A: Polish people have been emphasising the dangers of Russian imperialism for decades, only to be called paranoid, or the prisoners of their own history. However, since the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, they need not feel like the Cassandras of Europe, and from the shadows of Russian imperialism, in 2022, the whole world realised that they were right all along.
B: Preppers creating a hobby or dare we say, a lifestyle out of preparing for survival were considered childish military enthusiasts, foil-hatted conspiracy theorists since the Cold War… until the last years.
And what happens when history combines A and B? That’s when the Polish prepper movement is born.
"As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down. (...) Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. (...) Then (..) flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” (Luke 21)
Are we starting from too far back? Let’s jump two thousand years: in Ukraine, since 2014, a hybrid-turned-total, high intensity war is raging with approximately 30.000 civilian casualties and counting, with 12 million people forced to leave their homes. During the last few years, environmental catastrophes, the coronavirus pandemic, the energy crisis, the food crisis and increasingly harsh economic problems added insult to injury. Either of these would stand as the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie, so it’s no wonder that the number of those consciously preparing for the end of the world has been on the rise lately.
The first steps
According to prepper history, the first wave started in 2012 due to the Mayan prediction of the end of the world. Even though the Armageddon did not come then, interest in preparing for the end days didn’t cease. Only a few decades ago, the following sentences would’ve sounded almost heretical: “After 1989, not only Poland, but the whole region experienced a >>geopolitical break<<. The Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War was over. Poland joined the world of western, liberal democracies, and it seemed like Fukuyama was right: we were witnessing the end of history. Liberal peace lasted relatively long. Even the European Security Strategy of 2003 started with the following words: >>Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure, nor so free<<.”—sociologist Weronika Grzebalska, the topic’s researcher, summarised the state of affairs.
Still, Polish people have always had a sixth or seventh sense and felt that something was coming. “In a geopolitical sense, we are at one of the worst places possible—this is where wars break out, this is the area that witnessed the greatest fights and destruction. This is where our sense of uncertainty against the orderliness that surrounds us, stems from”—these are the thoughts of journalist and hobby-prepper Marcin Bąk. “My family, for example, had a firsthand experience of what it means to lose everything that you had built in the 1920s not in a day, but in a few hours time, during the Warsaw Uprising.”
We’ve reached the deepest layers of Polish national consciousness. When talking about the Warsaw Uprising, the age-old dilemma arises: what am I good for alone, in the face of violence and what if I have no chance of winning? Or more poetically: should I die standing straight or on my knees? What is it that has to be done?
Prepper grannies
“The fact that there’s no one better at prepping than the Polish, comes as no surprise. It’s all deeply rooted in our experiences, knowledge and memories. For over a hundred years, we were forced to keep secrets, run away, find ways to be skillful, turn nothing into something and constantly fight for everything. Just take our grandparents as an example: they were the ones stocking up, putting things away for worse days, and who respected creativity and skills in animal farming and agriculture. Our grandmothers’ generation is the original prepper generation. Until just recently, for example, every housewife kept enough supplies in the pantry that would feed the family for weeks.”—one of the most prominent figures of the Polish prepper movement, Piotr Czuryłło adds.
“When we started the Polish prepper movement ten years or so ago, we asked those interested what made them seek out this activity. From all the possible threats, the war was the absolute top of the list. This showed us that, in Poland, people are most afraid of the war as war lives in their souls, it’s imprinted even in those people’s minds who weren’t even born yet. The politics of remembrance, movies, stories, hundreds of years of Polish martyrology: what’s happening right now in Ukraine not only brings real war to our mobile phones and televisions, but also tears old wounds open. The barbaric acts of the Russians showed everyone that there are no rules whether you’re living in the 21st century or in the Middle Ages, the rules of the game stayed the same.”
No wonder
Or perhaps it’s possible that on the banks of Vistula playing together in nature was the activity that dominated until the war broke out, however, now being afraid of the war is the general sentiment. Or more precisely, not just the war itself, but what it entails: energy service blackouts, epidemics and environmental catastrophes.
And where tradition met the zeitgeist, the first Polish platform for preppers—preppersi.pl—and based on the American example, the Polish Preppers Network movement, was born. On Facebook, the Preppers Poland page founded in February 2014, counts 32.000 followers. Since then, Czuryłło, who lives in the Masurian Lake area, has had thousands of people enrolled in his workshops, and there are many other organisations whose goal is to make people prepared for what’s to come.
Before it was cool
Adolf Kudliński, who passed away in 2020, is also one of the founding fathers of the Polish prepper movement. The countryside farmer-turned prepper prophet started his preaching practice back in the ‘90s. Needless to say, he was considered a complete nutjob for burying homemade fat-cured Polish sausages in the back of his garden or making enough pickles for a regiment, preparing for worse times coming, or the fact that he founded the still-to-this-day only Polish hatchet collection in his backyard smithy with over 3000 pieces. A few years later, however, he became a real guru. Over 250.000 people subscribed to his YouTube channel, and his videos were watched by millions. Being the quirky personality he was, he took in homeless people in his farmstead close to Kielce to prepare them for survival, and before his death, he was sentenced for xenophobia for instructing people for take the situation into their own hands against the Romanian mushroom picking maffia destroying Polish forests.
