Switzerland is home to more than 370,000 nuclear bunkers – enough to shelter every member of the population. But if the worst should happen, would they actually work?
At first, Zora Schelbert, the chief operating officer and tour guide at the Sonnenberg nuclear bunker in Lucerne, Switzerland, wasn’t sure whether the requests she was receiving were a joke. It was February 2022, and Russia had just dropped the first bombs over Kyiv. “People were asking me what kind of measures they should take, where they would have to go,” Schelbert said. She quickly realised they had confused the historical society she works for, Unterirdisch Überleben (Surviving Underground), for the local department of civil protection.
To the alternating fascination, bewilderment and envy of its European neighbours, Switzerland, population nearly 9 million, has more bunkers per capita than anywhere else in the world – enough to guarantee shelter space to every single resident in the event of a crisis. (Sweden and Finland are a close second, covering all major cities.) The queries Schelbert was receiving came from frightened people trying to locate their assigned places. Today, however, the Sonnenberg bunker is mostly a museum. Originally built in 1971 to protect up to 20,000 people, it remained one of the largest nuclear shelters in the world until 2002, when its capacity was reduced to 2,000 to improve efficiency and reduce costs.