COCHEM, GERMANY (AFP) – For many years, the residents of the leafy town of Cochem in the German Rhineland went about their daily business with no idea they were living on a gold mine.

During the Cold War, the German central bank stashed away almost DEM15 billion worth of an emergency currency in a 1,500-square-metre nuclear bunker beneath the town.

A closely guarded state secret, the currency was codenamed “BBK II” and intended for use if Germany was the target of an attack on its monetary system.

After the Cold War, the bunker passed into the hands of a regional cooperative bank and then a real estate fund. In 2016, it was bought by German couple Manfred and Petra Reuter, who turned it into a museum.

Today, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stoking fears of nuclear conflict, interest in the bunker is growing again.

“Many people we know have pointed out that we have a safe bunker and asked whether there would be room for them in case of an emergency,” said Petra Reuter.

On tours of the bunker, “questions are naturally asked about the current situation”, which feels like “a leap back in time 60 years”, she said. “The fears are the same.”

Inside, behind a heavy iron door, long corridors lead to decontamination chambers and offices equipped with typewriters and rotary phones.

The main room consists of 12 cages where, for almost 25 years, some 18,300 boxes containing millions of 10, 20, 50 and 100 mark banknotes were stored up to the ceiling.

On the front, the banknotes were almost identical to the real deutschmarks in circulation at the time, but on the back they were very different.

Starting in 1964, the notes were delivered to the bunker by hundreds of trucks over a period of about 10 years, with no one suspecting a thing – not even the East German Stasi secret police.

The bunker was accessed via a secret passage from what was ostensibly a training and development centre for Bundesbank employees in a residential area of the town.

Cochem, located about 100 kilometres from the border with Belgium and Luxembourg, was chosen because it was such a long way from the Iron Curtain.

“The citizens of the community were astonished to discover this treasure, which had been hidden for so long near their homes,” said Wolfgang Lambertz, the former mayor of the town, which has around 5,000 inhabitants.

Along with the DEM15 billion stored in the bunker, just under DEM11 billion worth of the alternative currency was also stored in the vaults of the central bank in Frankfurt.

Altogether, this added up to around DEM25 billion – roughly equivalent to the total amount of cash circulating in the German economy in 1963.

Perhaps an extreme measure to ward off a merely hypothetical attack, but the German authorities had been guided by lessons from history.

During World War II, ‘Operation Bernhard’ was launched, in which prisoners in concentration camps were forced to manufacture counterfeit pounds with the aim of flooding England with them.

“The most plausible explanation was probably the fear that counterfeit money would be smuggled through the Iron Curtain in order to damage the West German economy,” according to President of the Bundesbank’s regional office for Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland Bernd Kaltenhaueser.

SHANGHAI (AFP) – As many Shanghai residents shelter from COVID at home, a common sight on the megacity’s suddenly subdued streets is the racing, swerving scooters of food-delivery riders.

Firms including Meituan, Alibaba-owned Ele.me, Pinduoduo and Dingdong Maicai are struggling to keep up with a rush of orders from sequestered citizens in need of groceries and disinfectants.

At a sorting centre in central Shanghai run by Dingdong Maicai, staff are working overtime to handle double the demand of a week ago, when the metropolis of 25 million people began battening down the hatches.

Shanghai has so far avoided a citywide lockdown but authorities have closed school campuses, sealed off some residential compounds and launched a rigorous round of mass testing.

Dingdong Maicai has hired 300 additional staff across the city in recent days, some of them restaurant workers left idle by closures.

China’s hordes of scooter delivery drivers were hailed as national heroes two years ago when they kept untold millions fed during huge lockdowns when the virus first emerged.

The lessons learned from 2020 – and no small amount of bravado – have helped companies stay on top of the crush this time around.

“We are an iron army. Whatever artillery fire we face, we react quickly,” said Zhang Yangyang, manager of the bustling yet tidy Dingdong sorting depot.

Since its initial outbreak faded two years ago, China has largely kept the virus under control through a tough zero-COVID strategy.

Although its national daily case number – 4,365 reported last Friday – is unremarkable globally, it represents the country’s worst uptick in infections since the start of the pandemic.

With the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreading, authorities have imposed stay-at-home orders or other restrictions in several cities.

But unclear messaging about their plans has sowed public confusion, helping to fuel binge-buying and the resulting burden on business managers like Zhang.

“I don’t have a weekend,” Zhang said.

China has one of the world’s biggest and most developed ready-meal and grocery delivery sectors.

Slick smartphone apps enable users to place one-click orders from virtually any restaurant or food store within a several-kilometre radius, with the apps even displaying the delivery rider’s body temperature.

Food runners report they are currently making up to 100 deliveries a day, which are often left outside housing complexes to avoid human contact.

Dingdong Maicai staffer Li Yawu has found himself suddenly working up to 15 hours a day, after which he goes home to “soak my feet”.

“It would be untrue to say I wasn’t scared in the beginning,” he said of delivering to neighbourhoods where COVID has taken hold.

“But when you deliver food into a user’s hands and there is that much gratitude in their eyes, I don’t feel scared anymore.”