‘Tis the Season of Peace and Goodwill

sadly however, not all forecast peace and goodwill

‘Would you survive 72 hours?’ Germany and the Nordic countries prepare citizens for possible war | Europe | The Guardian

Germany is developing an app to help people locate the nearest bunker in the event of attack. Sweden is distributing a 32-page pamphlet titled If Crisis or War Comes. Half a million Finns have already downloaded an emergency preparedness guide.
If the prospect of a broader conflict in Europe seems remote for many, some countries at least are taking it seriously – and, in the term used by Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, taking steps to get populations kriegsfähig: war-capable.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has dramatically raised security tensions across the Baltic region, prompting Finland and Sweden to abandon decades of nonalignment and join Nato. Military capability, however, is not all: citizens have to be braced too.
[…]
Norway’s directorate for civil protection, DSB, has distributed a similar booklet to the country’s 2.6 million households. “We live in an increasingly turbulent world,” it says, affected by climate change, digital threats and “in the worst case, acts of war”.
The Norwegian pamphlet advises people, for example, to hold at least a week’s worth of non-perishable food including “crispbreads, canned pulses and beans, canned sandwich spreads, energy bars, dried fruit, chocolate, honey, biscuits and nuts”.
Norway also advises residents to stock up on essential medicines – including iodine tablets, in case of a nuclear incident – and, like Sweden, recommends that people have several bank cards and keep a ready supply of cash at home.
In Finland, an exhaustive online guide called Preparing for incidents and crises offers residents information and advice on anything from water outages to wildfires, the collapse of the internet or “longer-term crises … such as military conflict”.
More practically, on a separate website, 72tuntia.fi, Finland – which shares an 830-mile (1,340km) border with Russia – asks its citizens bluntly: “Would you survive 72 hours?” in a range of crisis situations, inviting them to put both their skills and their supplies through a series of tests.
The site has tips on strengthening psychological resilience “to increase your ability to cope in difficult circumstances”, improving personal cybersecurity and sheltering indoors (“Seal doors and windows. Turn on the radio. Wait calmly for instructions.”)
[…]
Germany’s focus, meanwhile, is on ramping up the number of its bunkers and protective shelters after an official estimate that the nation of 84 million has fewer than 600 public shelters, together capable of holding just 480,000 people.
Many cold war shelters have been dismantled owing to the belief they would no longer be needed, but Berlin has now launched a national bunker plan under the Federal Office for Population Protection, including a geolocation phone app.
Experts predict an attack by Russia may be a possibility within the next five years and the search is now on for any structure that could be used if such an event occurred, including metro stations and basements of public offices, schools and town halls.
German households have been urged to adapt their own cellars, garages or store rooms, or excavate old bunkers, while housebuilders will be legally obliged to include safe shelters in new homes – as Poland has already done.
The Frankfurter Allgemeiner newspaper this month revealed details of a 1,000-page army document aimed at German businesses – advising them, for example, to train extra lorry drivers – but containing civil preparedness recommendations for individuals.

¡Ave Claudia! Reina de las réplicas

[hail, Claudia, queen of repartee]