Year: 2018
The Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland
Switzerland is a politically neutral country, yet it has a strong military. All across the Swiss alps are military installation and bunkers carefully hidden so as to blend into the surrounding landscape. Some of them are camouflaged as huge rocks, others as quiet villas or barns that could open up in the event of an emergency to reveal cannons and heavy machine guns that could blow any approaching army to smithereens. Enormous caverns are dugout on the mountain side to function as ad-hoc airbases with hangars. Every major bridge, tunnel, road and railway has been rigged so they could be deliberately collapsed, whenever required, to keep enemy armies out. Highways can be converted into runways by quickly removing the grade separations in between the lanes.
Is that a rock?
The country has nuclear fallout shelters in every home, institutions and hospitals, as well as nearly 300,000 bunkers and 5,100 public shelters that could accommodate the entire Swiss population if required. Switzerland also has one of the largest armies on a per capita basis, with 200,000 active personnel and 3.6 million available for service. Every male citizen under 34 years old (under 50 in some cases) is a reserve soldier. Soldiers are even allowed to take all personally assigned weapons to home. If anyone were to invade Switzerland, they would find a nation armed to the teeth.
In his 1984 book, La Place de la Concorde Suisse, acclaimed New Yorker author John McPhee quoted a Swiss officer as saying: “Switzerland doesn’t have an army, Switzerland is an army.” Indeed, Switzerland’s powerful citizen army has helped preserve the country’s neutrality and keep neighboring countries from invading Swiss territory. The country hasn’t been involved in any military conflict for 200 years.
A bunker disguised as a house.
Fortification of the Swiss alpine region began in the 1880s. They were intensified and modernized during the World War and again during the Cold War period. But today, as a neutral country with no immediate threats to its borders, most of the bunkers lie empty and many are falling into disrepair. Some have been converted into shelters for homeless people, others house things like museums and hotels.
The Swiss government considered closing them down but the cost of decommissioning — an estimated $1 billion — far surpasses what it takes annually to maintain them. While the matter is still debated, the bunkers are likely to stay because they still provide use as fallout shelters. “Neutrality is no guarantee against radioactivity,” they say. In 1978, a law was passed requiring all new buildings to incorporate a shelter. If a family decides against building a shelter, they must pay for a place in the public shelter. Switzerland is the only country in the world that could provide protection to its entire population of 8 million, and more.
Another bunker disguised as a barn.
This Is Just Too Weird To Comprehend
Parkland school shooting: Florida killer suspect Nikolas Cruz receives adoring fan mail in prison
Admirers send letters detailing their ‘attraction’ to alleged gunman, including his ‘beautiful eyes’, while offering support and companionship
Accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz has been receiving volumes of fan mail at the Florida prison where he is being held.
In a pattern seen before with other killers and men accused of violent crimes, Cruz, who is charged with 17 counts of murder for the massacre at the school, has been sent suggestive photographs, greeting cards, encouragement and other kind notes, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, which obtained copies of some of the missives.
Broward County public defender Howard Finkelstein, whose office represents Cruz, said he was concerned about the notoriety Cruz was getting.
“The letters shake me up because they are written by regular, everyday teenage girls from across the nation,” he said. “That scares me. It’s perverted.”
The Sun Sentinel showed a thick stack of hundreds of pages of photocopies of the letters Cruz has been sent.
“You’re in a tough spot, Nik and that is something I know, because I’ve been there myself,” one letter writer wrote to Cruz. “If you need something, I can mail to you … ask. If you need to talk … I’ll listen.”
On 15 March, a person who identified themselves as an 18-year-old woman from Texas wrote: “When I saw your picture on the television, something attracted me to you.”
The letter was inside an envelope decorated with hearts and happy faces, the Sun Sentinel reported.
“Your eyes are beautiful and the freckles on your face make you so handsome.”
Another woman sent Cruz nine suggestive photos, the newspaper reported.
Mr Finkelstein told the Sun Sentinel that the “piles of letters” to Cruz was unlike anything he has seen before.
“In my 40 years as public defender, I’ve never seen this many letters to a defendant,” he said. “Everyone now and then gets a few, but nothing like this.”
Some of the correspondence is also from men. Mr Finkelstein told the newspaper that Cruz, who is on suicide watch, has not seen the letters. The Broward County Jail opens most mail for inmates, the Sun Sentinel reported; mail that is vulgar or deemed a security threat is returned to the sender.
“We read a few religious ones to him that extended wishes for his soul and to come to God, but we have not and will not read him the fan letters or share the photos of scantily-clad teenage girls,” Mr Finkelstein told the newspaper.
