Blog Day 685 - 23 February 2022 - Day 05 of Covid Nearly Normaller

First up the good news, as from 11.59pm Friday night it won't be necessary for most of us to wear masks in most environments.  People working in hospitality and retail will still need to wear masks whilst at work, some school children will still need to wear masks at school and healthcare workers and visitors to hospitals etc will also have to wear masks.  But, the majority going out and about for pleasure or business will not be wearing masks.

At the same time the state will remove the recommendation for folk to work from home and people will be able to work in their office without wearing a mask.

The CEO of the NAB on the radio this morning said that they have 15,000 staff usually working in the CBD of these currently about 3% are in the office at any one time.  The NAB will be encouraging or mandating a return to work for all staff at least three days a week from next week.  These sorts of moves will start to put some life back into the CBD.

The position in Ukraine continues to deteriorate with Russia occupying two "independent" regions of eastern Ukraine and still threatening the rest.

Some of you may recall that I have previously talked about my visit to Przemysl in Eastern Poland in this blog.  Given Przemysl is only a couple of kilometres from the Poland - Ukraine border I am sure that the residents of that town would be very very nervous.

Przemysl is in the unfortunate position of being one of those European crossroads towns and anybody invading Western Europe from Eastern Europe and vice versa has to pass through one of these towns.  Have a look at the following for a brief history of the town in the last 100 years or so;

 

1914 - 1918 Whilst part of the Austro Hungarian empire was put under siege twice and changed hands militarily at least twice. 

1919 - 1921 Part of the ethnic cleansing between Poland and Ukraine as an outcome of the collapse of the Austro Hungarian empire at the end of TGW.  This involved movement of 10s of thousands of refugees and thousands of deaths of people who found themselves on the wrong side of the wrong border at the wrong time.

1939 - Invaded by both Germany and Russia (USSR).  The river running through Przemsyl was part of the agreed border between the invading German and Russian forces.

1941 - Germany invaded USSR and occupied the Russian part of Poland including Przemysl.  During the German occupation of Przemysl they rounded up all of the town's Jewish population and sent them off to the concentration and death camps.

1945 - USSR invades and occupies Poland as part of the offensive against Germany.

1945 - 1990 - The Cold War - Poland remains in the sphere of the USSR and part of the Warsaw pact

1991 - Collapse of the USSR and Poland regains independence from their Russian overlords.

During my visit to Przemysl I had the opportunity to visit a Cold War military control room.  This facility is actually a series of rooms deep under a school.  The control room was built at the same time as the school and was so secret that even the staff and students at the school didn't know it was there.  When they tested the emergency generator they had to give the school students and staff the day off as it was so noisy.

The facility was occupied by the military 24 hours a day 7 days a week from 1962 until 1995 and comprised communication facilities, map rooms, dormitories (for the off duty troops) generator room and escape facilities.  To enter the facility one had to go through airlock doors similar to a submarine and down a ladder and through more heavy fireproof blast doors.

In the case of a nuclear attack this facility would go into full lockdown completely sealed off from the outside world.  When necessary a crew member would don a full protective suit with breathing apparatus and go outside to test for radiation, gas and biological agents.

This centre could also act as a control room for retaliatory attacks by Warsaw pact countries against the NATO forces.  

I could imagine if the Cold War became a Hot War facilities such as this would be high on NATO's hit list. If it was on the NATO hit list it would be the last war that Przemysl would be involved in.

Remains of TGW Fort

World war two bunker, probably German

Cold War Warsaw Pact Control room

The above map is in the Przemysl control room. If you look closely at the left side of the map you can see little red mushroom shaped clouds, these mark targets in Western Europe for nuclear weapons.  It also tells us how these weapons were going to be delivered.  Considering that this facility was fully operational and staffed up until the mid nineteen nineties it makes you realise how real the Cold War really was.  

Nothing much has changed with the covid figures with the daily infection numbers bouncing up a bit from the weekend low and likewise the death figures.  I won't go through those today but will have a look at them on Friday or Saturday.