the essential
The fear of a nuclear conflict is pushing certain countries, such as Germany, to inventory their fallout shelters. But what about France? How many bunkers do we have and could they be used in the event of an attack?
Russia's nuclear threat makes some European countries shudder. On November 19, a decree signed by Vladimir Putin modified Russian nuclear doctrine, authorizing the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a massive attack on Russian territory.
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In response, several European nations are preparing for this eventuality. Germany, for example, has launched a national inventory of its bunkers and infrastructure that can serve as shelters. Once located, these places will be recorded in a digital database accessible to citizens via their mobile phones. Currently, Germany has 600 public bunkers, which can accommodate around 500,000 people, a paltry capacity for a country of 83 million inhabitants.
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Other European countries, such as Switzerland, Poland and Sweden, did not wait for this escalation to act. Switzerland, often cited as an example in terms of civil preparedness, has sufficient capacity to shelter its entire population. Conversely, France appears to be a bad student.
A shelter capacity of only 4%
In France, bunkers even remain difficult to identify. Many of these structures, mostly dating from World War II or the Cold War, have been rehabilitated or abandoned. According to Artemis Protection, a company specializing in the construction of fallout shelters interviewed by TF1, France has around a thousand bunkers: 600 for military use and 400 for private use. This represents a shelter capacity of only 4% of the French population.
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The weakness of civil infrastructure in terms of anti-atomic protection had already been pointed out in 2023 by Olivier Paccaud, senator from Oise. He questioned Sébastien Lecornu, then Minister of the Armed Forces, about “the low capacity of underground shelters intended to protect the population in the event of a nuclear armed conflict”. The senator recalled that in 2017, France had only a thousand shelters, mostly built in the 1980s, a figure that he described as “significant weakness”.
At that time, Élisabeth Borne, then Prime Minister, reaffirmed the government's confidence in the French nuclear deterrent strategy. According to her, this system is sufficient to prevent any major nuclear conflict. However, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the demand for individual bunkers has exploded in France with a sharp increase in demand from individuals.
