Swedish Coat of Arms (Credit: Sweden.org.za

For the first time in over 40 years, and long since the spectre of the Cold War loomed across Europe, Sweden has called its entire Home Guard to begin immediate military drills, to bolster the country’s “defensive and operational capabilities” 

And they just sent out a booklet to every home in Sweden, teaching citizens what to do in the event of a war or natural disaster.

And if you think that’s odd, wait until you hear what Finland, Norway and Russia have all been up to lately!

UPDATE – FEBRUARY 5, 2021

In 2005, Finland began construction on the first nuclear power plant reactor in over 15 years.  16 years later, it’s still not completed yet, and estimates are that it won’t be until 2022.  Despite delays, the government told the Finnish people in February 2019 that what they had already built was safe. 

Then, on December 18, 2020, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that:

Olkiluoto 3 Reactor construction. (Credit: TVO)

“On December 9, emergency responders from the IAEA responded to a simulated event at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland. 

The Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) played the role of ‘Accident State’ during the exercise on December 9. Over 70 other countries and international organizations played along to test their own emergency response procedures. STUK developed a scenario involving the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant and their staff played in the exercise to test internal procedures. The exercise was deemed a success, according to the authorities on hand.

Then, less than 24 hours later, the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre (IEC) was notified that a real event was taking place at the same power plant.

During the morning of 10 December, a malfunction in the purification system for the reactor cooling water at Unit 2 of the plant caused a temporary rise of radiation levels in the steam lines. Both STUK and the plant operator, Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), went into emergency response mode and the plant’s Unit 2 had automatically been shut down.

How is it that a potential nuclear reactor disaster took place and we never heard a word about it on North American news?  Because of the ridiculously prolonged US Presidential election?  My God, consider the implications of THAT for a moment.

As you will read below, other nations in the region have been conducting all kinds of strange drills and preparations over the last several years that seemingly are preparing for a massive disaster, possibly even a nuclear one. 

Is that thanks to Finland’s faulty equipment and never-ending construction delays on a nuclear reactor?  Stay tuned.

ORIGINAL POSTING – June 16, 2018

On June 6, 2018, the Kingdom of Sweden’s celebrated its National Day – much like July 1 in Canada or July 4 in the United States – by mobilizing all 40 Home Guard battalions in an unprecedented exercise, something they have not done since 1975 – over 43 years ago! 

This recent mobilization involves 22,000 reservists – which is a bit alarming, considering the standing Swedish Army has only 34,000 troops!

The Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, Micael Byden, speaks to one of his soldiers. (Credit: Ronnie Hammar/Försvarsmakten)

The Supreme Commander of Swedish Armed Forces, Micael Byden, released a statement in Swedish and offered in English as well on their website, which said:

“Our mission is to strengthen Sweden’s military defense and improve our operational capabilities.   We are testing the chain of mobilization for around half our organization, something we have not done since 1975.”

The Supreme Commander never said in the brief statement, however, WHY exactly he felt this was necessary to do.  He has been the head of the Swedish Armed Forces since 2015, and again, not to put too fine a point on it, but these military maneuvers have not been conducted since the mid-1970s.  The Cold War seems to be long-since dead, and now Sweden wants to be prepared militarily?

Perhaps that’s because this isn’t about military readiness.  Why do I say this?  Because according to the English website of the Swedish Home Guard itself, their purpose is described in the following way:

Swedish Home Guard troops in training. (Credit: Jorchr)

“The service is on high alert, with mobilisation times measured in hours rather than days or weeks. It is required to support the entire range of defence activities – from civil support in peacetime to armed combat in war.

If Sweden was to be hit by a natural disaster, a major accident or other threat to society, the Home Guard is ready to support police, rescue services and others. The service also has CBRN platoons, traffic platoons and engineering units…

Home Guard units are contemporary military units, primarily tasked with protecting, monitoring, and supporting society at times of crisis, thereby providing a national and territorial bulwark for the defence and protection of Sweden.” (Emphasis mine)

Some of Sweden’s 262 BAE CV90 tanks, in winter alpine military training exercises. (Credit: BAE Systems)

It’s important to note that they aren’t the army.  There is a separate Swedish Army, Navy and Air Force of about 34,000 soldiers that are tasked with the full-time responsibility of protecting the Scandinavian Kingdom against armed threats from hostile powers, either foreign or domestic.  Again, reservists are only dispatched to deal with things like “natural disasters, major accidents or other threats to society”.

So do they know something we don’t know?  Perhaps.

In addition to these new military training operations for reservists, Sweden is also sending an updated version of a Cold War-era advice booklet on how to cope with an outbreak of war…

…to around 4.8 million households.

