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
bschne 2 hours ago [-]
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
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.
AStonesThrow 9 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
baxtr 2 hours ago [-]
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?
jamiek88 1 hours ago [-]
Time is a feeling too, it’s the sense of time that goes awry. Like casinos attempt to mimic.
rollcat 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
1 hours ago [-]
Onavo 1 hours ago [-]
How do you deal with the mold problem?
intellectronica 3 hours ago [-]
And why does it have so many bankers?
ithkuil 2 hours ago [-]
Swiss bankers live within a levenshtein distance of 1 from a bunker
throwanem 1 hours ago [-]
Only Swiss bunkers, though.
iamflimflam1 2 hours ago [-]
Underrated comment.
sschueller 2 hours ago [-]
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.
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
jeffrallen 3 hours ago [-]
Germany, Austria, Italy and France: With friends like these who needs enemies? :)
aivisol 37 minutes ago [-]
That is how you ensure your neutrality.
alexey-salmin 12 minutes ago [-]
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.
2 hours ago [-]
aredox 2 hours ago [-]
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.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
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.
euroderf 1 hours ago [-]
Young men with nothing to do, no gainful employment, are the curse of many a nation. Civil unrest.
Mercenaries outsource the problem.
Antony90807 56 minutes ago [-]
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aaron695 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
KingOfCoders 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
somedude895 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
KingOfCoders 2 hours ago [-]
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."
abc05xx 3 hours ago [-]
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.
vincnetas 3 hours ago [-]
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 :)
Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy. Living with a bully next door is not.
KingOfCoders 15 minutes ago [-]
"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."
aredox 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
aredox 1 hours ago [-]
It doesn't excuse their treatment of "Righteous Among the Nations" like Paul Gruninger.
>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.
jajko 56 minutes ago [-]
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...
KingOfCoders 43 minutes ago [-]
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.
jajko 22 minutes ago [-]
Your parent comment was flagged as not worthy of this forum (not by me), enough said about quality of your 'facts' :)
lukan 44 seconds ago [-]
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.
KingOfCoders 11 minutes ago [-]
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.
Physkal 3 hours ago [-]
With such large accusations I was honestly expecting sources.
3 hours ago [-]
4ggr0 2 hours ago [-]
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].
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.
Physkal 3 hours ago [-]
Thank you for the link. I'm learning.
FirmwareBurner 3 hours ago [-]
Can you use Google or LLM chatbots? Because it's all public information everyone can find.
aredox 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Mayora13 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
willy_k 3 hours ago [-]
I’m as much a fan of thoughtless AI forwarding as the next HNer, but this seems like a fair situation for it:
Chat gpt is known to make up citations and quotes. You shouldn't reference it unless you've checked every one for accuracy.
willy_k 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43497394
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.
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.
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@mikealpharomeotangoindia/video/74960... (in Swiss German)
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)
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...
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.
That they weren’t waging war does result in excess men who someone else can pay to wage war for them though.
Mercenaries outsource the problem.
Your rant has nothing to do with 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."
https://www.uek.ch/en/index.htm
Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy. Living with a bully next door is not.
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."
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...
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.
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...
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.
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...
"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.
I would say, some facts were presented, but in a flame war inducing style.
It's like asking for sources when someone talks about the US having been to war with [INSERT RANDOM COUNTRY].
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.
https://chatgpt.com/share/68199e8e-5ad4-8012-8026-09fa353b60...