March 12, 2018 (NBC News)
Burrowed beneath a small park in Stockholm is a forgotten relic of the past
that may help in the future. The only clue to its existence is a green metal
door, 8 feet high by 5 feet wide, hewn into the rock next to a busy,
snow-dusted sidewalk. Heaving it open reveals an airlock that leads to a fully
operational nuclear bunker. Facilities like this are a vital part of Sweden's
history - and recent threats from Russia mean they could become important again
in the years to come.
"They are meant to be
used if the government decides to announce full alert," says Ove
Brunnström, the cheerful spokesman for Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency who
recently gave NBC News a rare tour of the subterranean site. "That would
be [triggered] if we are close to war or we are under attack." Few
countries do bunkers like Sweden, which never joined NATO and could be
considered one of the world's most peaceful nations over the past 200 years. It
honeycombed itself with civil defense shelters during the Cold War and today
around 65,000 remain on standby, dotted around its sparsely populated
territory.
A woman walks by an emergency exit to a public bomb and fallout shelter in the Torsgatan area of central Stockholm. Foto Mikael Sjoeberg / for NBC News
In the early 2000s, Sweden
slashed defense spending and halted bunker construction. Many were all but
forgotten, doubling as parking lots and bicycle storage spaces during a period
when global conflict seemed a distant prospect. That thinking changed in 2014
when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, allegedly sent troops
into eastern Ukraine, and began violating airspace over the Nordic and Baltic
regions.
"Ukraine was a wake-up
call for the Swedes, and it really renewed the national discussion surrounding
defense," says Erik Brattberg, a fellow at the Washington-based Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace think tank. This perceived threat has
prompted Sweden to order a reboot of its once-proud policy of "total
defense" — which calls on the military and civilians to act together to
ward off attackers. Bunkers are an integral part of this hunker-down strategy. In
December, the country's Defense Commission recommended modernizing existing
shelters while planning the construction of the first new ones in more than 15
years. "It's expensive to build shelters, the Cold War was over and we had
quite a calm situation in Europe," says Brunnström, explaining his
country's change of heart. "But what happened in Ukraine in 2014, I think,
shocked the Western world."
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