Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother. It is a chilly February evening in twenty twenty six, and looking out the window at the city lights, it is hard not to think about the layers of history and, frankly, the layers of concrete that sit beneath our feet.
Herman Poppleberry at your service. It is good to be here, Corn. We have a topic today that feels very close to home, literally and figuratively. We are talking about the physical space of safety, or the lack thereof, in a country that has spent decades perfecting the art of aerial defense but perhaps neglecting the final yard of the journey.
Yeah, it really does hit home. Today's prompt comes from a listener named Daniel. He wrote in with a very detailed and, honestly, quite harrowing account of his experience during some of the major escalations we have seen over the last couple of years. His focus is on home front preparedness and the state of public shelters here in Israel. He shared some pretty intense personal experiences from recent events, specifically regarding the difficulties of finding shelters, getting into them, and the total lack of basic resources once you are actually inside.
It is a sobering topic, Daniel, but a necessary one. Daniel specifically mentioned the confusion during the Iranian missile and drone strikes back in April of twenty twenty four. I think that is a night many of us remember vividly. It was the first time we saw that kind of direct state-on-state long-range engagement. The scramble for safety reveals all the cracks in the system that we usually ignore during quieter times. When the sky is filled with interceptions, you really start to care about the thickness of the door in front of you.
Exactly. It is one of those things where you assume the infrastructure is ready until the moment you actually need it. Daniel pointed out a few major pain points that I think will resonate with anyone living in an older urban center like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. He talked about vague addresses on municipal lists, poor signage that disappears in the dark, locked doors that require a bolt cutter rather than a key, and a total lack of connectivity or amenities like water, ventilation, or even a simple mattress. He is asking if this is a result of legitimate security concerns, like avoiding sabotage by keeping locations low-profile, or if it is just plain old bureaucratic negligence. And he wants us to look at how other countries handle this.
There is a massive amount to unpack there, Corn. I think we should start with the immediate, visceral experience of trying to find a shelter during an alarm. When that siren goes off, you have a very limited window of time. Depending on where you are in the country, that window is anywhere from fifteen seconds near the border to ninety seconds here in Jerusalem. If you are fumbling with a digital map that does not load or looking for a door that is tucked behind a dumpster with no reflective signage, those ninety seconds are terrifying.
It is a user experience problem, really. It is UX for survival. If the municipality website says a shelter is at a certain address, say, fifty-two Jaffa Street, but that address turns out to be a massive commercial block with four different entrances, three levels of underground parking, and no internal signage pointing to the protected space, that information is practically useless in an emergency. We have all these high-tech systems for detection and interception, like Iron Dome, David's Sling, and the Arrow system, but the low-tech part of the chain, the actual physical shelter where the human being sits, seems to be lagging forty years behind.
You are absolutely right about it being a UX issue, and it is a fascinating paradox. Israel is one of the most tech-heavy societies on earth. We have apps like Red Alert and the Home Front Command app that give us second-by-second updates on incoming threats. We have GPS-based alerts that can target a specific neighborhood. But once you are on the ground, running for your life, you are back in the nineteen seventies in terms of navigation. The lack of standardized, high-visibility, photoluminescent signage is a huge oversight.
Daniel mentioned that in his experience, the signs were often just faded stickers or spray-painted arrows that had been partially covered by graffiti or posters.
Which is unacceptable. In many European countries, especially those with a history of Cold War preparedness, civil defense signs are ubiquitous and instantly recognizable. They use specific international standards, like the orange triangle on a blue background. They do not require you to read a specific language or know a specific building's layout. They are designed to be seen through smoke, dust, or power outages. Here, we seem to rely on local knowledge, which assumes everyone has lived in their neighborhood for twenty years.
Daniel also brought up the issue of locked shelters, which is a huge point of contention. This comes up every time there is an escalation. You hear stories of people running to a public shelter only to find a heavy iron door with a massive padlock on it. The local authorities often defend this by saying they keep them locked to prevent vandalism, to stop people from using them as storage units, or to prevent them from becoming hubs for illicit activity or homelessness. But that logic completely fails the moment the siren sounds. A locked shelter is not a shelter; it is just a room you can't get into.
It is a classic example of a bureaucracy prioritizing maintenance over the actual mission. If the mission of a shelter is to save lives during an emergency, then any barrier to entry is a total failure of that mission. Some municipalities have started installing smart locks, which are connected to the national alert system and are supposed to pop open automatically when an alarm is triggered. But as we know, technology can fail, especially during a massive cyber attack or a power surge caused by an explosion. If the power goes out or the cellular signal does not reach the lock inside a concrete stairwell, you are still stuck outside.
