hckrnws
This is a bit random, but when I was an intern at CERN I spent a summer living in an old civil defense bunker near Geneva.
Short-term accommodation was notoriously expensive for students back then (probably even worse now), and I didn't hesitate when they offered me this unconventional housing opportunity.
The bunker had a decontamination zone, air filtering system, massive concrete doors, a large communal kitchen, and numerous small bunk beds. It was adequate for short-term use, but we encountered two main issues:
- It's remarkably easy to lose track of time without natural light cues
- Even with the air filering system wet clothes wouldn't dry properly inside
I'm in civil protection service in Switzerland and occasionally spend a few days at a time in one of these doing basically office work or running refresher courses etc., definitely agree on the losing track of time thing --- can't count the number of times I've come up at 4--5pm and been extremely surprised by how light or dark, sunny or rainy it was
Of course there's a technical solution:
Everyone seems to go for LEDs to simulate outdoor lighting for this kind of purpose, when there is another way that seems much more elegant to me: fiber-optic solar lighting.
https://www.shieldenchannel.com/blogs/solar-panels/fiber-opt...
Indeed more elegant, but also more pricey. The LED solution was $1000, which could still be affordable for a student living in a bunker. It's also easier to install, especially if you don't own the place and cannot run thick fiber bundles through the walls.
I’d prefer not relying on electricity
Presumably you also need a system to produce light indoors at night. You might as well have a single solution for both day- and night-time that uses renewable energy.
This is a nuclear bunker. Electricity might not be available or scarce.
By the time external electricity is not available (assuming it was ever brought in, in the first place), you probably want to lose track of time.
Oh yes, also natural light itself might be scarce.
You almost certainly need it for ventilation and probably water pumps anyway.
It was already a pain in 2003 and the whole process looks like hunting for a job with interview process and everything.
For us it was a schock, versus the usual "you can pay it is yours", first come first served that we had back in Portugal.
However while not living in a bunker, we did have parties in some somehow converted into clubs.
Summer students at CERN lives in CERN Meyrin hostel nowadays. I heard that this make life much easier for them. But it is more affordable than anything in Geneva or Meyrin. And definitely would fit the low O(2) accepted students. At the expense of "gently" kicking everyone else.
Hopefully the students weren’t low O_2 when they lived in bunkers.
In high school we were having growing pangs, and so several of my classes were held in temporary trailers that had been hauled onto campus for that purpose. They were serviceable and not particularly hostile, and arguably more modern than the existing classrooms we were using anyway.
Then I graduate and enroll in a cushy university (UCSD) and come to find out, they're also having growing pangs, and so in the middle of campus we found ourselves taking classes in Quonset huts. These Quonset huts were bona fide military surplus, though it was already 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut
The Quonset huts were extraordinarily different from the classrooms and lab facilities we used on campus; they were, of course, comparatively set out in the wilderness, and very rough accommodations overall.
However, I was a commuting student, and nobody was living in Quonset huts, so after our hourlong class was dismissed, I was able to retreat to the relative comfort of home, or the Theodore Geisel library.
> In high school we were having growing pangs
weren't we all...
I wish. I never really had a "spurt" or "pangs".
How do you deal with the mold problem?
Control moisture in the air?
Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?
> Excuse my lack of experience in that matter, but with modern inventions like the watch shouldn’t keeping track of time be something that is possible?
No, just like the existence of books or the internet doesn't relieve you of needing to know stuff.
Everyone has internal sense of time that relies on external natural cues. A watch is a kludgy bolt-on that's not well integrated with one's awareness.
Time is a feeling too, it’s the sense of time that goes awry. Like casinos attempt to mimic.
I worked in a casino and I don't think the owners or the design are intentionally trying to fool you any more than a department store would. You are distracted playing games and lose all track of time since it's more engaging than shopping for socks.
Casino design employs various tactics to make players lose track of time, encouraging longer play and increased spending. These techniques include eliminating clocks and windows, using maze-like layouts, and manipulating sensory experiences like lighting, sound, and scent.
