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> The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges Had they

> The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges Had they written this 30 years ago this would certainly have been true, Sweden as a nation had heeded Baden Powell's motto "Be Prepared". A large part of this preparation was realised through the unusual but effective way the country had organised its defence which was integrated into most parts of society. The system was called 'Totalförsvaret' (literally 'the total defence') and integrated armed forces, civilian institutions and parts of industry into an organisational structure which was designed to be resistant against the loss of one or more of its arms. There were large stockpiles of material and supplies scattered around the country, these included amongst other 50 mobile field hospitals with 2100 respirators, fully equipped operating theatres, etc. The country had stockpiled food supplies which could last for a maximum of 2 years. But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. The field hospitals went to the Baltic states, the respirators (new, unused) were given away or thrashed. The food supplies are gone, Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor's warehouses and on the road at the moment. Before the 90's Sweden had access to about 3600 respirators, now the number seems to be around 520 - seems to be because the "government" has decided this number is critical to the nation's security and as such is not published. The country has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the OECD after Portugal. Maybe SARS2 will help to rebuild this part of the Swedish state? Time will tell.

jacobush 7y ago
Maybe 25 years even. (After that, it went downhill fast.) The defense was truly remarkably in depth and at all levels prepared to continue operations without a remaining chain of command. A Soviet invading force would have of course "won" within weeks, but not before suffering huge losses thanks to always-at-the-ready 200 state of the art fighter bombers using highways all over the country for runways, with a ground crew of only 5 per plane, and a handful of the worlds best (for littoral waters) submarines. When the coastal artillery would be neutralized, presumably with nukes or speznas, the mobile artillery would retreat inland. The cities were assumed to be nuked, but a large fraction of the city population had underground shelter. Even with Air and Naval forces depleted, the real struggle for a would be invader would only begin. There were weapons and food stored all over the countryside, and the communicated doctrine was "if you hear about a surrender from anyone, even the prime minister, it's false news. Keep fighting until the country is liberated." It would have been like Afghanistan, except the insurgents would have had access to better weapons. All of this had the purpose of deterring the Soviet command from full on ground invasion. Perhaps only nuke the larger cities, destroy some strategic assets and kill the government. In a WW3 scenario, that would have been a win for Sweden.
- mongol 7y ago
  I wonder what happened with risk awareness. I know many who even at the time thought it was insane to decommission so much of preparedness. Could it have been a generational thing? Or just a huge sigh of relief after the cold war ended? I think risk awareness decreased approximately in the same pace conscription numbers decreased. 1980: 50 980 new conscripts trained 1986: 45 572 1990: 41 349 2000: 16 658 2005: 10 169 2008: 6 804 2010: conscription paused https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/var-historia/artiklar/varnplikt-under-109-ar/ https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/var-h...
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Terms such as "the end of history" were popular for a while, so I think a big part of it was a huge sigh of relief after the Cold War. Even during the heyday of the Cold War, some thought defence was futile, some thought it would never be needed at all, so I can imagine that when everything looked alright for a while, cooler/more cynical/hawks didn't have as much sway and the balance shifted. We are way past it and back to where 50k conscripts should be trained a year again, but I guess everyone is used to lower taxes etc nowadays.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'm guessing economics happened. Beancounters got into power and all the surplus and redundancy was cut out as a "fat", in the process of becoming "lean" and "just-in-time". It's the same story everywhere.
    - TuringTest 7y ago
      I really hope, in the future, business schools will forget this "lean" idea of optimality and will again appreciate the value of keeping reserve resources.
  - Yetanfou 7y ago
    The Swedish word for what happened is that the country is 'fredsskadat', i.e. 'damaged by peace'. The country has not seen a major conflict in more than 2 centuries which has created a zeitgeist in which it has left that sort of problems behind it and does not really need to prepare for the eventuality. The narrative goes along these lines: Why spend time and money in preparation for conflict when you can just talk your way out of it? If people just listened to all the reasonable arguments put forward they'll see reason and refrain from whatever nefarious plan they were hatching. The money spent on defence - civil and military - is so much better spent on improving the world at large, in spreading the blessings of the Swedish model abroad. This is not the whole story of course since Sweden does have a sizeable arms industry which exports to all sorts of countries which stray very far from the above narrative. Conscription into the Swedish army was reinstated a few years ago, conscripts are now being called upon to help managing the SARS2 crisis. Depending on how the country emerges from the crisis there might be a chance of rebuilding part of the total defence system starting with the civil defence aspects.
throw7738 7y ago
A few years ago they even castrated lion in army flag. Army was needed and at some level even offensive.
claudeganon 7y ago
>But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. This hollowing out seems to be true across much of the US and Western world. Once the threat of the Soviet Union was removed, the US lost it’s ability to defend it’s own society with equivalent state power. While the slashing and privatization of essential services was lauded by both parties, it seems that this might turn out to have been extreme shortsightedness.
TuringTest 7y ago
> Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor's warehouses and on the road at the moment. Funny thing is, some people call this lean market-based optimization "efficient". Nature happens to have a different definition. If you can only survive and operate at peak capacity during regular conditions, and are destroyed during a crisis, there's nothing efficient about that.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  As my grandfather used to say: "if you don't have [insurance, or spares] then you're just borrowing it until God decides to take it away from you".

