Simulates a nuclear attack • Strongly critical of the new MSB brochure • “Knowledge frighteningly low”
It was in 2018 that the Norwegian Agency for Social Security and Preparedness, MSB, sent out the brochure “If the crisis or the war comes”. Now an updated version has arrived which should give the Swedes information on how to act if the worst were to occur. It focuses more on war situations than the previous one.
Now comes strong criticism from the organization “Swedish doctors against nuclear weapons” for the lack of knowledge about nuclear weapons in particular.
“The advice on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack is the same as the duck and cover of the 1950s. Not because it is wrong in itself – in the event of a nuclear attack there is not much more to do than seek shelter and hope for the best,” writes chairman Vendela Englund Burnett in the debate article on The medical journal.
“Unfortunately, we are needed more than ever. Knowledge of what nuclear weapons actually are and do is frighteningly low, even among authorities and decision-makers. The five lines in the MSB brochure are a current example of this,” it continues.
“How do you even get down to a shelter?”
The organization believes that the brochure does not explain what a nuclear explosion actually means. The doctors also write that the information about going to a shelter and staying there for a couple of days until the radiation decreases can be misleading for the public.
“How do you even get down to a shelter (if there is one) when the flight time of a supersonic weapon from Kaliningrad to Karlskrona can be under three minutes? The world has been saved several times by individual people’s reflection, personal judgment and courage. There is no time for this anymore,” writes Vendela Englund Burnett.
Simulates a nuclear explosion
Swedish doctors against nuclear weapons stress that you cannot go out into a functioning society after such an attack and they have carried out a simulation of what would happen if an attack with a 100 kiloton nuclear weapon is detonated over the parliament building in Stockholm.
“It shows that about 90,000 people would die immediately and that about a quarter of a million would be injured – many with complex burns, lacerations, crushing and radiation injuries, many blinded by the flash of light, perhaps permanently, and of course with varying degrees of psychological shock . None of us have managed even one patient with such a combination of injuries. The hospitals would be gone or eliminated,” the debate article says.
MSB’s response: “Of course it will be a disaster”
MSB’s unit manager Henrik Larsson responds to the criticism and says that there are many things that came into play when they decided the content of the brochure. Work is also underway to increase knowledge about nuclear weapons.
“One aspect is the balance between informing or risking scare. Of course, it would be a disaster for Sweden if we suffered a nuclear attack. The affected areas will be completely devastated with a destroyed infrastructure. It would take several pages in the brochure to do a fair description. We did not judge that it was reasonable to do, so we chose to have a shorter information,” he writes in an email to TV4 Nyheterna.