“If Crisis or War Comes” (Om Krisen Eller Kriget Kommer). Credit: Kingdom of Sweden

The 20-page pamphlet, titled “If Crisis or War Comes,” released officially in English and in Swedish, contains advice about where to find bomb shelters and how to secure basic necessities such as food, clean water, and heat. It tells Swedes they have a duty to act if their country is threatened for “total defence,” and was first published during the Second World War and subsequently during the Cold War.   “If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up,” the booklet says. “All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.”

What on earth?  Why the push to send this to millions of homes right now, while also calling up their entire military on maneuvers?

But Sweden isn’t the only country that’s actively preparing its citizens for potential disaster. 

According to the site The Local, Norway’s largest news site in English, the Norwegian government decided in August 2017 to give away free iodine tablets to anyone who wants them:

“We have seen an increasing number of nuclear submarines off Norway’s coast – both visiting allies and Russian submarines patrolling off the coast all the way to Great Britain,” Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority section manager Astrid Liland told NRK, a major source of news in the Norwegian language.

“Increased numbers of nuclear submarines along the coast of Norway increase the risk of radioactive accidents”, say authorities, “who have now decided to assess the viability of distributing iodine tablets to parts of the population.”

According to WebMD, iodine tablets are used for radiation emergencies, to protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodides. Potassium iodide tablets for use in a radiation emergency are available as FDA-approved products (ThyroSafe, Iosat) and on the Internet as food supplements.  (You can even buy Thyrosafe Potassium Iodide Tablets, 65 Mg, 20-Count by ThyroSafe at Amazon).

Potassium iodide tablets. (Credit: ThyroSafe.com

According to The Local article cited above, 43 crates containing a total of three million iodine tablets are already being stored at a depot in Oslo as one of Norway’s nuclear contingency precautions.  At even a discounted rate of $1.00 a pill, that’s a lot of pills just sitting around waiting for what sounds like a nonsensical hypothetical situation.  Especially when you learn that, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commision:

The shelf life of IOSAT 130 mg tablets is 7 years and the shelf life of ThyroSafe 65 mg tablets is 6 years. 

So unless this nuclear accident is going to happen in about 6-7 years at the most, all that medication will just go to waste.  Does this seem like a rational thing to be stockpiling, to prepare for an oddly-specific hypothetic nuclear submarine disaster?

To be sure, there have been 9 nuclear submarines sunk so far in history – 2 from the US, 5 from the former Soviet Union, and 2 from the modern Russian Navy, including the infamous Kursk, the massive 16,000-ton submarine destroyed in a major explosion on August 12, 2000, killing all 118 of its crew. 

(Just as an aside – what is wrong with the Russian Navy? Seven lost nuclear subs?  Seriously?)

However, this situation reminds me of the prophecy told in the Bible, in Revelation 8:10-11, of a massive deadly event described as follows:

¹⁰ The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.

¹¹ The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

Now, traditionally, many scholars and preachers have told us that this would be an actual asteroid hitting the Earth.  But I don’t believe that.  I think the message of this Biblical passage is hidden in plain sight, in the specifics it mentions, which only our generation today can understand.  Truly, the “Devil is in the details”.

In the original Greek manuscripts of Revelation 8:11, this “star falling from Heaven” was called “Ἄψινθος ” (or Apsinthos).  The English translators of the King James Bible knew this referred to the herb “wormwood”, as it was extremely bitter to taste, grew all over the region where John lived  – and the plant’s Latin name (Artemisia absinthium) and this Greek word apsinthos were clearly related. 

Today, the strong alcohol “absinthe” gets its highly bitter flavor from wormwood leaves and flowers, and its name is derived from the herb’s Latin name artemisia absinthium as well.  But I think it’s safe to say that most of us have never touched the stuff, or even seen it in real life.

Now stay with me, because this is where it may get a little freaky. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of a region in the Ukraine known as “Wormwood Forest“ in English (photo, right) – but the whole world knows its Ukrainian name, which it shares with the industrial plant you see at the top of this photo:

Tjernobyl.
Yes – CHERNOBYL.

You read right – the Apostle John wrote of a future event in Revelation 8:10-11, which will someday poison 1/3 of the world’s waters, he said that 1/3 of humanity will die from it, and that the event would be called…  

Apsinthos in Greek – which is “Wormwood” in English, and “Chernobyl” in Ukrainian.  John the Revelator likely used the analogy of the wormwood herb to convey to his audience THEN just how bitter the water would become, as the herb was often used then.  But this event will still happen in OUR future as well, and today, that symbolism of wormwood is lost on most of us, who don’t even know what looks or tastes like. 

So what if God also gave a secret message within these verses, to convey to his audience TODAY this event will in fact be a massive nuclear disaster?  It would be a true sign of divine direction and sheer genius for John to finish writing the Book of Revelation after 80 AD – more than 1941 years ago, and have it convey a message that would only make sense to those of us born in the Nuclear Age – in the year 1945, after the atomic bomb at Hiroshima?

