Swiss Paranoia

[David Morris]

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/19/switzerland-is-one-gigantic-bo.html

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG has been exploring the bizarre world of
Swiss self-destructing infrastructure, documented in La Place de la
Concorde Suisse, John McPhee's "rich, journalistic study of the Swiss
Army's role in Swiss society." It turns out that the Swiss Army
specifies that bridges, hillsides, and tunnels need to be designed so
that they can be remotely destroyed in the event of societal collapse,
pan-European war, or invasion. Meanwhile, underground parking garages
(and some tunnels) are designed to be sealed off as airtight nuclear
bunkers.

To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads,
Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That
is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to
approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a
highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is
programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the
bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent
the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage...

There are also hollow mountains! Booby-trapped cliff-faces!

Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway
tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains
have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them.
There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside
pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground
between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made
rockslides are ready to slide...

The impending self-demolition of the country is "routinely practiced,"
McPhee writes. "Often, in such assignments, the civilian engineer who
created the bridge will, in his capacity as a military officer, be
given the task of planning its destruction."