Fun Facts I learnt @ the Fallout Shelter December 10, 2006

as i mentioned in my previous entry while i was in Berlin i went on a brief tour of a functional atomic fallout shelter built in 1974. the building developers apparently got a huge grant from the government to include the shelter in the new building they were putting up – i’m not sure exactly what they spent it all on.

So, how good is this ‘fully functional’ fallout shelter anyway?

First you need to know it’s there; situated down a stairwell below a parking garage there is only one small sign outside the door. i don’t think there is a sign on the street outside.

Then you need to know a nuclear attack is coming so you go there. then you need to be strong or quick as it only has a capacity of 3600 people (along with the other, smaller, shelters dotted around Berlin the combined capacity of them all is about 5% of the city’s population – by contrast apparently there are enough fallout shelters in Switzerland for 90% of that countries population and ironically they are neutral).

Next you have to hope that the bomb was dropped more than a minimum of 5km away from the site or the structure will likely have been compromised.

So, assuming you know a nuclear attack is on the way and you get into the shelter and the bomb impacts more than 5km away you are set for the next 14 days but be prepared to be uncomfortable.

If the 3600 person capacity is full the average temperature will be around 35 degrees Celsius, all the time, with a relative humidity around 75% plus.

The air filters will only last for 14 days and cannot be cleaned or replaced.

And due to the filtration process the amount of oxygen available in the air will be so low that you will only have enough energy to sleep most of the time, with an effort you could go to the toilet (one of 64 – remember, 3600 people) or eat.

But mostly you will be sleeping. On a bed that consists of mesh netting in a steel frame (no under support) that is stacked 4 high and butts up against the next one. and they are only 1.7m long. cosy.   (click for bigger view)

If you can muster up the energy to eat there are enough stored provisions to last 3600 people for 14 days. great, what is the food like? tinned bread. and? that’s it, just tinned bread. But if you want to heat it up there is a kitchen (about 2m square) which has 2 shelves and a stove top with 3 hotplates.

bread. and water. how much water? there is enough water stored for each person to have 2.5 litres a day. sounds like a reasonable amount at first, but that’s for everything including toilets (the toilets have no doors only a curtain – the idea is to discourage suicide as the idea is that people are less likely to commit suicide if they don’t have the privacy) and washing (there are no showers). For perspective apparently the average German normally uses 120 – 140 litres of water a day (Americans apparently use an average of closer to 300 litres a day). There are two manual pumps to a well also but no one is likely to have enough energy or strength to operate them (remember the low oxygen levels) and even if someone does get them working the ground water would probably be contaminated anyway.

And who will be in charge? 16 soldiers. And do any of these 16 soldiers have medical training to deal with emergencies? no. it is assumed that amongst the 3600 people who get in there will probably be some doctors. and you better hope they bring medicine and equipment with them because none is stored in the shelter.

So what happens after 14 days when the filtered air, water and tinned bread runs out? you call for help on the one telephone in the shelter. that is connected to the local city telephone network. so you better hope that the phone lines are still intact. and that there is someone there on the other end to answer.

Weekend Wrap Up October 1, 2006

This weekend M and I have not strayed especially far from Mannheim. On Saturday we went to a town about half an hour away on the train called Worms (its Vurms not worms in the garden!). This place has the Dom (Cathedral) that all European towns lay claim to theirm being the biggest, best, oldest, blah blah – we’re getting a bit over that to be honest. However, what attracted us to this little place was Europe’s oldest Jewish cemetary.  The gravestones date back from 1036. There are over 2000 graves. It was a very interesting place to see and I have posted only one photo as it really cannot capture the feel of the place, the atmosphere and the like. One thing that I noticed was that it had a very different feel about it from Christian cemetaries.  Maybe it was the haphazard layout, the fact that the graves are so old (although people were still being buried there up until after WWI - at least as far as I could see). Maybe it was the stones of memorial that people put on the headstones of people dead for hundreds of years – or the messages in writing slipped into the cracks of the headstones – but it was a peaceful place and not a sterile place of internment. Hard to explain.  

Today we headed off to the local museum to see a cool exhibition of massively enlarged microscopic images of bugs and bacteria and things like that. We got off the tram and headed up the path towards the museum and were greeted by this…

Good Lord – The Guiness Book of World Records! Whatever could it be? There were children and rides, and sausage stalls and old cars on display and beer by the litre and tv crews. Perhaps an awe inspiring circus trapeeze act or a tightrope walker. Or, perhaps a death defying scientific experiement (we were are the museum after all)???  And it was…

the most boring and pointless record ever – the WORLD’S LONGEST EXTENSION CORD. No I’m not joking. The crane that you can see in the background has a tv crew on it for the local station. Now that would make rivetting viewing wouldn’t it?? More likely to make young children go out and seek a life of crime and drugs just to escape the boredom. I wonder if it will get a special GBWR award for most boring and never likely to be thought about much less remembered record.