Fallout Shelters and Zurich's Water: Swiss Resilience

Switzerland has a reputation for being... not paranoid, exactly, but certainly careful with their own safety. Zurich exemplifies this: not just with its fallout shelters, but with an entire backup water system. Just in case the world ends.

(you can find contact details and social links there too)

[JoshyFre]

'A lot of those are being used for storage these days, probably for, cheese'

[Raldazzar]

I loved the 'because Switzerland' as a reason for clean water xD

[TomScottGo]

I'm doing full infrastructure-nerdery on this one. Turns out it's something a lot of the locals don't even know about...!

[addfuture]

My uncle and aunt live in Switzerland and I've been inside their bunker and it's no joke. Solid concrete and steel door about 30cm thick and an escape tunnel. Pretty cool.

[chrishuab]

I like to imagine Tom finds some cool fact about a foreign country on Wikipedia, travels for hours to shoot 10 minutes of video at its precise location, then goes home to edit and upload it. What a life.

[MicroBlogganism]

Fallout shelter cheese, the least irradiated cheese on the market :P

[TheAdaaamski]

If that was a bit for dogs to drink out of at the bottom of the fountain, shown for a brief moment, then that is great!

[KyleLi]

The swiss know something we don't.

[alienkishorekumar]

To be born Swiss is winning lottery twice.

[Lttlemoi]

And then you have Belgium, where every year before winter, the media screams that we might not have enough electricity this year.

Tom in Switzerland? You finally got to see a proper railway system compared to the UK ^^

[ilregulator]

FYI In Switzerland all public fountains are drinking water except if there's a sign that says otherwise. If you find a public fountain anywhere in the country and there ISN'T a sign that says "no drinking water", you're free to drink as much as you like.

[quidprobro]

Wait, so decorative fountains in Switzerland use clean drinking water? Where I live they're normally closed systems that have been chlorinated for health concerns

[PullerzCoD]

I'm Swiss and I didn't know we had all this. Feel safer already 😎

[S_O_O_C]

I grew up and live in switzerland, and everytime i see one of these videos i'm like "Wait, they don't have that in other countries?" It's easy to forget how good you have it...

[DrGhoztz]

The Swiss are basically the turtle build in any RTS

[skonkfactory]

San Francisco has two complete systems for delivering firefighting water. There's the regular hydrant system, and there's the Auxiliary Water Supply System, which uses gravity and a series of cisterns built under the streets to supply water even in the event of an earthquake. That's what those brick circles and squares you sometimes see in the street are.

[TheTrueRandomness]

How did I not know this about my own city?! I was well aware of the shelter requirement, and I also knew that Zurich has an insane amount of fountains yet I didn't know some of them actually ran on a secondary water system!

Thanks for educating me! I'm guessing we can look forward to more videos from Switzerland?

[RinoaL]

stuff like this makes me want to move back to switzerland someday. haha

[henrydabomb]

These 'Things you might not know' episodes are everything Ive always wanted in a youtube series. Short, quick, to the point, very informative, not boring/ cool topics. Thank you Tom Scott! please keep it up!