and well
worth a read.

------
77pt77
Where does this paranoia come from?

~~~
barry-cotter
Here is a complete list of countries in mainland Europe that have not been
invaded or suffered a civil war since 1900.

Switzerland

Here is a complete list of Switzerland’s neighbours that have the same
constitutional settlement as in 1940.

~~~
rypskar
You might be able to argue that Sweden isn't part of mainland Europe, but it
would be really hard to argue that Liechtenstein is not part of it.

~~~
barry-cotter
You’re correct. The UK also had a civil war after WWI so mainland Europe is
unnecessary.

Complete list of European countries that haven’t been invaded or had a
revolution since 1900

Liechtenstein, Sweden, Switzerland

------
sadness2
> many military structures above ground and below have been declassified and
> sold off for reuse as homes, data centers, even cheese factories

Or have they? 8-)

