“I don’t want to brag, but the Finnish bomb shelter technology is one of the best. We have been doing this for a while,” Rask said, pointing to the two massive steel doors at the entry of the shelter, that he said would withstand heavy bombardment – including nuclear – as well as chemical attacks.
“It was built like this on purpose,” Rask said, “Studies have shown that people react better to rooms that have walls, where there are boundaries that create a sense of privacy.” But the vast shelter network is just one of the components of what Finland calls its strategy of “comprehensive security” that has started to attract attention following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finland, a country of 5.5 million people, can muster a wartime army of 280,000 personnel, while in total it has 900,000 trained reservists. “We had no idea at the beginning of the pandemic how bad it was going to get, what it will do to our economy. But then our prime minister came out and said that the deal will go ahead signalling that the country’s security is paramount.”Finland has also continued with conscription for all male school-leavers even after the end of the cold war when many other European nations ceased the practice.