Apps and booklets are offering advice on how to build a bunker, stockpile food and live without electricity in case the worst happens

Germany is developing an app to help people locate the nearest bunker in the event of attack. Sweden is distributing a 32-page pamphlet titled If Crisis or War Comes. Half a million Finns have already downloaded an emergency preparedness guide.

If the prospect of a broader conflict in Europe seems remote for many, some countries at least are taking it seriously – and, in the term used by Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, taking steps to get populations kriegsfähig: war-capable.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has dramatically raised security tensions across the Baltic region, prompting Finland and Sweden to abandon decades of nonalignment and join Nato. Military capability, however, is not all: citizens have to be braced too.

    • @[email protected]English
      28•11 hours ago

      TBF, the introduction of the new uniforms was already decided in 2018 by the prior government under the MoD Ursula von der Leyen, and the new uniforms will be implemented step by step until 2032.

      Er erläuterte, dass die Modernisierung der Dienstbekleidung 2018 entschieden, dann aber zurückgestellt worden sei, um vorher wichtige Kampfbekleidung und -ausrüstung zu erneuern und zu modernisieren. Dies sei in den letzten Jahren geschehen, so dass nun auch das Vorhaben bei der Dienstbekleidung weiter umgesetzt werde.

      Zudem erstrecke sich die Finanzierung des Gesamtvorhabens bis 2032.

      https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/bundeswehr-ausgehuniformen-100.html

      • @[email protected]English
        15•11 hours ago

        Yeah, it’s just striking how everything has so much inertia. Ukraine has been holding the fort for 3 years now, and we’re looking at those immense budgets for useless stuff.

        Same with the bunkers, let’s make an app to see where you can take refuge in one of the bunkers … let’s see… that can hold short of 500 thousand people country wide. That’s fine, 1 citizen in 160.

        • @[email protected]English
          6•4 hours ago

          New uniforms aren’t useless. If the Bundeswehr wants to be an attractive employer they need modern uniform. I read online that people who served find the current ones very outdated. We just need to invest more in the military in total

    • @[email protected]English
      1•12 hours ago

      Germany is also adding reliance of China, which is basically the proxy war handler of Russia