History Day!
I slept to just before 8 this morning, apparently the cure for the insomnia is to walk 20kms a day. Cafe for breakfast and then history lessons, took a four hour tour focused on the USSR's take-over of Czecholslovakia after WWII, the main focus of the tour was a trip down into one of the Soviet fallout shelters, pics to follow!
WWII: Czecholslovakia greeted the Russians as liberators when they rolled in to the country and pushed the Nazis back. Careful what you wish for, once the war was over and it was time to show their guests the door it became clear the Russians had no plans on leaving and from 1948 on Czecholslovakia was absorbed into the USSR.
Czecholslovakia was the economic powerhouse of the USSR which occasionally granted them certain freedoms that other member states never got, by 1968 the Czech's had even reenstated freedom of speech, this was the last straw for Moscow and Soviet tanks once again rolled into Prague. The country had spent 20 years preparing for war from the West and never considered it would come from the East instead.
This is the building where the Czech branch of the KGB interrelated and tortured thousands of Czechs.
The fallout shelter I visited was one of 350 built just in Prague, each one was designed to keep 2250 people alive for 2-3 months (they held 2500 people but 10% were expected to die due to the conditions in the shelters themselves).
800,000 of the cities 2,000,000 residents were therefore expected to survive if the shelters were used properly. In reality the shelters were mostly theatre, they would not have held up to a direct bombing and would not have kept 2500 people fed and watered in 2500sq meters of space, they were never even tested.
Some pics of the shelter, I noticed there weren't any bedrooms or anything, just corridor after corridor, a big maze, I asked the guide where people were supposed to sleep, he said wherever they could. The doors are one foot thick solid lead to stop the gamma rays, the walls are 3 feet of concrete for the same reason.
The guide also had a trivia contest during the tour, each correct answer got one point for your county of origin... guess which know-it-all asshole won? Doing Canada proud!
The building below and the tower attached was for jamming Western European and American radio broadcasts from getting to the Czech population.
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