Shelter
Being human can be frightening and confusing. We live with our dreams and ambitions in an unpredictable life, that sooner or later will end. To protect ourselves from fear and anxiety, we create fantasies that do not change our destructive patterns of behaviour but rather serve to convince us of one thing: everything will be alright.
This idea struck me when Lennart, the caretaker of the main fallout shelter in the city of Mariehamn, Åland, took me on a tour of the space. The shelter was blown into the rock under the city during the Cold War in the early 1980’s and was built to withstand a close hit by a nuclear weapon. Much of the equipment hangs from springs to not be affected by ground tremors and the space is designed to house 1500 people for an unspecified period of time.
After the tour I felt confused and something dawned upon me: In my unconscious I had been harbouring the perception that even if something terrible would come to pass, such as a nuclear accident, everything would turn out alright in the end. Safety would be found in the underground fallout shelters and when everything would be in order on the surface, we would emerge from underground intact and ready to go on with our lives.
The shelters are filled with equipment that could be useful when facing a disaster: Flashlights, helmets, fire safety equipment, axes, iron bars, ropes, sirens, office material, computers and beds. In this particular shelter there is also a kitchen, an infirmary, a shower room, a large machine that cleans the air of radioactive particles and a sweet water pool that is regularly checked for bacterial contamination. The idea behind the colourful environment is to stimulate the mind; here one can find almost anything one could need when facing a vast and abstract threat.
When the unimaginable and terrible happens, we have something to fall back on. We have somewhere to go if the climate breaks, a reactor melts or if an epidemic or nuclear war breaks out. The shelter is our plan b. However, if disaster strikes, I estimate that my mind, at the most, could withstand a few days in a space like this before starting to crack.