With the test firing of its “Orechnik” intermediate-range ballistic missile last Thursday over Ukraine, Russia showed that it was capable of striking any European country. If Vladimir Putin were to want to load such a weapon with a nuclear warhead and send it to France, there would be little else to do but watch our end come. Shouting “all take shelter” would do no good, we don’t have any.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian attacker has continued to brandish the nuclear threat. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin amazed everyone by proving that he had the technical capabilities to hit just about anyone in the world with his intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM). But it didn't take that for us to worry about the danger, particularly in the Senate where, already in February 2023, the Republican Olivier Paccaud questioned the Minister of the Armed Forces “on the low capacities of underground shelters intended to protect the population in the event of a nuclear armed conflict.
“We are betting everything on nuclear deterrence”
“In 2017, France had barely a thousand shelters on its soil, most of them built in the 1980s. Six hundred of these structures were of a military nature and around 400 others were private civilian shelters,” says the senator. . He compared this paltry figure to Germany, Norway, Finland and Switzerland, which have shelters for 40 to 104% of the population. “In France we do not have, we have never had and we will never have a policy to protect the population in the event of an attack of this type as can be done elsewhere,” recognizes Jean-Marie. Collin, expert against nuclear proliferation and director of Ican.
This is basically the response given to the senator by the Prime Minister at the time, Élisabeth Borne, in more political terms. “Nuclear deterrence permanently protects France from any threat of state-origin aggression against its vital interests,” promised the former head of government. “For sixty years, we have focused everything on deterrence, hoping that it doesn’t happen. Because we don’t have a plan B,” laments Jean-Marie Collin.
According to the expert, France does not have the financial means to build shelters for 70 million people anyway. And even then, it wouldn't be of much use: “imagine that a nuclear weapon ten or 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima arrives on the French state, no matter where you are, you will suffer the consequences,” says -he. Because today, “no one in the government is able to say what it will happen if a nuclear weapon explodes in France,” adds the director of Ican.
A private bunker won't save you
The privileged people who could take refuge in the shelters, notably located under the Elysée, the Gare de l'Est or the Maison de la Radio, will have a chance of surviving the explosion. Ditto for paranoid civilians with deep wallets who would have had a private bunker built. Except that the aftermath of the explosion is not encouraging, firstly because the survivors will have to face “the total destruction of the very structure of our society”, insists the expert.
Then, because “the persistent nature of radioactivity ruins the hopes of survival of those who were able to take shelter”, assures the Women's Journal Abraham Behar, president of the association of French doctors for the prevention of nuclear war.
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Unless you stay locked in your bunker for months with a sufficient stock of food and water, a solution which only concerns “a handful of people”, warns Abraham Behar. So the best thing is that this doesn't happen. And since no one can say “whether deterrence works or not”, the best way to avoid a nuclear war, “is nuclear disarmament”, insists the director of ICAN.
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