Why cash and tactical gadgets won't save you in a crisis. Debunking prepping myths and proposing the 'Hick Strategy' – how to survive without drawing attention.
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In the movie “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” the titular character accidentally didn’t fly with his family to Florida. Instead, he landed in the big city with his father’s fanny pack, which contained credit cards, cash, and batteries. His first purchases at a toy store were a Swiss Army knife, soap, and a map of New York. Later, in Chinatown, he packed fireworks into his backpack. The archetype of a prepper, everything comes in handy in the fight against villains.
Kevin seems to be a role model for many so-called boomer-preppers – people who position themselves as preparedness specialists for those 40+ – someone who can handle anything. How else to understand that an urban prepping celebrity advises having cash for a crisis, with which we can calmly buy something? In general, he recommends a minimum of five thousand zlotys, or even more.
Five Thousand Zlotys, or Premium Toilet Paper
This recommendation, to put it mildly, doesn’t stand up to my experience. The 1997 flood, COVID – money was worthless. I remember how it was impossible to withdraw dollars, francs, euros from the bank, for which you couldn’t buy much anyway, because prices increased tenfold, sometimes twentyfold. Empty shelves, ladies and gentlemen. So I have more efficient ideas for toilet paper than carrying battery-covered small slips of paper that will attract attention. It might improve your mood, like owning a thousand rolls of toilet paper, but it won’t help you survive.
Of course, I recommend keeping some cash in case ATMs don’t work for two or three days. It might indeed be useful for filling up your car. However, if a serious crisis breaks out, I assure you – you won’t fill up your car. The biggest foolishness will be to pack into a car and drive away from home with your life savings.
A Vodka Will Do More Than a MasterCard
The best currency, according to our grandparents’ experience, is vodka, chocolate, stockings, warm clothes, coffee, food, and medical supplies. So instead of hoarding idiotic gadgets, I recommend keeping a few liters of pure alcohol, with which you can get more done than with a thousand zlotys. Poland is a country of heavy drinkers, and of course, having such an amount of alcohol is only possible if you are not part of that elite. I repeat once again – alcohol in Poland will be the best currency in times of crisis. Drunks craving a fix will give anything for a bottle.
Air Rifles for Birds, or the Industry of Fear
Perhaps prepping specialists have a different goal – to transfer these funds through stores that sell must-have products. Fear-based business generates billions in revenue. You don’t have to look far for examples; just visit any major online portal to see hundreds of articles on how to recognize the first symptoms of cancer. Fear of financial crisis, climate change, war, blackout – it’s all staged so that everyone, with their appropriate level of resilience, finds a dedicated niche. A simple EDC knife is enough to make you feel prepared, even if you only use it to open packages from the courier.
I remember a few years ago a friend involved in marketing for a company importing camping and military equipment told me that during the bird flu scare, when air rifles were promoted on Tele Mango, drunk Poles called sellers and ordered air rifles… for birds. This ridiculous, fear-escalating cockroach strategy offering pseudo-advice is the result of the prepping business, which is now pumping out strange ideas.
The Backpack of Cosmic Technologies
Another element is the backpack. It seems to me that most Poles are not mountaineers and do not own backpacks larger than twenty, maximum twenty-five liters. I myself have three such backpacks and one thirty-liter one for the mountains. One of the “forest old-timers,” who presents himself as a crisis management specialist, a military man, and a person showcasing bug-out bags – though he doesn’t reveal his own, as it’s super secret and contains cosmic technologies – admits with disarming sincerity that the military conducted research as part of developing civil defense documents, and a bug-out bag should be forty to fifty liters.
Yes, that’s true. If I had to pack all the necessary camping gear for survival, I would need a huge backpack and the ability to carry kilograms, which would probably break me as a human after two hours. So I have different advice than the good old uncle from TV or YouTube.
