Other demobilized bunkers В— such as those in the towns of Crestwald and Vitznau В— provide no-frills group accommodation, and give visitors the chance to participate in special events like Swiss Army Nights, where participants rough it out on military bunk beds in much the same way as the soldiers who guarded this secret fortress did in the 1940s. (See how Switzerland's solar plane came to be.) For those not suffering from claustrophobia, the four-star facility, open from May to December, offers a spa, a conference center, and the boasting rights that come with staying in a hotel hewn deep into the mountain rock. In 2004, it was converted into a hotel called La Claustra. Gotthard mountain, there lies another fort, this one used during the war as an artillery stronghold. Southeast of Saanen, inside the massive St. Created by the four-year, $18.4 million Planets project, the digital genome has to be locked away securely because of its value to future generationsВ—it's a time capsule from which scientists will be able to recreate certain types of present-day digital file formats, should they one day become obsolete.

Oschwald says clients from 30 countries use the underground facility at Saanen to store their digital data, 'anyone from a student storing files from his computer to an international corporation that wants its data accessed from anywhere in the world.' The Swiss Fort Knox is so secure that European scientists have chosen to store the 'digital genome' behind one of its 3.5-ton doors. 'So to use one that was already built made sense.' 'To build a high-tech data bank with the highest level of security would cost about $250,000,' says Oschwald, whose company also runs another digital bank in a former underground military bunker in the nearby town of Zweisimmen. He figured its impregnable cement walls made it the perfect place to store digital data. It is co-owned by SIAG, a technology-security company whose CEO, Christoph Oschwald, knew of the bunker's existence from his own army days. Thanks to its tight security, the Saanen fort, which during the war served as an Air Force command post, is called the Swiss Fort Knox. Now these underground fortresses are used as everything from hotels, banquet halls and seminar centers to museums, stables, and, in at least one case, a storage room for cheese. Then, in the 1990s, it started to sell or rent some of the bunkers to private companies and other civilian organizations. The government maintained its tight network of militaryДЇortifications until the end of Cold War. (See why the Swiss wouldn't extradite Polanski.) The Swiss military dug over 20,000 bunkers in the Alps, allowing its soldiers to stay hidden В— along with their weapons, ammunition, and other supplies В— and defend the country in case of an attack. It used to be a World War II bunker, and, like thousands of other old bunkers around Switzerland that had stood empty for decades, it now has a second life as something else entirely.ДЄlthough Switzerland had been neutral for four centuries, when the Nazis started invading countries to its east and west in 1939, the tiny nation decided to batten down the hatches. But when it was first carved out below a mountain in the Swiss town of Saanen half a century ago, the vault was designed to withstand a different kind of attack В— one by the German army. The cavernous underground vault, which is protected round-the-clock by armed men in black fatigues and has blast- and bullet-proof doors, is strong enough to withstand terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Follow may be famous for its banks, but not many people know about the one that lies hidden underneath the Alps.

Swiss number of rounds wwii soldier