I know your point is they don’t do it more than department stores do, and you might very well be right. I think it is probably hard to prove either way.
https://www.e-architect.com/articles/the-psychology-behind-c...
Pretty much everything about a casino is intentionally designed to make you lose track of time.
Source: "Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas" by Schüll
https://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-Veg...
Your body will disagree with the watch at some point.
Imagine being stuck sick at home or in the hospital for an extended period of time - you will lose track of which weekday it is.
As someone who is semi-retired I definitely have to sometimes check to confirm what day it is.
26 years ago I was interviewing for a sysadmin job in an academic setting. And I was invited to my prospective coworker's office. He was a software developer, mostly, but jack-of-all-trades for the office systems. There was a lot of data processing involved.
His office featured a Sun workstation on his desktop, and a desk piled rather high with paperwork and whatnot. There was absolutely no wall clock anywhere to be found. His workstation's desktop also did not feature a clock. There was really no indication of the passage of time in that space.
I drank in the import of this, and I asked him if it was true, and he agreed readily. I was sort of amazed. But it was also quite humbling that he could construct such a space, where he could basically throw himself into his work and dedicate as much time as necessary, until his stomach or fatigue drew him back into the real world.
Past, present and future is nothing but a stubborn illusion!
Comment was deleted :(
During this Russo-Ukrainian war I was astonished that civilians will emerge from bunkers after some really intense fighting in a city, like Avdiivka or Bakhmut, fights where the entire city was leveled. I didn't think anyone could survive in there.
Turns out not only were Soviet structures all reinforced and even able to survive nuclear blasts, but they also have bomb bunkers underground.
I envy these European countries, who can manage to do things collectively that make sense to do collectively.
Vs. America, which is all just "hooray individualism: you're all on your own."
The US achieved a lot collectively, they created a really public education system for instance.
That's a fairly sophomoric take, to be honest. Not only is Europe a large place which can't be homogenized into one culture, so is the US. Unless you really think California and Texas will approach a problem the same? Or New York vs Alabama?
And a lot of these "collectivist" things in Europe are being proven to have been underwritten by the US defense budget, and now that that's no longer the case, uncomfortable conversations are starting to occur on the eastern side of the pond.
Do you have examples of the underwritten things? I haven’t heard of this
There are places where it happens in America, its just very hard to do that in such a large country without leaders that want to make it happen. Its much more profitable for politicians to have a population that doesn't want to work together and keeps fighting each other for transgender rights when they can't make ends meet and are one step away from being homeless.
I think the last chance we had for a politician that was somewhat visionary was with the first Obama term but he was too entrenched in the politics to actually drive any real change, with all that bipartisanship bullshit. Now they will just continue to invest in driving a wedge between the population to prevent them from noticing they're in a class war.
I recently found out there in a command bunker (K85) smack in the middle of Stadelhofen, Zürich. It was only declassified in 2009. The primary access is via the tunnel. The 30m shaft was originally used while constructing the tunnel but was never filled in and turned into the bunker. It went into operation in 1989 and closed in 2009 but is still used as an emergency tunnel exist in case of a fire etc.
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@mikealpharomeotangoindia/video/74960... (in Swiss German)
Switzerland has a defensive army. It's not designed to project power in any way or invade. It's strictly designed to repel an invasion. Every part of the Swiss military state can be understood in this context.
This is in stark contrast to the failed US (through NATO) foreign poicy with respect to Ukraine. Ukraine should've had a defensive army as well but didn't. And the US is to blame as to why.
In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, it's claimed that the US promised not to expand NATO east [1]. This is disputed. What isn't disputed is that George W. Bush opened the door to Ukraine joining NATO [2]. Now this was never going to happen. Germany (for one) would veto it. Having NATO on the border with Russia is a recipe for disaster.
