Inside a bunker in Copenhagen: Denmark dusts off old air-raid shelters

CopenhagenBeneath the streets of Copenhagen lie vestiges of the Cold War that the Danish Parliament wants to unearth. For decades, the subsoil of the Danish capital housed a network of 6,000 public bunkers to protect against air raids. Today, hidden among weeds and covered in graffiti, 1,000 shelters remain, relics of a past that everyone had forgotten.

One of the bunkers is practically hidden beneath the grass of a central square in Nørrebro. From the street, all that's visible is a metal door with a rusty padlock, which Tim Simonsen, the head of the Capital Region fire brigade, has to struggle to open. A narrow staircase covered in dry leaves descends from the hole. Inside, it's pitch black due to the lack of electricity, and dampness coats the thick concrete walls; a strong, musty smell permeates everything.

The amenities are minimal in this 35-square-meter space designed to shelter 50 people: on one side there are iron benches, and on the other, two buckets separated by a plastic curtain that serve as a sink. "Right now it's hard to imagine the shelter being functional; it's more of a Cold War relic. But if we have to use it again, we must work to prepare it," Simonsen admits.

Air raid shelters might seem like a thing of the past, but since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Danish Emergency Management Agency has taken stock of the country's remaining bunkers and found 3.6 million spaces, enough to cover 61% of the population. However, most of these shelters haven't been maintained for decades, so the government has called for an inventory to determine which ones would actually be useful.

Beyond that, four political groups in the Catalan Parliament have called for the reintroduction of laws requiring shelters to be ready for use in the event of conflict. Until 2003, municipalities were legally obligated to have shelters operational within 24 hours. This law was repealed during peacetime, a period in which the shelters have been used as storage rooms, bicycle parking areas, or have simply been abandoned.

Political parties justify the proposal to have a new list. shelters following in the footsteps of Sweden and Finland, These are countries where preparing the civilian population for conflict has never been neglected. The Danish Ministry of Defense has repeatedly stated that there is no conventional military threat against Denmark, although in recent years the government has taken steps to increase citizen preparedness in the event of a crisis or war. Denmark has been one of the countries that has most firmly reiterated its support for Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. Since 2022, the country has also experienced several incidents attributable to the Kremlin, such as cyberattacks and drone strikes targeting energy infrastructure.

"We are in the worst security situation since the Second World War," the Minister of Emergency Management, Torsten Schack Pedersen, warned again a few weeks ago. Therefore, "every effort must be made to create a robust preparedness system that involves the whole of society," the minister said, referring to the risk of hybrid warfare attacks but also to emergencies such as power outages or extreme weather events.

“For years, no one has been interested in talking about bunkers or allocating any budget to them, but at a time of greater insecurity in Europe, we have to bring it up again,” Tim Simonsen observed. The problem, according to the fire brigade chief, is that the government has not yet established what the priorities should be for preparing the shelters. “I suppose that in modern times they should have electricity and a mobile data network, since it’s important to maintain communications and keep people occupied while they’re down here,” he says.

According to Simonsen, another important factor is the power of current weaponry. During the 1960s, air-raid shelters were equipped with sand filters intended to protect against nuclear radiation. "But I don't know if this would still be effective," he admits. Furthermore, the network of bunkers was planned using an outdated map of the capital; "now the city has changed a lot; new neighborhoods have been built where there was nothing before," the expert explains.

To address the lack of new bunkers, the transport authority has admitted that it is considering using the subway network as a shelter. To make this possible, they are verifying that the glass panels that filter light on the platforms are sufficiently resistant to explosions; that the entrances to subway stations can be reinforced; and that the supply of oxygen to the subway corridors is guaranteed in the event of a large-scale power outage.