And that leads directly into Daniel's point about connectivity. He talked about being in a car park shelter during the April twenty twenty four strikes with absolutely no cellular service and no internet. He mentioned having to use a portable travel router and a long ethernet cable just to know when the all-clear was given. That is not just a convenience issue; it is a significant safety risk. If you are in a thick concrete box underground, you are essentially in a Faraday cage. Without a signal, you do not know if it is safe to leave, if there is a second wave of missiles incoming, or if there is a fire in the building above you.
That is a point that often gets overlooked by planners who are still thinking in terms of the nineteen fifties. Modern civil defense is not just about physical protection from shrapnel; it is about the flow of information. In a world of psychological warfare and rapid-fire updates, being cut off from information for two hours can lead to extreme panic. Or, even worse, it leads to people leaving the shelter too early because they think the silence means it is over, when in reality, a second wave is just minutes away. Installing basic wired internet, fiber optics, or signal repeaters in these spaces should be a standard building requirement, not an afterthought or a luxury.
I want to touch on Daniel's question about transparency versus sabotage. This is a big one. Is there a legitimate security reason to keep shelter locations somewhat vague? Does the government worry that if every shelter is mapped with high precision, an enemy could target them specifically? Or is that just an excuse for poor planning?
Personally, Corn, I find the sabotage argument very weak in the modern era. We live in a world of high-resolution satellite imagery, synthetic aperture radar, and sophisticated open-source intelligence. Any state-level actor, like Iran, or even well-organized non-state groups, already knows where the major public buildings, underground car parks, and infrastructure hubs are. They don't need a municipal map to find a large underground structure. Trying to hide a public shelter by not putting a sign on the door only hurts the civilians who need to find it in ninety seconds. It does not hide it from a long-range missile guidance system.
I agree. It feels more like a convenient shield for bureaucratic negligence. If you do not have to provide a detailed, audited, public map of every shelter, then you are not held accountable when one of those shelters is found to be in disrepair, filled with old furniture, or flooded with sewage. Transparency creates accountability. If every citizen could look at an app, see their nearest shelter, and see the date of its last safety inspection and the name of the person responsible for it, there would be a lot more pressure on local governments to keep them up to par.
Exactly. And that brings us to the international comparisons Daniel asked about. Who does this better? The gold standard for civil defense is almost always cited as Finland. They have been preparing for potential conflict with a much larger neighbor for decades, and their infrastructure is truly incredible.
Tell me more about the Finnish model, Herman. I have heard they actually use their shelters for everyday activities, which seems like a brilliant way to solve the maintenance problem.
It is brilliant. In Finland, since the Building Act of nineteen fifty eight, any building over a certain size is required by law to have a shelter. But the genius part is how they integrate them into the community. Many of their large public shelters, which they call VSS shelters, are used as swimming pools, ice rinks, indoor playgrounds, or underground parking garages during peacetime. Because they are used every day, they are clean, they have working ventilation, they have bright lighting, and everyone in the neighborhood knows exactly where the entrance is because they go there to swim or play hockey.
That is a huge psychological difference. Instead of a scary, damp, dark hole in the ground that you only visit when you are in fear for your life, it is a place where you go for recreation. It normalizes the infrastructure. It makes the shelter part of the city's living fabric rather than a tomb-like relic.
Precisely. It also solves the maintenance problem. If a space is being used as a public gym, you cannot let it fill up with mold or broken chairs. The staff at the gym are effectively the maintenance crew for the shelter. They know how the heavy blast doors work because they probably have to check them as part of their weekly safety drills. In Helsinki alone, there are enough shelters to house the entire population of the city plus all the visitors. They have underground "cities" that can hold hundreds of thousands of people for weeks if necessary.
And what about Switzerland? I know they have a very famous policy regarding shelters.
Switzerland has a similar level of commitment, though their approach is more decentralized. They have enough shelter space for over one hundred percent of their population. It is a federal law. Every house built after a certain year must have a protected room, or the owner has to pay a tax to fund a place in a public shelter nearby. It is a cultural mindset of "better to have it and not need it." Here in Israel, we obviously need it, but the approach feels more reactive. We build Mamads, which are the reinforced rooms in new apartments, and that is great for people who can afford new buildings. But as Daniel pointed out, if you live in an older building or you are out in public, you are relying on a system that is very uneven.
This is what people are calling "shelter inequality." If you live in a high-end tower in Tel Aviv, you have a reinforced room with filtered air and high-speed internet. If you live in a rental in an older part of South Tel Aviv or a neighborhood in Jerusalem built in the nineteen fifties, you are running down four flights of stairs to a basement that might be locked or flooded. This is where the advocacy for "mega shelters" comes in, which Daniel mentioned in his prompt.