It is completely reasonable for Russia to not want NATO on their doorstep. Look at a map and Ukraine is like an invasion corridor to Russia. For comparison, the US almost started World War Three over Cuba after provoking the US provked the USSR in Turkey. It should really be called the Turkey Nuclear Missile Crisis. Thiss is called the Monroe Doctrine [3].
Giving Ukraine this hope was a strategic error and destabilizing to the region. What Ukraine actually needed was a defensive army like Switzerland. Bunkers, fortifications, infrastructure for an insurgency in case of invasion and the promise of neutrality.
Would this have stopped a Russian invasion? We'll never know. But it was still the right thing to do. It would in the very least make the pretense for the Russian invasion even less legitimate (to be clear, it's illegitimate).
[1]: https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/98-00/tome.pdf
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
I read the interesting linked article about bunkers in Switzerland and it totally went over my head that it was all about US foreign policy in Ukraine.
Related:
Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25331474 - Dec 2020 (119 comments)
The forgotten underground world of Swiss bunkers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12430234 - Sept 2016 (50 comments)
And why does it have so many bankers?
This is mentioned in the John McPhee book referenced elsewhere in the thread, because there is actually an answer: when the cantons stopped fighting and Switzerland/Helvetica Confederation was formed, the Swiss finance/banking system developed to handle all the money being brought in by those folks acting as mercenaries and being paid to fight other people’s wars.
Swiss bankers live within a levenshtein distance of 1 from a bunker
That's bonkers.
Only Swiss bunkers, though.
Underrated comment.
[dead]
For anyone interested this the bunkers and their history:
Fun fact, Finland also has a lot of bunkers, for more obvious reasons, enough I believe to host their whole population.
The TLDR : they are obliged to have bunkers for a given population in an area thanks to Russian military aggression over the years.
> Finland has around 50,500 civil defence shelters with space for about 4.8 million people
https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410869/finland-has-civil-def...
Its the hood that maketh the bunker a good idea..
[dead]
If you want to read more about the topic and about the readiness of the Swiss army, I can recommend a short book by John McPhee called La Place de la Concorde Suisse
Germany, Austria, Italy and France: With friends like these who needs enemies? :)
Austria is also militarily neutral. Not a part of NATO and >60% of Austrians were always against joining NATO.
That is how you ensure your neutrality.
Not directly related, but I don't that model works anymore. Switzerland is landlocked and surrounded by the European Union that unlike the independent neighbors of the past applies pressure coherently. Over the years Switzerland seems more and more aligned with both EU and US and I don't think they have much of a choice.
They have a choice to a point but today, isolating is regressing; there's a lot of money to be made if you have healthy relationships with your neighbours.
That logic applied in WWII when Switzerland was surrounded by Axis powers and they nonetheless got excellent outcomes by officially remaining neutral. The model will probably keep working until someone invades them.
Comment was deleted :(
And yet it is the Swiss who waged wars in all these countries - as mercenaries.
The last two wars between the Swiss and their neighbours were in 1531 and during Napoleon - who in the end admired the Swiss confederacy and helped rebirth it in its modern form.
Being the source of mercenaries is literally the opposite of waging war as the country.
That they weren’t waging war does result in excess men who someone else can pay to wage war for them though.
Young men with nothing to do, no gainful employment, are the curse of many a nation. Civil unrest.
Mercenaries outsource the problem.
>Being the source of mercenaries is literally the opposite of waging war as the country.
Patently wrong: Swiss Neutrality explicitely bans mercenary work by any Swiss citizen.
> Patently wrong
No, but you just haven't understood that they were talking about the past :-).
It does now, but Swiss mercenaries were a target of Thomas More’s satire in Utopia.
Doesn't the Vatican still have a Swiss guard? I wonder how that works
There is an exception for them.
Maybe in the modern era, specifically since 1848, but [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_mercenaries].
