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Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war
- sdwr 2y agoThat's what a functional government looks like. High-information, low-controversy, consolidating citizens around a shared truth.
- rootusrootus 2y agoSure, but which is the cause, and which the effect? Edit: Huh, a totally legitimate question that points directly at the underlying cause, and downvoted to the limit. Does it hurt that much to admit that people are getting exactly the government they want?
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago[dead]
- joe_the_user 2y agoA pamphlet talking about "in case of war..." seems like it is making war itself more likely. "Shared truth" seems like it's reaching also.
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago[dead]
- hagbard_c 2y agoWearing a helmet makes falling more likely? Vaccination makes disease more likely? Fire drills increase the chance of fire? Information about bear awareness makes bear encounters more likely? Of course not. Civil defence is a good thing, sticking your head in the sand is not. Also, the brochure is not just about war but also about other crises. Sweden can experience 'interesting' weather which can leave people out of reach of rescue services for a while so 'be prepared' is just good advice.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoWhy would that make war more likely?
- yencabulator 2y agoThat pamphlet is not new, they've been doing it since WWII.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoRelated: Sweden's 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide hits mailboxes today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42173777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42173777 - Nov 2024
- Mistletoe 2y ago[flagged]
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- mdp2021 2y agoEven if you went there to ask, we would have to inquire about how much you assessed credibility.
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- mdp2021 2y agoSpeaking on purely theoretical terms - because this forum is probably not fit for the expression of some judgements -, while it is not a generally good strategy to just "wait and hope", one should not forget that pseudo-chance can go in more directions - some of which have been surprising in the region in the last hundred years. (Of course, no strategist would just embrace chance.)
- dang 2y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar, regardless of which nation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mikewarot 2y agoPutin's successor is likely to be someone even less securely in power, and thus far less rational. I don't want to test our luck with what's left of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
- 2y ago
- hyggetrold 2y agoIn retrospect, it seems like it was a bad idea for Western countries to assume that things were going to remain peaceful after the fall of the USSR. Glad to see the threat of war being taken seriously.
- Y-bar 2y agoUnfortunately it not "just" about war now. The changing climate has also significantly increased the risk for major disruptions on social services such as fresh water supply, electricity, sanitation, and roads/track. We now also need to add those to the list of real risks to prepare for.
- mdp2021 2y agoNiall Ferguson recently gave a speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocYvwiSYDTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocYvwiSYDTA (Address to the 2024 CIS Consilium on the Gold Coast), in which he says that WWIII may be a more urgent risk. It's a race.
- Y-bar 2y agoThis reminds me of Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis from three years ago where they remind us that there will be increased international conflicts due to the effects of climate change: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD-CLIMATE-RISK-ANALYSIS-FINAL.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... (1.5 MB PDF)
- mdp2021 2y agoInteresting (and very plain, understandable, commonsensical) - but of course some running conflicts are not not strongly related to climate change. Of course, when Niall Ferguson spoke, it looked at the contingency: he sees a possibility of catastrophic consequences that may come much earlier than the climatic "Armageddon". (Well, in some news peices today they spoke about "before Xmas"... It makes the order of events very definite.)
- petesergeant 2y agoExceptionally well-armed NATO + JEF members, and Finland well within distance to use conventional artillery to turn St Petersburg to rubble. This is a public-awareness and support-building exercise rather than a real concern. This is like the RAF frequently issuing press-releases about intercepting Russian jets.
- mdp2021 2y ago> conventional artillery to turn St Petersburg to rubble Well, let's really hope not. (Let us hope that nothing of worth is ever destroyed, and let us not speak about destruction of universal goods lightly.) Edit: let us be even more clear (possibly in light of the dismissing feelers who just passed by). If you are into destruction of the cultural heritage, you are the enemy. Complexities just come later.
- BobaFloutist 2y agoPutin is hoping and taking action to ensure otherwise.
- mdp2021 2y agoThat reinforces my point instead of changing it. Destruction of the Worth = bad. I.e. it is part of what should be fought.
- soco 2y agoAre human lives worthwhile to be destroyed? Are they not universal enough? Because I don't see much respect for those around the world... starting, but not ending there, with the russian soldiers themselves.
- mdp2021 2y agoSome will be of the opinion that what may not respect cultural heritage may not have the same worth. Sorry. Edit: I will express it again, and to stress the point: some things are the fruit of the drive towards construction. Some other things may be destroyers. So, it all depends. No, we will not attribute worth to destroyers.
- ipnon 2y agoI just watched Patlabor 2 last night, about a civil war in post-Cold War Japan. The main theme is the following: The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur. Thus a government which does not plan for one-in-a-million scenarios is truly derelict and incapable of survival.
- daneel_w 2y agoFantastic movie, great political plot, great direction. Part 1 is decent, too.
- HPsquared 2y agoI put the odds at least 10% this century.