While the “star falling out of Heaven” could be an asteroid hitting the earth, that would likely kill a large portion of humanity just from the impact and massive tsunami.  What if this “star” was in fact an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile, which could also “flame like a torch” as it flies over the Earth, and could detonate in one location and spread nuclear fallout, based on the jet streams today, across a large portion of the Earth, and poisoning the waters?

Which makes these poassium iodide pills given to Norwegian citizens that much more sobering, as it’s well known to treat those who have been affected by nuclear radiation.  How could they possibly predict in advance that such an accident would happen, and why would they prepare for it NOW of all times?  We’ve had the potential for nuclear accidents for over 75 years!

Perhaps the Norwegians are simply preparing, just as they said they were.  However, blaming a possible Russian submarine disaster for causing these preparations is even more interesting, when you consider that, on the other side of the former Cold War battle front, the Russians also seem to be preparing for a major event as well.

READ NOW:
40 Million Russians Conduct Emergency Drills – WHY?

In the previous article linked above, I shared how the Russians recently completed construction on 5,000 bunkers in the city of Moscow – to house all 11 million residents.  Then, if that was not over-the-top enough, they held 2 different emergency preparedness drills in the last decade.  One drill involved 40 million citizens over a 4 day period.  The logistics alone of such an endeavour, including how they would be fed and watered, how they could manage washroom and sleeping arrangements, would be mind-boggling.  Remember, these weren’t soldiers they were sending out for training – these were the average Ivans and Ivankas of Russia.

Metro Populations of the top American cities. (Credit: Statista)

They also completed a second training exercise with 60 million Russian citizens.  That is almost equivalent to the total populations of the top 6 largest US cities put together:  New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Washington, DC.

That is incredibly serious stuff.  WHAT ON EARTH are they preparing for in such large numbers?  And bunkers for every single citizen in Moscow?  No other nation on Earth has done anything even remotely close to that.  Imagine how much cement was used to create these 5,000 bunkers, each of which can hold 2,000 people or more in them.  Imagine the enormous human resource and financial costs?

Russian President Vladimir Putin used the excuse of escalating tensions between Russia and the US near the end of the Obama administration, as his reason for building these bunkers.  What science fiction.  You don’t plan for and build emergency underground nuclear bunker housing for 11 million people in 1 or 2… or even 5 years.  That would likely take a decade or longer to complete.  In fact, the project may have started before he was even President of the Russian Federation.

Most experts would tell you that we haven’t been in the Cold War for years.  It is a distant memory that a high school student today would not even remember – and many likely wouldn’t even know what it was ever about.  Yet, for some reason, NOW is the time that everyone in Europe decides to wake up and spend millions, even billions of dollars to prepare against nuclear calamities?  Hogwash.

To be sure, they are preparing for something.  And its something that could be coming sooner than later – possibly within the decade.  This is just speculation at the moment, but the enormously obvious signs seem to be just everywhere in Europe.  And once these realities about European preparations begin to really sink in, the painfully obvious follow-up questions must be asked:

Why has North America seemingly done NOTHING to prepare our citizens for these future calamities?  Are we just going to be told some major event is happening, 20 minutes before it does, to avoid panic, to avoid people quitting their jobs and stagnating the economy?  Are our political leaders really that cynical, that cruel, that compelled to continue the capitalist march forward to nowhere.

Truly stop for a moment RIGHT NOW and think about the above, and honestly answer those questions in your head to the best of your abilities. Before you continue to read on.

It seems like this entire reion is preparing for a potential disaster. WHY? (Credit: Mapchart.net)

I can hear most of you now.  “This is just ridiculous nonsense and fear mongering”.  Fair enough.  But to recap…

• 60 million Russian citizens DID take part in a massive drill
• Another 40 million Russians DID take part in a massive drill
• 11 million bunker spots WERE built for every single citizen of Moscow
• Disaster planning booklets WERE sent to 4.8 million Swedish homes
• 22,000 Swedish reservists DID begin maneuvers for the first time in 40 years
• 3 million Norwegian iodine tablets DO sit in the dark in 43 crates in a warehouse somewhere, just waiting for a calamity, and
• Finland DID just have an actual emergency event at a nuclear power plant
• and ALL of this DID happen within the last 3 years

Fear mongering folly, you say?  Scare tactics?  Click bait?  I haven’t even gotten to that yet.  I was too busy just sharing the FACTS with you.

Still not convinced that they are planning for something specific?  Ok, last attempt to wake you up.  Take a look at the map above –  every one of those listed situations I’ve mentioned took place in countries that are located directly beside each other on the map.  

Awake now?  Great.  Now, you likely will want to review this.  And thank the Swedish government for providing it.  Because if you’re like me in Canada, your government never bothered. 

“If Crisis or War Comes” (Om Krisen Eller Kriget Kommer). Credit: Kingdom of Sweden

By Shawn Jorgensen
Founder, Calling Out Community
Posted: June 15, 2018.  Updated: February 5, 2021.
[God’s Got A Plan For You!]