“The young men who went off to fight, and sometimes die, in foreign service had several incentives—limited economic options in the still largely rural cantons; adventure; pride in the reputation of the Swiss as soldiers; and finally what military historian Sir Charles Oman describes as a pure love of combat and warfighting in and of itself, forged by two centuries of conflict.”
Either way, being a mercenary is explicitly the opposite of ‘fighting for your country’, which is the point I was making.
Thats the fate of all mountainous countries with population surplus? They used to send children to work abroad in medieval times. They often were used as cannonfood armies and mercenaries. Same thing in Afghanistan. Should have introduced the canton system to the taliban. Much more reasonable model for that area.
Mercenaries were very common at the time and Switzerland shares the languages of its neighbours, which probably makes it even easier to seek "employment".
[dead]
Wait until you see Albania.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
> Switzerland’s policy to provide shelter to every single resident in the event of a crisis was first enshrined into law in 1963.
Your rant has nothing to do with the article.
From the article,
"That DNA is inherited directly from World War II, when bunkers were already an established part of Swiss military strategy. In the early ‘40s, when neutral Switzerland was entirely surrounded by Axis powers, the army famously stocked the Swiss Réduit (“National Redoubt”), a series of military fortifications in the central Alps dating to the 1880s, with supplies and ammunition to prepare for a potential Nazi invasion."
From my post,
"Founded in the idea to make it too expensive for Nazi Germany to invade."
The problem with ChatGPT is: People who have only limited amount of knowledge should not use it. Bunkers were built in phases and many during the cold war. Bunkers in houses started in the sixties. So your statement is not true. Because Switzerland was not prepared, they had to resort to other means.
So basically Dwarves who were digging for mithril and other minerals and awakened Balrog. Im curious is there a map that maps Europe on to Middle-earth and what would the Baltic states be :)
Switzerland is more well known for their Gnomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_of_Zurich
I think Tokien seriously took inspiration from various European peoples to create the Middle-Earth races.
He did visit spent a summer as a young adult hiking near Lauterbrunnen, which he modeled Rivendell and the Misty Mountains after.
I recently spent a few days hiking near Lauterbrunnen. It was as close to “magic” as I have ever felt
This is the definitive history, as researched by an independent commission in Switzerland:
https://www.uek.ch/en/index.htm
Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy. Living with a bully next door is not.
"Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy"
The report says exactly what I'm saying,
> "send back Jews to be killed"
From the report: "The measures agreed in August 1938 to turn back unwanted immigrants were implemented ruthlessly; [..] It even happened that border guards struck refugees with the butts of their rifles to bar them from crossing the border"
> "sell weapons to the Nazis"
From the report: By far the most arms were sold to Germany and Italy, e.g. page 200
> "buy stolen Jewish gold and stolen gold from occupied countries"
From the report: "During the Second World War, Switzerland was the most important market for gold from the territories controlled by the Third Reich. Almost four-fifths of the Reichsbank’s gold shipments abroad were arranged via Switzerland."
Switzerland went above and beyond "accomodating a bully next door": they enabled its rearmament of Germany post-WW1, circumventing the Versailles Treaty; and they sheltered the Nazi networks (e.g. François Genoud) and money post-WW2, helping the neo-nazi rise in Europe and the juntas in South America - again, Germany wasn't in a position to bully the Swiss. Switzerland and the Swiss banks made absolutely no effort to come clean after 1945 until they were forced by international pressure 50 years (!) later.
And until 1997 and a famous documentary, L'Honneur perdu de la Suisse - which was censored until 2006 - the Swiss had absolutely no memory of their real role during WWII.
And see how they treated Paul Gruninger after the war: https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...
Comment was deleted :(
I'm not sure what you mean by 'in the end it was more successful'
All these polices operate together its not like the first did one, then the other. Depending on the situation the adjusted policy many times. And they also had many polices that you didn't mention, like an active air war and air defense against Germany (and the allies at time). I don't know what you are basing the claim on that one was more successful then the others.
