Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1542142
Equipment resources will also be a challenge – in addition to the protective structures already men- tioned, a rapid increase in rescue, evacuation and reconstruction capacity may require a reserve of suitable vehicles: from off-road passenger vehicles through buses to trucks and fire engines for fire- fighters. These should be vehicles useful in crisis situations. It is hard to seriously consider using electric cars when preparing for attacks on the po- wer grid itself. The same applies to rail transport – there must be a reserve of diesel rolling stock in case the electric traction network loses power. The scale of these preparations is enormous, and so far we have discussed only one scenario – attacks on energy infrastructure – and only a relatively short timeline. In the longer term, efforts should aim to create a popu- lation-protection and civil-defense system that offers a chance of survival in situations that may occur later than five years from now. This includes both full-scale armed conflict and natural disasters such as floods, storms and tornadoes, fires and other hazardous phe- nomena whose likelihood will increase with climate change. Industrial accidents and catastrophes must also not be underestimated. An ideal population-protection and civil-defense system should enable response in such situations based on a single fundamental assumption. Given the risk of ar- med conflict, including a land aggression by Russia that could aim to seize even part of our territory (not to mention Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), we should have a population-protection and civil-defense system that in peacetime is independent of the military and allows the armed forces to concentrate only on tasks that are most important for them. This means that a range of tasks traditionally per- formed by the military should be placed within the civilian system. For example, aerial support – which we saw used during the last flood – was provided by military aircraft. Ideally, search-and-rescue and transport capabilities should also exist within civilian formations. The same applies to engineering activities (including rebuilding or constructing bridges). Of cour- se, this does not always mean forming, for example, firefighting engineering regiments. On the contrary, we should consider appropriate strategic use of the whole country's potential – society and the economy. It is possible, for instance, to strategically use the capaci- ty of construction companies able to operate in crisis conditions. Every sector of the state's activity sho- uld be viewed as a potential resource that may prove useful. However, this is a task that requires years of continuous work, analysis and verification of adopted solutions and their regular modification. ANALYSIS