Swiss Paranoia

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 19.06.2012 16:30, David Morris wrote:

> 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."
>
>

For more details in a less sensationalist perspective look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Redoubt_%28Switzerland%29

A literary work partly taking place in the Swiss national reduit is 
Christian Kracht's alternate history novel /Ich werde hier sein im 
Sonnenschein und im Schatten/.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_werde_hier_sein_im_Sonnenschein_und_im_Schatten

"The novel presents an alternate history 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_history> of Switzerland 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland> in which Lenin 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin> did not leave Switzerland for 
Russia in 1917 to bring about the Russian Revolution 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_%281917%29>. Instead, 
Lenin's revolution took place in Switzerland, transforming it into the 
/Swiss Socialist Republic/, a Communist state engaged in the 
colonisation of Africa 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonisation_of_Africa> and in perpetual 
war <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war> with other 
totalitarian empires, notably with a federation of British and German 
fascists. The plot of the novel, set in around 2010, traces a black 
Swiss political commissar 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar>'s journey to the 
heart of the empire, the gigantic alpine Reduit 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduit>, where he is to arrest 
Brazhinsky, an enemy of the state."

The Afro-Swiss protagonist (and the whole idea of Socialist 
Afro-Swissness) is inspired by the Schwarzkommando from /Gravity's 
Rainbow/. And the electric switch at the underside of Bongo-Shaftsbury's 
arm (see /V/, chapter 3.IV) finds echoes on pp. 46 and 129. The first 
one - "Neben ihrer Achselhöhle war eine Steckdose eingelassen, wie die 
Schnauze eines Schweins" - makes the Pynchon link perfect by associating 
the plug box with the snout of a pig. Other obvious influences are 
Conrad, Dick and Lovecraft. Also Burroughs and Ernst Jünger. Still think 
/1979/ to be Kracht's best novel, but /Ich werde hier sein im 
Sonnenschein und im Schatten/ (as well as his latest, /Imperium/) is 
certainly worth reading, too. So let me close with a sample that deals 
with an attack on the reduit: "Ich hielt mir das sich langsam 
verfärbende Kopfkissen an die Brust, verliess das Zimmer, nahm mir eine 
Gasmaske aus einer der Vorrichtungen, wankte den Gang hinunter auf eine 
Ausgangstür zu und drückte sie auf. Den Balkon betretend, sah ich das 
erhabene Bild Dutzender deutscher Luftschiffe, die den Himmel über 
meinem Kopf füllten. Und während vor den runden, gläsernen Scheiben der 
Gasmaske die Sonne orangerot und wundervoll glühend hinter den Alpen 
versank und unsere Scheinwerfer wie weisse Nadeln den Abendhimmel 
durchstachen, begann erneut das infernalische, monströse Bombardement 
des Réduits" (p. 132). There is a Jünger mockery in this.



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