Sweden to modernise civil defence shelters

Sweden has announced investing $10 million to inspect and renovate its civil defence shelters. The Nordic country has 64,000 bomb shelters, which can accommodate around seven million people. The Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) had already begun inspecting the country’s shelters after Sweden joined NATO in 2024 and recently announced that it had launched a major project to modernise nuclear shelters, a task expected to take two to three years. According to the MSB, these civil defence shelters protect against blast waves and fragments from bombs, blast and heat waves from nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout, chemical warfare gases, and biological weapons. The government is also investing in improving the performance of emergency services in times of conflict, strengthening cyber security, and replenishing medical supplies. This is all part of the ‘total defence’ strategy launched in 2014, which has been stepped up in recent years. The Prime Minister has announced plans to increase defence spending by $30 billion over the next decade.