The $800 (£568) in Cruz’s commissary account has apparently been sent, at least in part, by fans, Finkelstein said.
Interesting Images
Cool Library
Watching the news in Damascus
Norwegian soldiers playing football on an ice flow with their rifles
Obama!
Go Bulletproof
Popular Science
If you’re a businessperson traveling to dangerous regions–or you are, perhaps, a tuxedo-wearing superspy–you probably want to stay safe and stylish at the same time. That’s a tall order, but it’s one that can be met with a few pieces of bulletproof clothing that provide protection from being shot at, stabbed, or even assaulted by hand. Here are a few items that might even get Q Branch’s grudging approval.
They say clothes make the man, so there’s no reason to sacrifice looking good for personal safety. Garrison Bespoke is a tailor in Toronto who will produce a suit to your personal specifications, including making it bulletproof. The suit is lined with lightweight sheets of the carbon nanotube material found in some body armor, which can reportedly stop .22, 9mm, and .45 caliber rounds.
The nanotubes harden when a ballistic round hits them, preventing the bullet from penetrating the suit. Of course, the impact of the bullet will probably give you at least some nasty bruises, and possibly some broken bones or internal injuries. But at least you won’t have to find a tailor to fix your bullet-hole-ridden duds–which is good, since the suit runs around $20,000.
Bulletproof Topcoat
NIJ IIIA BULLETPROOF LONG TOPCOAT
BulletBlocker
For colder climes, you might want bulletproof clothing that’s both protective and warm. That’s where Bulletblocker’s $1200 bulletproof topcoat comes in. The outside is a mix of wool and cashmere, but inside is a removable liner made of Kevlar, which the company says is rated to stop 9mm, .45 caliber, 357 and 44 Magnum, and even hollow-point rounds. And, as you can see, it looks great with a fedora (not bulletproof).
MTS MULTI-THREAT SHIELD
Force Training Institute
We can’t all afford a bulletproof suit, so for the cost-conscious business traveler, consider accessorizing with the $899 MTS Multi-Threat Shield. It looks like an ordinary attache case, but quickly unfolds into a three-foot tall Kevlar shield that can block bullets, knives, and even physical attacks. Granted, it weighs 8 pounds, which might be a bit heavier than your average bag, and it won’t actually hold your laptop. But it protects against handguns, shotguns, and submachine guns. With an optional armor plate slotted into a front pocket, it can even block a high-powered rifle.
Tailors at Garrison’s Bespoke in Toronto have lined a vest and suit jacket with several ultrathin sheets of carbon nanotubes: a state-of-the-art puncture-proof and bullet-resistant material.
An amateur rocket-maker finally launched himself off Earth. Now to prove it’s flat …
Washington Post
Mike Hughes, a California man who is most known for his belief that the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee, finally blasted off into the sky in a steam-powered rocket he had built himself.
The 61-year-old limo driver and daredevil-turned-rocket-maker soared about 1,875 feet above the Mojave Desert on Saturday afternoon, the Associated Press reported. Hughes’s white-and-green rocket, bearing the words “FLAT EARTH,” propelled vertically about 3 p.m. Pacific time and reached a speed of about 350 mph, Waldo Stakes, who has been helping Hughes, told the AP. Hughes deployed two parachutes while landing, the second one just moments before he plopped down not far from his launching point.
A video shows that the whole endeavor, from the moment his rocket went up to the moment he landed, lasted about a minute.
The vertical launch, which happened without a countdown more than 200 miles east of Los Angeles, came amid growing skepticism that Hughes would ever lift himself off. The launch had been postponed multiple times, partly because Hughes said he couldn’t get permission from a federal agency to conduct it on public land.
After he landed Saturday, Hughes told the AP that he was “relieved” but that he expected to feel the physical toll of it all the next day.
“Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess. I’ll feel it in the morning. I won’t be able to get out of bed,” he said. “At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight.”
He also said he’d been frustrated with assumptions that he “chickened out,” so he “manned up and did it.”
Hughes had been on a mission to prove that the Earth is flat and that NASA astronauts such as John Glenn and Neil Armstrong were merely paid actors performing in front of a computer-generated image of a round globe. His previous failed attempts, as well as the successful one on Saturday, are all part of his ultimate goal to propel himself at least 52 miles above Earth by the end of the year — and to prove once and for all that the planet is flat.
According to the AP, Hughes’s hard landing on Saturday left him injured, though it is unclear what type of injuries he suffered. Photos show paramedics carrying Hughes on a stretcher and into an ambulance.
Also among Hughes’s plans — aside from trying to get to space — is to run for governor.
“This is no joke,” he told the AP. “I want to do it.”
Got to admit, the guy’s got balls.
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