Let's dive into that. The "mega shelter" concept is essentially the Finnish model adapted for high-density urban environments. Think of it as a community hub that happens to be bomb-proof. Instead of fifty small, neglected shelters scattered around a neighborhood, you have one massive, high-capacity facility. It could be built under a public park, a school, or a shopping center. It would have dedicated areas for sleeping, proper bathrooms, small clinics, and most importantly, robust communication infrastructure like dedicated fiber lines and satellite backups.
It reminds me of the stories from the London Underground during the Blitz in World War Two. People lived down there. They had libraries, they had tea stalls, they had a sense of community. If we are looking at future conflicts where the duration of stay might increase from twenty minutes to twenty-four or forty-eight hours, we need to move beyond the "shrapnel box" mentality. Daniel mentioned his wife was pregnant at the time of the strikes, and they had to sleep in a cold stairwell because the shelter was inaccessible or lacked even a basic mat. That is a failure of care. A mega shelter would have the space and resources to accommodate vulnerable populations, the elderly, and people with medical needs properly.
It is also about the economy of scale, Corn. It is much easier for a city like Jerusalem to maintain and secure ten massive, well-equipped shelters than five hundred small ones. You could have permanent staff, or at least a very clear chain of responsibility. You could have backup generators that are actually tested every month. You could have stored water and medical supplies that are rotated and checked. It is much more efficient than trying to manage a thousand tiny basements.
So why aren't we doing it? Is it just the cost of digging?
Cost is a massive factor. Digging deep into the bedrock of a city like Jerusalem is incredibly expensive. But there is also a planning inertia. Our current system is based on the idea of short-term stays. The assumption was always that the home front would be hit, but only for brief periods. The reality of modern warfare, with long-range precision missiles and the potential for multi-day escalations, changes that calculation entirely. We need to plan for "sustained life underground," not just "temporary cover."
I think there is also a role for the private sector here. In some countries, developers get tax breaks or density bonuses if they include high-quality public infrastructure in their projects. Imagine if a new shopping mall or office tower in the center of the city was required to provide a certain amount of public "mega shelter" space that met specific national standards for connectivity and amenities. They could use it as a gym or a convention space during the day, but it would be ready for the public in an emergency.
That is exactly how it should work. It is about building resilience into the very fabric of the city. Singapore is another great example of this. They use their mass rapid transit stations as civil defense shelters. They are deep, they are reinforced, and they have all the facilities needed to support thousands of people. Because they are part of the daily transit network, the maintenance is built into the operational budget of the train system. It never gets forgotten because thousands of people walk through it every day.
It feels like we are missing that integration here. Our public shelters are often these standalone concrete cubes that sit in parks or on street corners, looking like relics of another era. They don't serve any purpose during peacetime, so they become invisible to the public and to the budget-makers until the sirens start. That invisibility is dangerous. It leads to the situation Daniel described, where even finding the entrance is a challenge. If that shelter was also a community center or a library, everyone would know exactly where the entrance is.
Exactly. The more a space is used, the safer it is. Empty, dark spaces invite trouble. Vibrant, active spaces are self-policing to a large degree. If we want to advocate for this, we need to change the conversation from "emergency storage" to "dual-use infrastructure."
Let's talk about the advocacy part. If a listener like Daniel wants to push for this, where do they start? It feels like such a massive, monolithic problem involving the military, the national government, and the local municipality.
It starts at the municipal level, but it requires national standards. Most of the responsibility for public shelters lies with the local city council and the Home Front Command. Citizens can demand audits. They can ask for the results of the latest shelter inspections to be made public. There is power in numbers. If a whole neighborhood association signs a petition saying, "Our designated shelter is locked and has no internet," the city has to respond.
There is also the technology angle. We should be advocating for a centralized, real-time map of shelters that includes photos of the entrance, the current status of the lock, and a list of available amenities. If I can see on my phone that the shelter at the corner is full or the lock is malfunctioning, I can head to the next one instead of wasting precious seconds.
That would be a game-changer. An open API for shelter data could allow developers to build better navigation tools. Imagine a "Waze for Shelters" that routes you to the nearest open, available space during an alarm, taking into account your current walking speed and the time remaining. The data exists; it just needs to be liberated from the filing cabinets of the Home Front Command and standardized.
I also think we need to rethink the "mattress and water" problem. Daniel mentioned the lack of basic comfort. If you are pregnant, or elderly, or have young children, sitting on a cold concrete floor for two hours is not just uncomfortable; it is a health risk. We should be looking at modular, storable solutions. You don't need a thousand permanent beds, but you do need a system for quickly deploying mats or folding cots.