Also, why are you using a fictional movie as source for anything? I do not think people were actually kicked out, only denied entry. At least I have not read about that, anybody can provide a source for that?
Here some information about the denial of asylum:
"According to the Bergier Commission final report, during the Second World War, Switzerland granted asylum to 25,000 Jews while denying around 20,000 refugees (of which a significant portion were estimated to be Jewish) admission to the country in total.[42] However, Serge Klarsfeld, the French-Jewish historian, activist and Nazi Hunter stated in 2013 that the Swiss authorities rejected fewer WWII Jewish refugees than believed. Based on his own research, Klarsfeld claimed that the number of entry denials was closer to 3000."
> The report on arms revealed that from 1940 to 1944, 84 per cent of Swiss munitions’ exports went to Axis countries.
Of course more trade goes to Axis in this period, as Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis on literally all side.
And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal. It would have been literally insane not to sell things like munitions to Germany in that situation.
It doesn't excuse their treatment of "Righteous Among the Nations" like Paul Gruninger.
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...
I'm not excusing anything, rather trying to present a coherent picture, rather then presenting a view that seems to focus on making Switzerland look as possible.
Treatment of Paul Gruninger wasn't good, nobody is questioning that. But he was just fired, not shot or imprisoned. A reasonable punishment for what he did. And the people he let in were not evicted.
And that despite rejecting some, many Jews were accept into Switzerland and survived the war that somehow isn't talked about much. And of course the Swiss Jews survived the war unlike most other places in Europe.
Somehow Switzerland is made out to be a villain when in reality they did a lot and resisted more then many other states would have in the situation. Switzerland didn't do as much as they could have, but that's true for pretty much every nation. Given of how terrible and hopeless the Swiss situation seemed, I think overall their conduct in WW2 was pretty reasonable.
Literally every nation that traded with Germany, received gold stolen from Jews, Austria and Czechia. That includes the US and everybody else. But Switzerland is somehow uniquely singled out and is talked about in this context far more then anybody else.
>And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal.
Switzerland went through WWII without suffering much - and never came clean after WWII until the 1990s, remaining a rear base of nazi and neo-nazi networks during the second half of the XXth century.
Why are you moving the goal posts? That doesn't really have anything to do with the original post or argument. Is the goal of your post to just come up with as much negative stuff about Switzerland as you can manage?
Also its a waste oversimplification to claim 'never came clean until 1990'. That is only in regard to one specific issue and discussion and managing of that issue had been ongoing for a long time.
> remaining a rear base of nazi and neo-nazi networks during the second half of the XXth century.
And it was a base for anti-nazi networks threw-out the war as well.
And politically Switzerland was never close to being extreme right wing or joining the nazis. Switzerland is a free country that is open to lots of foreigners and international organization of all kinds. Including spy agencies from every country under the sun.
What official government policy support nazi networks? What exactly do you want Switzerland to do?
>Also its a waste oversimplification to claim 'never came clean until 1990'.
Excuse me, but I was there in the 1990s when the documentary "L'Honneur perdu de la Suisse" was aired and the during the debate around the Nazi bank account and the stolen Jewish goods or abandonned Jewish bank accounts.
The Swiss authorities, both private (banks) and public, resisted any inquiry until they were forced to, mostly by American Authorities who threatened to ban Swiss banks from operating in the USA.
The documentary cited above led to trials against the documentary makers and the television network, and a ban on any diffusion until the European court of Justice ruled in their favor after ten years of legal strife.
Your reaction shows that most Swiss refuse to engage with what was clear war profiteering and collaboration *before, during and after WWII" with the Nazis and their successors. Even official accounts nowadays admit this: https://www.ekr.admin.ch/publikationen/d710.html
>What official government policy support nazi networks?
Blocking Jews from seeking refuge and sending them back to Germany; not because of fear of German retaliation, but fear of "Verjudung" - "jewification".
>What exactly do you want Switzerland to do? During the war, After the war, admit it, instead of refusing any attempt to right wrongs or even threatening with lawsuits anyone who talks about it.