Six Kilos of Truth
I write this as a comfortable person who has nothing to do with survival camps. A few times I walked streams without a map, at night through the forest, or in the mountains in the rain all night, building a campfire with a friend. Today, I go camping like a marquis on the roof of a car, because sleeping in a wet tent on the ground is not good for my health. I attended a military training “W Gotowości” (Ready), where the unit commander, handing out diplomas – as successive people approached – listed, to everyone’s amusement, the branded clothes the participants were wearing. One person even had a tactical vest with gadgets attached.
If I’ve piqued your interest, I have a piece of advice. Put six kilograms in a backpack and walk ten kilometers. See how you cope. Determine how many kilograms you can carry – only then start preparing what you need to survive. Every prepping specialist will tell you that survival, like nature, is about preserving life with minimal energy expenditure. This will probably be a big shock for most people, because in a crisis situation, Uber, Netflix, GPS, or GSM will not work.
Seventy-Two Hours Is a Joke
Stocking up for seventy-two hours is textbook banality. During COVID, I was only ready because, as a lazy person, I have supplies for a month or two. Any serious specialist will tell you that Poland, as a country in the event of a serious crisis – for example, a cyberattack sabotaging infrastructure – will take longer than three days to recover. That’s why I recommend finding out where the underground water sources are. In my area, there are three spring water sources and many technical water sources.
Furs for Bread - Learn History
Reading accounts and books about the siege of Sarajevo, several things strike you. Firstly, the lack of coffee (I recommend everyone try Balkan coffee in Sarajevo), and instead drinking roasted grain. Residents complained that NATO planes dropped tons of soap, but not necessary things. Secondly, the high mortality rate from shrapnel. Pin-sized fragments that flew through windows and embedded themselves in brains. A bug-out bag or the best EDC gadgets won’t help you if you don’t learn to hit the ground in time.
We don’t have to reach for Sarajevo, because when I recall the famous flood in Wrocław in 1997, when on Friday evening, a few hours before the Saturday peak wave, the banks of the dangerous river were besieged like a fair by grilling, tipsy people taking photos. That says it all about the approach. Therefore, I dare say that in the age of social media, the first hours of a similar crisis, for example, of a warlike nature, will look equally bizarre. Everyone will want to have that perfect reel to show that they are the hero and the best dad. Let’s be direct. Many people, instead of following advice, will be looking for information on social media or filming reels. This is, of course, a recipe for disaster.
How many people took their cherished bug-out bags when going to a family Christmas Eve dinner in another city? You didn’t, because it’s a bit embarrassing, right, narcissistic paranoids? A rhetorical question. After all, when fears are pumped up for marketing purposes, common sense doesn’t matter. It’s also hard to admit that you’re buying hair growth liquid even though you have a full head of hair. Don’t worry, no one will hold you accountable in a niche medium. Only your well-being matters, just like ten pseudo-course certificates or 100 books on a shelf you’ll never read, this backpack is meant to give you a sense of pseudo-security… The fear industry will invent a new fear, and the market will provide you with new products. Cancer, aliens, microplastics, chemicals in food, or even cyclist-ecologists interfering with your comfort zone. A zone that the market will very eagerly exploit and satisfy. You just need to have cash ready.
Hick vs. Tactical Clown
Any sensible survival strategy in a crisis is a gray man strategy, meaning not drawing attention to yourself. Moreover, the strategy of a harmless person is the best business and bureaucratic strategy that has repeatedly yielded excellent results for me. Who talks a lot and flexes muscles? A total loser and storyteller. Concrete people get to work. So, returning to the core, if you are an ordinary person with problems like others (lack of food, obtaining information), you can, first of all, socialize, gain information, participate in the community, and at the same time gain trust as one of their own. Crisis times are not for narcissists dressed like they’re going to a fair, who order food via Uber with one hand and adjust their jacket with the other, checking if they look good.
The matter is quite simple. If you are dressed like a tactical Christmas tree in clothes from a military-roach store, and you have a shovel with ropes on your back, it’s as if you had a sign on your forehead: ROB-ME. You will attract attention. In times of crisis, when people are fighting for resources, the strategy of not drawing attention to yourself is fundamental. Clothes far from military, meaning inconspicuous… However, in the age of social media, being a gray man is not a very attractive strategy. Become a hick with me. Embrace it. You will survive. Clowns will be crushed first. It has always been this way.