And that brings us back to the "mega shelter" concept. A larger facility can have a dedicated storage room for those things. A small, cramped shelter doesn't have the footprint to store mattresses for fifty people without making the space unusable. The scale of the shelter dictates the quality of the care.
It is interesting to think about the psychological impact of all this. When you have a well-lit, connected, and clean place to go, your stress levels are significantly lower. Daniel talked about the stress of the Iranian strike. Part of that stress is the threat itself, but a huge part of it is the uncertainty of the environment you are fleeing to. If you know you are going to a place with internet, water, and a chair, you can focus on staying calm and taking care of your family.
That is the "resilience" part of civil defense. It is not just about physical survival; it is about social and psychological stability. If the population feels that the state has provided a dignified and safe way to weather the storm, the "victory" for the attacker is diminished. They want to create chaos and despair. A well-run mega shelter is an antidote to that. It says, "We are prepared, we are calm, and we are looking after each other."
I want to go back to the sabotage concern for a second. Even if we dismiss the idea of hiding the locations, what about the risk of someone physically blocking the doors or damaging the equipment inside?
That is a legitimate security concern, but the answer isn't to hide the shelter; it is to secure it. You secure it with cameras, with alarms, and with regular patrols. In Finland, their shelters are inspected constantly. If a lock is tampered with, it is fixed immediately. Neglecting a shelter because you are afraid it might be sabotaged is like not building a bridge because you are afraid it might be bombed. You build the bridge, and then you protect it.
Right. And if the shelter is being used for something else during peacetime, like a gym or a parking garage, there are people there all the time. That is the best security you can have. Eyes on the street, or in this case, eyes in the basement.
Exactly. The more a space is used, the safer it is. Empty, dark spaces invite trouble. Vibrant, active spaces are self-policing to a large degree.
So, to summarize some of the takeaways for Daniel and our listeners. First, the "sabotage" argument for lack of transparency is likely a red herring. Transparency is the key to accountability and efficiency. Second, we should look to countries like Finland, Switzerland, and Singapore for models of "dual-use" infrastructure that integrates civil defense into daily life.
And third, the push for mega shelters is about more than just space. It is about providing a baseline of human dignity and communication during a crisis. It is a shift from "hiding" to "residing." We need to move away from the idea that a shelter is just a place to survive and start thinking of it as a place to live through a difficult moment.
I think it is also important for individuals to take what steps they can. Daniel mentioned his "go-bag" with a torch and a power bank. That is essential. But we can also be "citizen inspectors." If you see a public shelter that is in bad shape, take a photo, post it on social media, tag your municipality. Don't let the neglect be invisible. If the door is locked during a drill, report it.
And if you are in a position of influence, whether in tech, urban planning, or local government, think about how resilience can be baked into your work. Can your app include shelter data? Can your building project include a public safe space? Can we standardize the signage across the whole country?
It is a collective effort. We spend billions of shekels on the "hard" defense of interceptors and fighter jets. We should be spending a fraction of that on the "soft" defense of making sure every citizen has a clear, accessible, and dignified place to go when the sirens sound.
Well said, Corn. It is about closing the loop. You can have the best missile defense in the world, but if the final step, the person reaching safety, fails because of a rusty padlock or a missing sign, then the whole system has a hole in it.
This has been a really important discussion. It is easy to get caught up in the high-level politics and military strategy, but for the person on the ground, the most important thing in the world is that the shelter door is open and they can call their family to say they are okay.
Absolutely. And I think Daniel's experience is a wake-up call that we have work to do. We shouldn't have to wait for the next major escalation to fix the signage or install a signal repeater. We have the technology, we have the resources, we just need the political will to prioritize the "last yard" of civil defense.
Well, thank you to Daniel for sending in that prompt. It is a vital conversation for us here in Israel, and I think there are lessons in it for anyone living in a part of the world where civil defense is a reality.
Definitely. It is about being proactive rather than reactive. It is about building a city that looks after its people, even when the lights go out.
Before we wrap up, I want to remind everyone that if you are finding these discussions valuable, we would really appreciate it if you could leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps other people find the show and keeps us motivated to keep digging into these weird and important prompts.
Yeah, it makes a big difference. We love hearing from you all. Your prompts are what drive this show.
You can find us at myweirdprompts.com, where we have our full archive and a contact form if you want to reach out. You can also email us at show at myweirdprompts.com. We are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and pretty much everywhere else you get your podcasts.
This has been episode eight hundred eleven of My Weird Prompts. It is always a pleasure, Corn.
You too, Herman. Stay safe out there, everyone. We will talk to you in the next one.
Goodbye, everyone.
Goodbye.
