Ukraine, Moscow’s nuclear war threats echo from Kyiv to Rieti, analyzed to the last comma in Europe’s largest military base built to train for nuclear, bacteriological or chemical attacks. A frontline base also in the “training” of personnel deployed against the Covid pandemic, but now called upon to provide maximum support to the Italian and NATO forces.
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A citadel was built in Rieti over twenty years ago where we cast out our worst fears with facts and not just prayers. It’s a real capital on a scale of 1:1, with a train station and a metro station and even a complicated underground sewage system: it’s called Nubich (nuclear, biological, chemical), it’s also on the street sign. Here you will learn how to move in scenarios that have unfortunately become reality worldwide with the spread of Covid19 and which hopefully will not become so on the most feared nuclear front.
It is the only base of this size in Europe, but armed forces and civil organizations are not only coming to Rieti from Europe to train for the worst scenarios.
This is where the professionals from the Joint Force School work, for whom overalls, gloves and highprotection masks are their daily bread. They wear them dozens of times each year and train to defend themselves in hostile environments, not only in the event of potential traditional threats and enemies, but also for the risk associated with the use of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological warfare agents. And it is precisely these four connected words that form the acronym “Nbcr”, which distinguishes an elite of highly specialized Italian soldiers in the sector.
THE “NBC” SCHOOL OF RIETI
These men are trained by a Joint Forces School in Rieti at the Attilio Verdirosi, a fortified barracks (partially enclosed by the medieval walls of the Sabine capital) that specializes in countering these threats, thousands of men and women each year , national soldiers and NATO forces, but also law enforcement personnel (including special forces), 118 health workers and the Red Cross. The training offered by the school, which employs just over 200 effective men and is now under the command of Brigadier General Riccarbo Fambrini, is divided into three distinct levels: basic, advanced and specialist in the “Nbcr” sector. Of these courses, three are in English and are intended for the many countries that send their men to specialize in Rieti.
THE CITY’
To support the barracks where theoretical courses are held, the school also has a “Nubich maxitraining area (NUcleare, BAtteriologica Chimica), located in the former Rieti military airport. Born in 2002, it is the city in which different scenarios are simulated: a lifesize subway station (complete with wagons), a railway with a railway track and a train true and two hundred meters of tunnels that reproduce the real drainage system, underground and submersible.
A “training park” the size of twenty football pitches, which has only one twin in Europe, at PortonDown, near Salisbury in England, but of smaller dimensions. A place where it is possible to realistically simulate a nuclear or terrorist attack with dozens of men and vehicles.
PEACETIME EMERGENCIES: THE “DUAL USE
Verdirosi’s men did not hold back when, in the days of the coronavirus emergency, Rieti’s ASL asked them for assistance in setting up a Covid hospital in the “Santa Lucia retirement home, not even a hundred meters from the barracks and the recorded many cases of infection. They went into action with their equipment, used for what military jargon calls “dual use,” meaning the ability of the armed forces to do their job in peacetime for the benefit of the population.
This was also the case on the night of August 24, 2016, when the soldiers of the Nbc school reached Amatrice, the town of Rieti devastated by the earthquake. A feat that earned the Joint Forces School flag the Army Cross of Merit in Gold in 2018.
In action, in particular, are the highly specialized men of the 7th Cbrn Regiment “Cremona from Civitavecchia, based in Nubich, who in recent months have disinfected thousands of buildings, including 337 churches in the capital, with a view to the reopening of places of worship.
NEW CHALLENGES AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Over the years, additional tasks have been added to the military operation specialized in NBC defense: see interventions related to toxic waste and environmental accidents (such as the explosion of a chemical manufacturing factory), but also to stay in the field of hostilities, from terrorist attacks among Use of gas such as sarin (already used in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack) or, again, anthrax.
“A new attack, a new defense” is the motto of the Rieti School of Interforces. A number of collaborations arise precisely from this development of risk, such as that with the National Fire Brigade, which has Nbcr cores; or again with the World Health Organization (WHO), with the University of Tor Vergata and with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Many military corps, affiliated with NATO or the Atlantic Alliance Partnership for Peace itself, send their soldiers to Rieti to specialize. They come from the Netherlands, Norway, Canada. The citadel of Nubic was also used in the past to simulate terrorist attacks in the subways and the subsequent intervention of the special police and carabinieri units (Nocs and Gis); or even for a highrisk raid to release hostages in a supermarket. The special corps, including those of the Army and Air Force (such as the divers and the Comsubin Raiders), trained in the citadel’s small sewer network to find a secret chemical laboratory intended in the presence of radioactive material to pack a bomb.
DANGER OF CONTAMINATION? THE AIR IS ANALYZED
The Control Center Area (ACC) operates in the same base, a national “alert and report” operating room for Nbcr risks, from which are monitored from Italy and Europe, thanks to a series of control units distributed throughout the national territory in Portugal are scattered and in Eastern Europe. These are sensors that, by analyzing the air, can determine if there has been a nuclear accident and therefore alert the defense and rescue structures. An activity, the latter, which was also dedicated to a special exercise in December 2019, the “Information Exchange Event ’19, in which NATO forces and similar centers in Poland, Czech Republic and Romania, Hungary and Slovakia participated in addition to the army departments , Navy and Air Force. A simulation that, as the school explains on its website, served “to test the ability of alarm centers to disseminate / exchange information on the spread of biological, chemical and radiological contamination, particularly in relation to crosstype accidents Edge “.
THE UNIVERSAL JUDGMENT
Finally, the excellent relationship between Nubich and Rieti itself should be remembered: in 2016 the Interforce school was awarded honorary citizenship by Rieti. In addition, relationships on cultural themes are frequent, thanks to the museum room with Nbc materials and the spectacular cloister of the Beata Colomba and the Oratory of San Pietro Martire, which preserves the precious and imposing fresco of the Last Judgment created in the sixteenth century by Bartolomeo and Lorenzo Torresani, preserved in the school. According to numerous critics, even if the proportions are right. it is second only to that of the Sistine Chapel. With the hope that there will never be a reverse verdict after the use of nuclear weapons.
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