Liepāja prepares for disasters with the same enthusiasm as tourists for Karosta Prison

Džūlija Lote-Lapka has just revealed a shocking truth - it turns out that some Latvian municipalities have actually prepared for crisis situations. While Riga still thinks civil defense is something related to traffic police, everyone in the Alūksne area already knows which sounds mean run and which ones mean the neighbor is drilling walls during another cosmetic renovation.

What's most surprising is that even non-governmental organizations have divided up roles. Each one knows clearly who's responsible for what. Here Liepāja could learn something - our only organization that can quickly assign roles is the Karosta Prison tour guides. They certainly know how to create a real atmosphere of horror and make people think about the worst.

To be fair, we already have an advantage - Karosta Prison has been preparing Liepāja residents for various extreme situations for decades. If you can survive a night in a Soviet-era prison cell as a tourist, then any crisis is just entertainment. As one visitor said after the tour: "After this experience, even having the electricity cut off in winter feels like a spa treatment."

So when Džūlija was playing simulation games with various scenarios in the newsroom, I thought - why shouldn't the municipality accept this help? We already have Karosta Prison, which can turn any crisis into a paid attraction. "Survive the apocalypse in Karosta - only 15 euros!" In Riga they'd pay thousands for an idea like that.