I am also amused by the statements of Bartosiak and Budzisz from Strategy&Future, who ridicule the current “W Gotowości” (Ready) training as “hick.” I share the view that Poland’s situation is not the best. But that’s the climate we have and the elites we have. Building a position by being anti-elite will not change anything valuable here and now. I don’t want to offend anyone, but these gentlemen do not present themselves as SEAL commandos, and in an over-intellectualized debate, they are very strong from the couch or an intellectual’s room filled to the brim with ego. I invite you to the forest; there you will show your worth when no one is watching and no one is paying you on Patronite.
In the context of our couch heroes, who don’t look like paragons of health and Rambo, I also see dads who, due to a lack of testosterone and potency, probably compensate for their shortcomings through LARP (live-action role-playing) paramilitary dress-ups and pretending to be soldiers. Hick boys are often dressed in tactical garb. And it is precisely in times of crisis that this can lead to you being deemed suspicious, a spy, a saboteur, or in the worst-case scenario, simply shot, if you cannot identify yourself as a military ally or adversary. Of course, on Instagram, these rules don’t apply, which is why we currently have a festival of stupidity and idiocy. From a drone’s perspective, a fleeing person in camouflage clothing doesn’t have “civilian” written on them. Intellect also doesn’t have much say, although being a hick might decide whether you are a target. Personally, I adopt the gray man hick strategy.
Reels of the Apocalypse vs. Survivor Stories
Reading accounts and books about the siege of Sarajevo, several things strike you. Firstly, the lack of coffee (I recommend everyone try Balkan coffee in Sarajevo), and instead drinking roasted grain. Residents complained that NATO planes dropped tons of soap, but not necessary things. Secondly, the high mortality rate from shrapnel. Pin-sized fragments that flew through windows and embedded themselves in brains. A bug-out bag or EDC gadgets won’t help you if you don’t learn to hit the ground in time.
We don’t have to reach for Sarajevo, because when I recall the famous flood in Wrocław in 1997, when on Friday evening, a few hours before the Saturday peak wave, the banks of the dangerous river were besieged like a fair by grilling, tipsy people taking photos. That says it all about the approach. Therefore, I dare say that in the age of social media, the first hours of a similar crisis, for example, of a warlike nature, will look equally bizarre. Everyone will want to have that perfect reel to show that they are the hero and the best dad. Let’s be direct. Many people, instead of following advice, will be looking for information on social media or filming reels. This is, of course, a recipe for disaster.
How many people took their cherished bug-out bags when going to a family Christmas Eve dinner in another city? You didn’t, because it’s a bit embarrassing, right, narcissistic paranoids? A rhetorical question. After all, when fears are pumped up for marketing purposes, common sense doesn’t matter. It’s also hard to admit that you’re buying hair growth liquid even though you have a full head of hair. Don’t worry, no one will hold you accountable in a niche medium. Only your well-being matters, just like ten pseudo-course certificates or 100 books on a shelf you’ll never read, this backpack is meant to give you a sense of pseudo-security… The fear industry will invent a new fear, and the market will provide you with new products. Cancer, aliens, microplastics, chemicals in food, or even cyclist-ecologists interfering with your comfort zone. A zone that the market will very eagerly exploit and satisfy. You just need to have cash ready.
When writing today’s article, I watched several videos, a total of several hours of material from Polish prepping celebrities and “old-timers” positioning themselves as experts with knowledge appropriate for times of crisis. As the author of this text, I am a total amateur who does not conduct training, has no ambition to earn money, or to be an authority in the field of survival. As a complete layman, based on my experiences, I simply wanted to draw attention to subtle logical inaccuracies and absurdities that are currently being promoted. In my opinion, for sales purposes. And I know the latter very well – marketing.