Why does Switzerland have so many nuclear bunkers?

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0:27You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Switzerland, the land of snow-capped Alps and incredibly good chocolate, and also a world leader in underground nuclear bunkers. There are more than 370 ,000 underground nuclear bunkers in Switzerland, enough space for each of the country's 9 million citizens. And you might be asking yourself right now, why? NPR's Rob Schmitz takes us to the Alpine country to get answers. From the outside, the Zonenberg nuclear bunker in Lucerne looks innocent enough.

1:08Its entrance is in the middle of a children's playground. But past the seesaws and swing sets carved into a hill is a thick, blast-proof door that, when opened, exposes a narrow, well-lit tunnel that gently descends as far as the eye can see. Just one thing, because of the temperatures outside, this access tunnel has become wet. So this part is a bit slippery, depending on the shoes. As soon as we're inside the building, it'll be dry. Just make sure to walk down carefully. My Swiss bomb bunker guide is Zora Shelbert. She's caretaker of the Zonenberg bunker. It was built in the 1970s to house 20 ,000 people in the event of a nuclear war.

1:48And back then, 20 ,000 people constituted a third of our city's inhabitants. So every third person in the city of Lucerne was once supposed to be sheltered in this bunker. If a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were to happen, officials reasoned at the time, Switzerland, an historically neutral nation, would likely not suffer a direct hit. but would be in the path of nuclear fallout from its non-neutral neighbors. So they supplied diesel-powered generators in this bunker that had enough fuel to power it for two weeks. Yeah, after two weeks, no more food, no more water, no more power.

2:27And today, civil defense also say that the duration of stay depends on what the problem is outside. And as we can see currently in the Ukraine or Israel, this makes total sense because as long as it's a conventional war, people seek shelter temporarily and then you can leave again. In other words, instead of scrapping its nationwide network of bomb shelters after the Cold War ended, Switzerland doubled down and kept building them, guaranteeing every one of its 9 million citizens a bomb shelter space just in case. There were a couple of political discussions, especially in 2010, 2011. There was a discussion in the parliament to finish with the system.

3:07Daniel Yordi, vice director of Switzerland's Federal Office of Civil Protection, says in 2011, when the national parliament was debating whether to scrap all these bomb shelters, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan melted down after a massive earthquake and tsunami. And they came to the conclusion that it's good to have those shelters as a national reserve to protect the people in a real emergency. And that means that every residential building in Switzerland is required to either build a bunker with proper blast doors and ventilation systems, or developers have to earmark funds for a nearby bunker maintained by the state.

3:45Swiss citizens have to pay an upfront fee between$1 ,700 to around$3 ,500 for the maintenance and construction of these shelters. And in peacetime, which due to its neutrality is the norm in Switzerland, these bunkers are usually turned into wine cellars, saunas, or in the case of the University of Bern, storage. Okay, we're not going to get locked in here, are we? No, no, no. Good. Professor Silvia Berger-Zajudun guides me to the door of the nuclear bunker underneath the history department building. And these are the lock systems, right? So you have to put that out and then you lock it like this.

4:24I mean, this door is nearly a foot thick. Yes. And it's made out of solid concrete. Reconforce concrete. Berger Zajudin is an expert on the history of Switzerland's network of nuclear bunkers. She says bomb bunkers are rooted in the idea that this tiny Alpine nation has, for more than a century, served as an island of calm, surrounded by a sea of chaos. It was already developed in the First World War, actually. So the idea of this island with a sea of destruction around it. And then in the Second World War, it was the same island metaphor that was developed again. And in the Cold War, the island metaphor was transposed to the nuclear shelter.

5:03Brugger-Zajuden says the Swiss government cultivates this idea through the country's schools. Each year, she says, many students spend a week learning about these bunkers as part of a civil defense-centered curriculum. Where you have to draw civil defense shelters, you have to watch civil defense movies, you have to go to the shelter and eventually sleep in the shelter for one night, for example. Berger Zajudin says at the end of the week, kids would present their drawings to their classmates. But then also kids that talked about their drawings and said, OK, in the upper level of my drawings, OK, there's destruction and death and chaos.

5:41and underneath its warmth and its security. And you have the shelter and the family and you have a pet and the mother is cooking and the father is reading. And it's like, the imagery was really persistent for kids. But Berger Zajudin says the reality of life in a nuclear bunker is a far cry from how Swiss children imagine it. Do you ever get claustrophobic coming down here? No, no. Back at the Sonnenberg nuclear bunker underneath Lucerne, my guide Zora Shelbert leads me past the bunker's hospital with bright green walls, a stylistic holdover from the 1970s to the fourth level of the bunker, a security station complete with three prison cells, all painted bright yellow.

6:27It's 16 spots for 20 ,000 people. And over the last few decades, doubts then were raised as to whether this would have been enough given the circumstances that lead to people entering. That's why I think it's fair to say that the size of the facility and the problems that come with such a big mass of people, be it social problems, psychological issues, this can be considered one of the factors that contributed to downsizing. And that's part of the reason why in 2002, Switzerland's government reduced the Sonnenberg bunker capacity from 20 ,000 to just 2 ,000. Its floors, filled with bunk beds, a prison, and a hospital, all deep underground, have been repurposed over the years as overflow housing for refugees, asylum seekers, and the homeless, a use that has been widely criticized.

7:14It has not been used, though, for its original intent, a bunker, to protect people from a nuclear fallout. But the Swiss government continues to spend tens of millions of dollars a year to maintain it, and hundreds of thousands of other bunkers throughout the country, just in case. It's NPR's Rob Schmitz in Lucerne, Switzerland.

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