An interesting puzzle piece . . .
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2007/0824.html
Weekly Column - 08.24.2007
RUSSIA’S UNDENIABLE WAR PREPARATIONS
by J. R. Nyquist
Since 1998 I have publicly warned of Russia’s war preparations. The idea of preparing for nuclear war is absurd for most Americans, because the idea of nuclear war makes no sense in a consumer society. However that may be, Russia’s war preparations were as undeniable then as they are today. And Russia is not a consumer society. In the late 1990s Russia was refurbishing huge nuclear war bunkers and building underground cities. The only purpose such bunkers and cities could serve is in relation to a future nuclear war. For a country that was supposedly broke to be spending its precious resources on something so expensive, so far out of the way of “normal” expectations, seemed inexplicable. “Oh well,” people would shrug. “The Russians are used to doing this sort of thing. It gives them psychological comfort. Let them do what they want. It needn’t trouble us.” The public missed the fact, however, that Russia was continuing to violate arms control agreements. It was not admitting to all the nuclear warheads it possessed, and was not reliably disposing of them. It was developing new, deadly, biological and chemical weapons.
Why in the midst of peace, a few short years after the end of the Cold War, were the Russians adhering to this insane path? Were they anticipating a future war?
The answer must be yes. And the answer continues to be yes. In the 1990s Russia forged an alliance with China that involved a growing series of joint military exercises. Why would the Russians do this? Why would they seek to develop a joint military capability that would link Russian missile power with Chinese manpower? For over a decade the Russians have been providing the Chinese with technology and weapons. This is not merely a commercial transaction, as some would insist. These transactions are carefully considered strategic steps. Since the mid-1990s, Russia and China have initiated joint-armaments programs that further solidified their military partnership. It is obsolete thinking to suppose Russia and China are enemies. It must be understood, as a practical matter, that Russia and China are underdog powers locked in a struggle for primacy with the United States. The only sensible strategy, if Russia and China expect to emerge on top, is to unite against the Americans. And that is what the two countries have been doing for the past decade.
A week ago today, on August 17, the Russians and Chinese conducted joint military exercises on Russian soil, in the southern Ural Mountains. These coincided with strategic air operations involving Russian nuclear bombers. The combination of ground exercises with nuclear bomber exercises is a characteristic of Soviet nuclear war theory, which holds that troops must be used to follow up nuclear strikes. President Putin and China’s President Hu Jintao watched the exercises while holding a summit in Bishkek (the capital of former Soviet Kyrgyzstan). While China and Russia insist that their preparations aren’t aimed at any specific power, only a simpleton would believe them. (I am sad to acknowledge that many Americans, in this regard, are simpletons.)
Last week, in an obvious upgrading of nuclear war readiness, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the resumption of long-range nuclear bomber patrols that had previously been suspended in 1992. “I made the decision to restore flights of Russian strategic bombers on a permanent basis,” said Putin. “Combat duty has begun.” For some reason, Americans cannot digest Putin’s statement or his decision to resume bomber patrols. Why is this happening? Well, we say to ourselves, there is no reason other than the peculiar psychology of the Russians. President Bush has not put U.S. strategic bombers on patrol. And why should he? Russia isn’t our enemy. We are all friends. We are all economic partners and allies in the war against terror.
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excerpt
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES MOVES INTO BOMB SHELTER:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003995
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WND
China’s Bomb Shelters article:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51336
My own sources while there affirmed that there are very extensive such.
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Brief note about the Japanese building bunkers:
http://www.1913intel.com/2006/10/27/nervous-japanese-build-nuclear-bunkers/
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Swiss building bunkers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6347519.stm
BBC NEWS ARTICLE. Brief excerpt:
Last Updated: Saturday, 10 February 2007, 11:58 GMT
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Swiss still braced for nuclear war
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Switzerland
Many historians will agree the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War, but in Switzerland the threat of nuclear war has left an unexpected legacy.
The Sonnenberg tunnel contains the world’s largest nuclear shelter
If you are driving through Switzerland, south to Italy, you are likely to take the route via the charming town of Lucerne and that means driving through the Sonnenberg tunnel.
Those tunnels around Lucerne can be quite irritating, especially in fine weather. Just as you are enjoying a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains, you are plunged into darkness.
But when you get to the Sonnenberg, make sure your eyes adjust, and take a closer look, for this is much more than a tunnel. In here is the world’s largest nuclear shelter.
Under Swiss law, local governments are required to provide shelter spaces for everyone, and in the early 1970s Lucerne was short by several thousand. The new Sonnenberg motorway tunnel, just being built, seemed a neat solution: kit it out as a nuclear shelter as well and it could hold 20,000 people.
The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away
“Actually we got the idea from you British,” explains Werner Fischer, the local civil protection chief, as he shows me around. “Londoners used the underground as shelter during the blitz.”
Well maybe, but believe me, there are things in the Sonnenberg that you will never find down the Finchley Road tube station.
‘Engineering feat’
It starts with the doors, which are a metre and a half thick (5ft), and weigh 350 tonnes each. The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away.
The shelter was designed to be self-sufficient
One megaton is 70 Hiroshimas. That means the Sonnenberg residents would have emerged to a world reduced not to smoking rubble, but to ash.
Inside, the tunnel is a surreal monument to neutral Switzerland’s desire to survive a total war which would, naturally, have been started and waged by someone else.
Every eventuality has been thought of.
There are vast sleeping quarters, with bunk beds four layers deep. There is an operating theatre, a command post, and as Mr Fischer points out, a prison. “Just because there’s a nuclear war outside doesn’t mean we won’t have any social problems in here,” he says.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis.
There were even, it is rumoured, plans for a post office, until someone asked the obvious question “when the world outside is burning, who would you write to? What would the address be, not to mention who would deliver your letter?”
Then there are the coloured lights, indicating whether it is night or day outside. Obviously the country which produces the world’s top watches would not like to lose track of time.
There are some truly impressive feats of engineering: the air filters, designed to supply those 20,000 souls with 192 cubic metres each of non-radioactive air every day, are indeed breathtaking. So large, the hall they are housed in has the dimensions of a medieval cathedral.
Shelter choice
But while the Sonnenberg may be the biggest shelter, it is by no means the only one.
Many shelters are now being used a storage spaces
In fact, there are over a quarter of a million of them in Switzerland, because, 17 years after the end of the Cold War, the policy of providing shelters for the entire population still stands.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis. My house, though does not have one.
An anxious telephone call to my local civil protection office brings a reassuring answer. “Actually your community has 40% overcapacity in shelters,” I’m told.
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US BUNKER BUILDERS:
http://www.usbunkers.com/products.php
http://www.hardenedstructures.com/underground.asp
http://www.subsurfacebuildings.com/BargainBunkers.html
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Japanese scientists eye new planet:
http://www.physorg.com/news123406660.html
I think there’s an FR thread on that.
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dats all for now LOL.