jacobush 7y ago

Maybe 25 years even. (After that, it went downhill fast.) The defense was truly remarkably in depth and at all levels prepared to continue operations without a remaining chain of command. A Soviet invading force would have of course "won" within weeks, but not before suffering huge losses thanks to always-at-the-ready 200 state of the art fighter bombers using highways all over the country for runways, with a ground crew of only 5 per plane, and a handful of the worlds best (for littoral waters) submarines. When the coastal artillery would be neutralized, presumably with nukes or speznas, the mobile artillery would retreat inland. The cities were assumed to be nuked, but a large fraction of the city population had underground shelter. Even with Air and Naval forces depleted, the real struggle for a would be invader would only begin. There were weapons and food stored all over the countryside, and the communicated doctrine was "if you hear about a surrender from anyone, even the prime minister, it's false news. Keep fighting until the country is liberated." It would have been like Afghanistan, except the insurgents would have had access to better weapons. All of this had the purpose of deterring the Soviet command from full on ground invasion. Perhaps only nuke the larger cities, destroy some strategic assets and kill the government. In a WW3 scenario, that would have been a win for Sweden.

mongol 7y ago
I wonder what happened with risk awareness. I know many who even at the time thought it was insane to decommission so much of preparedness. Could it have been a generational thing? Or just a huge sigh of relief after the cold war ended? I think risk awareness decreased approximately in the same pace conscription numbers decreased. 1980: 50 980 new conscripts trained 1986: 45 572 1990: 41 349 2000: 16 658 2005: 10 169 2008: 6 804 2010: conscription paused https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/var-historia/artiklar/varnplikt-under-109-ar/ https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/information-och-fakta/var-h...
- jacobush 7y ago
  Terms such as "the end of history" were popular for a while, so I think a big part of it was a huge sigh of relief after the Cold War. Even during the heyday of the Cold War, some thought defence was futile, some thought it would never be needed at all, so I can imagine that when everything looked alright for a while, cooler/more cynical/hawks didn't have as much sway and the balance shifted. We are way past it and back to where 50k conscripts should be trained a year again, but I guess everyone is used to lower taxes etc nowadays.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'm guessing economics happened. Beancounters got into power and all the surplus and redundancy was cut out as a "fat", in the process of becoming "lean" and "just-in-time". It's the same story everywhere.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    I really hope, in the future, business schools will forget this "lean" idea of optimality and will again appreciate the value of keeping reserve resources.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  The Swedish word for what happened is that the country is 'fredsskadat', i.e. 'damaged by peace'. The country has not seen a major conflict in more than 2 centuries which has created a zeitgeist in which it has left that sort of problems behind it and does not really need to prepare for the eventuality. The narrative goes along these lines: Why spend time and money in preparation for conflict when you can just talk your way out of it? If people just listened to all the reasonable arguments put forward they'll see reason and refrain from whatever nefarious plan they were hatching. The money spent on defence - civil and military - is so much better spent on improving the world at large, in spreading the blessings of the Swedish model abroad. This is not the whole story of course since Sweden does have a sizeable arms industry which exports to all sorts of countries which stray very far from the above narrative. Conscription into the Swedish army was reinstated a few years ago, conscripts are now being called upon to help managing the SARS2 crisis. Depending on how the country emerges from the crisis there might be a chance of rebuilding part of the total defence system starting with the civil defence aspects.

throw7738 7y ago

A few years ago they even castrated lion in army flag. Army was needed and at some level even offensive.

claudeganon 7y ago

>But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. This hollowing out seems to be true across much of the US and Western world. Once the threat of the Soviet Union was removed, the US lost it’s ability to defend it’s own society with equivalent state power. While the slashing and privatization of essential services was lauded by both parties, it seems that this might turn out to have been extreme shortsightedness.

TuringTest 7y ago

> Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor's warehouses and on the road at the moment. Funny thing is, some people call this lean market-based optimization "efficient". Nature happens to have a different definition. If you can only survive and operate at peak capacity during regular conditions, and are destroyed during a crisis, there's nothing efficient about that.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
As my grandfather used to say: "if you don't have [insurance, or spares] then you're just borrowing it until God decides to take it away from you".