…
Here a man is like a fly
Even if he wishes otherwise
Shadows hover over our heads
In a moment is all swept away
So where you can find a loved one, a friend
That's where you should be today
We all leave too soon
Taken away to the dance of death
(chorus)
And the last leaf falls from your tree
The night takes away the dreamer
Just a moment was there to live
We all die soon
...
Jarkko Martikainen:
Kaikki me kuolemme pian (2004)
XII. We All Die Soon
This is a general nuclear alert. Proceed immediately to the nearest available shelter. Stay calm and listen to the radio transmissions by authorities for further instructions... This is a general nuclear alert. Proceed immediately to the nearest available...
The nuclear alert was relayed to the population nationally by the YLE radio channels, provincially by the local radio networks used by the authorities and locally by the members of the civil protection organisation. It has been estimated that pre-existing, purpose-built shelters were available for about 45% of the population, altogether. The figures for those who actually made it to the relative safety of any available shelter are lower. A great majority of these were situated in residential buildings and were – as post-war recollections indicate - in the event rarely filled to capacity.
While the local safety supervisors sporting the blue triangle and a ”VSS” armband were going through the buildings to gather up the residents, the entrances to the much less numerous public shelters were overflowing with panicking people. Several scuffles, some fatal, broke out as members of the Civil Protection Units closed the doors of these already packed places of refuge before the horrified citizens left outside.
The roadways out of the main centers were filled with people escaping for safety. This was especially true of the capital area, where a pre-scheduled stage of an emergency evacuation had been underway since the early morning. At the time of the first Helsinki blast, two convoys of buses, escorted by the police, got trapped in the heavy outbound traffic on the Helsinki-Hämeenlinna highway. The resulting multiple-vehicle pileup blocked the highway, making it impossible for the police and emergency units to use the route.
As the bombs fell, most people who managed to get to the shelters stayed there. As was ordered. Where the shelters still stood, of course. In downtown Helsinki, some of the biggest shelters managed to survive the multiple nuclear blasts. Some of them were permanently sealed by rubble and whole buildings collapsing on their exits. From others, people emerged along service corridors, days later, to receive a deadly dose of radiation immediately after exiting to the streets they couldn't recognize anymore.
The estimations vary, but would be safe say that Finland lost about 15-20% of the national population in hours. 16 of the 20 biggest towns were either hit by a nuclear weapon or were situated so close to a blast to suffer heavy damage and fallout. The biggest town left intact was Lahti, less than 100 kilometers from three different nuclear explosions.
In Lapland, there were no human habitations worthy of the name left.
Within hours the YLE fell silent, both television and radio. The first because there was nobody alive to send a signal into the ether from the broadcast centers in Helsinki and Tampere, the latter due to the massive destruction of equipment and the worst power outages the nation had ever seen. Across the country, what survived of the telephony system was overloaded as middling-level administrators in various organisations tried desperately to get orders from their higher-ups.
In the urban areas even outside the zones of heavy blast damage, the freezing night and the raging fires together made the conditions hellish for any of rescue operations. While a few fire units actually attempted to do something to the situation, most were either unoperational or been ordered to fallout shelters by the more level-headed local commanders. Many of the fires were still buring in the morning, despite the freezing temperatures below -20 C. The authorities' radio communications were a mess. Surviving, operational police cruisers and ambulance units in the capital area soon switched off their radios due to receiving too many reports they could do nothing about.
Wounded and confused people, unable to call ambulances or reach military or volunteer medics began to wander towards hospitals and supposed places of shelter. By the next morning, the streets and roadsides were dotted by dead bodies, frozen stiff by the February cold; many refugees would suffer the same fate in the following weeks. Their remains would be mercifully hidden by the new white-grey-black snow soon. Where a local authority was functioning in the spring (such as it was) the recently-thawed bodies found under the melting snow were simply pushed into shallow roadside graves.(1)
In Hyvinkää, just north of the Helsinki area the mayor stopped answering the calls in the municipal emergency headquarters, and was in the morning found dead in his room, hanging from the roof supported by his belt around his neck.
In many ways, the military was to suffer most heavily from the situation. Finnish frontline troops found it very hard to find shelter in time, from the blasts as well as the fallout, as very few of them were in or close to prepared positions with bunkers or similar structures. In some areas officers moved their units into various civilian buildings offering some shelter, in some cases breaking in by force. Compared to some, the men in these units were lucky. In the dead of the winter night a first sergeant had to lead a infantry company out of a heavily irradiated area near the Lappeenranta blast due to his superiors losing their eyesight as well as their ability to command. It proved too late, as most of the men succumbed to radiation sickness in days. When the unit was later located, most were dead save a few men who had miraculously avoided receiving similar doses of radiation as their comrades.(2)
In the gloom of the winter night, confusion abounded as to who was in control. This was partly due to the centralized nature of the Finnish system. The capital was gone, so was apparently the government, the parliament, the ministries and the highest military and police commands. The Interior Ministry's emergency command centre in Hämeenlinna, theoretically in charge of all civil defence measures, could not be contacted. Provincial governors, mayors, local police and fire chiefs and military officers of various levels either took command locally and started giving out orders, often conflicting, or were paralyzed due to the enormity of the situation.
With the highest national authority gone or at least temporarily unable to function, by law the provincial governments would have to provide the needed leadership. In the run-up to the war, provincial command centres had been created and staffed, presided over by the governor and his emergency staff. Typically, these centres were located in the local provincial capital: in the event, almost all of these towns were hit with a (unanticipated) nuclear weapon. The sole exception was....
Notes
(1)
According to witnesses, from some of them pieces had been hacked off by various implements.
(2)
One of the interviewees claimed to be a survivor from this legendary unit. This claim has to be taken with a grain of salt. 
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