WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Swiss engineering has a reputation for being
precise and reliable.

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And the country has a reputation for being...
not paranoid, exactly,

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but at least taking a lot of precautions about
their safety.

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Switzerland is the only country in the world

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with enough nuclear fallout shelters for the
entire population.

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Even now, it's a legal requirement that any
new build house here

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must have a shelter if it's not close enough
to an existing one.

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And okay, a lot of those shelters are being
used mostly for storage these days,

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probably for cheese, but if the world takes
a dark path?

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Switzerland is ready.

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And that extends to this.

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The drinking water.

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I'm in Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland,

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and it has an entire backup water supply system.

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The city has hundreds of drinking fountains,
free for public use,

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of all sorts of designs.

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And okay, most of them are fed from the same
pipes as homes and offices:

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it's mostly filtered water from nearby Lake
Zurich,

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with a bit of spring water and ground water
mixed in.

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It is, of course, some of the safest drinking
water in the world.

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Because Switzerland.

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But in the event of an emergency:

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let's say the lake was contaminated somehow,

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or there's a days-long power cut that shuts
all the pumps down:

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not that that's likely, because the electricity
supply is just as secure,

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but if it happens: Zurich is still prepared.

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There is an entire backup water system,

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fed by nothing more than gravity from a spring
on a nearby mountain.

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It runs through 150 kilometres of pipes to
taps in hospitals and fallout shelters,

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and special drinking fountains like this.

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These can all be adapted so they can fill
a lot of buckets

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in a very short amount of time

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with nothing more than some hoses and scaffolding.

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This water isn't being wasted, by the way.

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I mean, it is, no-one's drinking it,

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but if it wasn't going through these pipes

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it'd just be joining a river and heading straight
to the ocean by a different path.

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Lots of cities maintain some level of redundant
water supply:

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some backup pipes, or emergency tankers in
case everything fails.

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But Zurich?

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They have two systems, constantly tested,

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always running together.

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Just in case the world ends.