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...
Why the need to attack and lie? That's a poor behavior and a typical propaganda I've often seen from webs around topics like nanochips in vaccines or pro-putin ones (or simply joint work of gru and fsb massive electronic propaganda departments).
Not going to address all that bullshit since that would be a long post, just a random one - Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland and treating it similarly to Austria, simply deprioritized it. Just look at the map, everything around was firmly in Axis, they were not going anywhere, he could just starve them.
The cost of invasion for him would be massive for next to 0 gains - tons of hard-to-conquer mountains, fiercely defensive population that hates to be subjugated, and as Machiavelli said 'most free and most armed nation in the world".
They were not saint, simply neutral, it doesn't seem you understand the concept quite a bit.
Also heard about how they were accepting refugees and jews to the point of clearly facing famine (since they had nowhere to go), then famous 'Das Boot ist voll' happened, and they kept bringing them in regardless? Show me any nation in modern history when facing such existential threat with no hope that would behave so morally. Good contrast ie with current US admin treatment of almost all foreigners. Also helped secretly allies ie set up and access command post in Campione d'Italia - technically an Italian territory but surrounded by Switzerland. And so on...
If you perceive a statement of verifiable fact as an attack, it's about you not about the fact.
"lie"
Where?
"bullshit"
Not an argument.
"Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland"
Yes - see the links of my post. But he didn't. And it was not my argument.
"Show me any nation in modern history"
Whataboutism is still not an argument.
Your parent comment was flagged as not worthy of this forum (not by me), enough said about quality of your 'facts' :)
Happy now? I guess when you can't win an argument you shut it down. Love it though <3 fits the topic! Switzerland shut down the discussion for 50 years, living off stolen gold and Jewish bank accounts.
More lies, I wonder where that fierce hate comes from, have you ever wondered about that?
If you would come up with facts in a reasonable way we can discuss them one by one, but you seem to lack that skill. There is some truth to them, and some are twisted half truths ignoring other facts, and rest are outright lies. Maybe next time.
Just one thing - Switzerland never shut any discussion, again a lie, its more free country than most western ones. Half the articles you posted are from Swiss webs, and if you ever followed their media, this is discussed consistently.
It just means, 2 or more people flagged it. No absolute truth about quality involved.
I would say, some facts were presented, but in a flame war inducing style. So flagging was likely warranted by normal expectations.
With such large accusations I was honestly expecting sources.
Comment was deleted :(
I get that you want sources, but this is a veeeeery known fact, at least for europeans, I guess. That's one of the first things which gets mentioned about Switzerland if you ask others to describe it.
It's like asking for sources when someone talks about the US having been to war with [INSERT RANDOM COUNTRY].
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweiz_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg In German.
As someone from the region: I also have read this a few times in different sources over my life, with no controversy about it at all. This is pretty much how it is written in the history books and it also makes sense.
Thank you for the link. I'm learning.
Can you use Google or LLM chatbots? Because it's all public information everyone can find.
[dead]
[dead]
I’m as much a fan of thoughtless AI forwarding as the next HNer, but this seems like a fair situation for it:
https://chatgpt.com/share/68199e8e-5ad4-8012-8026-09fa353b60...
Chat gpt is known to make up citations and quotes. You shouldn't reference it unless you've checked every one for accuracy.
o3 is known to use web search to reference documents directly and be perhaps a bit overly diligent when it comes to double checking itself. Of course it can still make mistakes, but for something like this that’s a lot less likely than with 4o. Besides, I didn’t reference it, I just shared the results of a query as a third party to the thread (who decided to take as much time checking the claims as the two comments above me). Although it seems that the info is all coming from Wikipedia anyway so I might as well have shared that.
Because they are a rough state, with a banking system needed by organised crime as well as dictators, warlords etc. All those bunkers because they rightfully fear to get pay back for centuries of being the "Schurkenstaat" that they are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code