- xg15 2y ago> The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur. Nitpick: I get your point, but phrasing it like this is basically the gambler's fallacy. That's not how probability works. You could ask though if, given the changed environment, the one-in-a-million event still has the odds of one-in-a-million. Or if one-in-a-million is really such a rare thing if you make a billion draws...
- ipnon 2y agoThe movie asks what is the point of JSDF if Japan isn’t under any threat … then somebody in an F-16 fires a TV guided missile into the Yokohama Bay Bridge. It’s a good movie, you should watch it.
- xg15 2y agoSounds good indeed!
- mdp2021 2y agoBetter formulation: a one-in-a-million event that is tried a million times has a ~63% chance of happening.
- daneel_w 2y agoThe literal title is "If the crisis or the war comes". Swedes and the Swedish language has a somewhat poetic tendency to refer to things in definite article, embodying them, when wanting to underline the seriousness.
- yencabulator 2y agoIf a war reaches Sweden in the next years, I think it's safe to say we know which war it will be. It's like the Finnish defense forces. Their training exercises have the OPFOR, the imaginary opposing force usually designated with the color yellow for the sake of the exercise, approaching from the East. Funny that, wonder why.
- daneel_w 2y agoWhile this Swedish linguistic tendency isn't related to Russia, on that topic we have an old saying: "Lede fi [archaic: evil enemy] kommer från öst."
- hagbard_c 2y agoNothing new here, the Swedish government has been publishing this guide since the second world war [1] and updates it regularly. It is not directly related to an increase in international tensions and would have been published even if Putin and his cronies were out on the pony farm. The last update was published in 2017/2018 by the previous labour-led government, now that Sweden is part of NATO it needed an update to reflect that fact. Previous versions were published in 1943, 1952, 1961, 1978, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 2017/2018. [1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_kriget_kommer https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_kriget_kommer
- piva00 2y agoI still have mine from 2017 in a kitchen drawer, as an immigrant it was quite informative, it's how I've learned that Sweden will never surrender and any messaging about it is enemy agitation to be ignored.
- rightbyte 2y ago> that Sweden will never surrender and any messaging about it is enemy agitation to be ignored. Oh ye, the outlawing of losing wars. Not very convincing for adults but I guess teenagers think it sounds cool.
- hagbard_c 2y agoThe "Sweden will never surrender" part refers to the brochure warning against enemy propaganda which suggests that Swedish forces have surrendered and people should leave enemy forces unharmed. It is mentioned on page 5 of the English-language brochure: https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf
- rightbyte 2y agoSo how do you enforce an armistice when the standing order is "never to surrender"? I.e. not "enemy propaganda" but government orders. You would have units disregarding it left and right. I don't think it is a good idea to give the soldiers the impression that they will fight to the last man, since that encourages killing their officers at an earlier stage than they would otherwise. Preferably, you want to lure with some peace agreement that is just around the corner, such that the soldiers believe that there is hope for them.
- kkfx 2y agoA simple note: if you live sufficiently south for p.v., in a home, you can sustain services disruptions significantly: - p.v. with storage means freezers operational, and freezers means food, protein in particular, for potentially very long periods - even without p.v. a home in the wood means being able to heat in the winter sourcing wood in nature, uncomfortable but still heat, also usable to cook - you have room to store water, from the aqueduct with a personal pump in home pipes, so with p.v. you get cold and hot water, potentially for a week or two, and in nature sources tend to be common at our latitudes In an apartment in a dense city you can just keep a bit of water, but still much less than the countryside, next to zero chance for p.v. and energy storage, very limited chance to source water in nature, even issues to walk for many stairs if elevators have no energy. Long story short: you can't be resilient. Oh, and you might be targeted because hitting a city it's easy and some damages are assured, hitting the countryside is essentially wasting weapons. Remember as well: with wood you can cook various long lasting foods, like rice, beans, ... without wood or locally produced energy your cooking ability going down to zero. Floods? Spread homes might be or not at risk, but they are still spread, meaning few per flooded are, so rescuing it's doable as temporary shelters, emergency food supply etc. Dense areas? The same in risk terms, but extremely hard to help simply because there are too many people hit together. Earthquakes? Very similar, plus the fact that light homes tend to allow quick escape, tall buildings do not, and even if they might be well designed in seismic terms they are still very problematic. Fires? idem. Long story short: it's pointless to publish such next-to-obvious recommendations, some could do something, many could not.
- 7952 2y agoWar and survival are communal activities. Tight dense communities tend to do better as people can support each other. Isolated dwellings are just ridiculously vulnerable in comparison. The next group of hungry/angry people who turn up will roll right over you. If you want to survive you should have neighbors and make friends with them.
- kkfx 2y agoNot in all known wars so far. In all wars we know cities are bombing, hungry, criminal while SPREAD (not isolated) areas are often simply ignored by the war and in nature you can both source and produce food. Beside in spread area you have friends as well as in city, but there we are all collaborative even when we do not like each other much because we are few, in cities we are strangers in the crowd.
- hulitu 2y ago> Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war Don't start it, in the first place. Not having an agressive stance also helps. /s