Denmark currently has space for around 3.6 million people or 61 percent of the population in shelters and bunkers.

Authorities have been working on the count for two years. It shows a decline since the previous count in 2002, when 4.7 million places were found, newspaper Jyllands-Posten reports.

The 2002 count was initiated in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, while the 2022 review was in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bunkers, public shelters and underground annexes like extra rooms under public garages or in basements make up the total number of spaces that can be used.

Of the total 3.6 million spaces, 3.4 million are in bunkers which could be prepared if needed, the Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) states on its website.

The agency distinguishes between a sikringsrum, a specially made bunker, and beskyttelsesrum, ‘safe rooms’ inside normal buildings that can be used for shelter in the event of an air raid or other event that made it unsafe to be in the rest of the building.

Some of the rooms are used for other purposes in peacetime and would have to be prepared for emergency use.

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Many of the state-owned bunkers are in disrepair and would need some work in order to be usable, meanwhile.

“They need to be inspected for water and mould and that would have large costs,” Lars Robetje, the deputy leader of the national organisation for emergency services, told news wire Ritzau.

Many of the bunkers are Second World War-era constructions that have been sealed, he explained.

“Politically, war was done away with [as a threat to Denmark, ed.] in the 2000s, and just after that all the funding we spent on maintenance and service of concrete bunkers was cancelled,” he said.

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State-owned bunkers come under the auspices of municipalities, who are thereby responsible for their upkeep.

Laws dictate that local authorities should be able to ready them in response to an order from the interior ministry.

“I’m not a military analyst but as a professional within the emergency services I would say there’s a lot of other things we should focus on ahead of concrete bunkers,” he said.

“For example, the threat from hybrid war that could affect our power supplies or data traffic,” he said.

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