Due to the lack of official statistics, we have to take his word for granted in terms of numbers. During the noughties, he talked about a survivalist community of 50.000 people from which 6000 people applied for his trainings. Others, however, are more cautious with statistics and claim that there are around 10.000-something preppers in Poland, but whatever the truth is, the prepper market is now worth hundreds of millions. Special prepper gear that was made in Poland has been available for years now. Naturally, though, most first-time survivalists get their entry level 72-hours backpacks from abroad online, however, there’s already a Polish company catering to their needs. Second-hand military tools, kits, and MREs are also very popular, and in the case of these items, value for money is the best at home.
Experts and organisations studying prepping emphasise the importance of how well-organised Polish society is. Many claim that in Poland, neighbourhood communities are still a thing, even when they are not on the best of terms, to say the least. When there’s an emergency, people living in the countryside support each other at all costs. There are leaders in the town communities, the network of volunteer firefighters enjoy prestige and now, even countryside housewife clubs as well.
Civil courage
Being well-organised and highly effective are also the aspects that Grzebalska highlights: “the history of Polish self-defence, especially during the 20th century was centred around finding balance between civil and military defensive components—something that even NATO draw attention to: the resilience of a nation stems one third from its military defence and two thirds the civil resilience of its state and society.” For a long time, the general stance was that the most optimal defence model was the (neo)liberal one in which civil society is protected by NATO and has no interference with their defence whatsoever while being protected by a professional, technologically-advanced military. However, due to recent experiences, cutting society from its defence, putting all the responsibility in the hands of professionals while society is left to pay the taxes and generate GDP and be good consumers appears not to be the way forward. Hybrid threats concern several different branches of the state and of society, and require the participation or at least a sense of responsibility from the side of society as well.
In numbers
PATRIOTISM: according to CBOS, the majority of Polish people claim to be real patriots—88% strongly agreed while only 8% stated the opposite. These figures, on a European scale, are in the lead in terms of national pride.
SECURITY: During the turn of February and March 2022, 85% of respondents felt that Poland is in danger. Today, only 78% believe to be living in an immediate threat.
ANXIETY: Still, research conducted in May and published in August by the University of Warsaw, showed that 51% of Polish people experience strong anxiety caused by the war.
BATTLE SPIRIT: According to the survey of the Warsaw Enterprise Institute, 66% of the adult population would defend their country in a war, and 17% of them would do so in an active manner, even with weapons.
Preppers vs. the State
The Polish government noticed what’s happening and reacted in their own way. They’re creating a more favourable legal environment for those participating in survival activities and for the operation of paramilitary organisations while strongly encouraging people to enlist for grassroots defence organisations by, for example, supporting the work of the Territorial Defence Force (WOT), currently boasting approx. 30.000 members. This September, compulsory defence classes are to be reintroduced in Polish schools in which students are going to get acquainted with the basics of civil defence, the rules of keeping and bearing arms and dealing with emergency situations. Last year, even national forestry followed suit: now, it’s legal to bushcraft or bivouac at designated places in Polish National Parks.
“So we can shoot then, right?”
What’s more, this July, the Polish Ministry of National Defence (MON) allocated close to 14.3 million PLN to 83 municipalities to build virtual and traditional shooting ranges. The Ministry anticipated demand as on the banks of the Vistula, shooting’s become a very fashionable pass-time: Paweł Dyngosz, president of the Braterstwo (Brotherhood) association and owner of a shooting range in Wrocław, explained: “since 24th February, from one day to the next, the interest in our shooting ranges increased five-fold. Before the war, we trained only a couple of people in our establishments, now we’re having a hard time squeezing close to 300 people into our training sessions from 6am to midnight every day”. Despite the fact they are not alone: around 450 shooting ranges are to open to the public in Poland.
However, according to the preppers and what research shows, a significant part of the society wants a lot more and calls for reforming the regulations of keeping and bearing arms. Almost every prepper reprimands the fact that Poland is one of the most disarmed countries of Europe. The majority of Poles have never held a weapon in their hands, even though they claim that during desperate times, they need to defend themselves somehow. Noone calls the police during war. Today, approximately half a million people have the right to own weapons—that amounts to only 1-2% of the population. “With hunger and uncertainty comes aggression. As the state won’t let us get armed, we’ll need to find our own means”—declared the president of one of the self-defence organisations to Polityka magazine, who’s teaching Krav Maga to those interested. Liberalised arms rules are not well-recepted just yet—parties are still in agreement that it'd be too risky to spearhead such an idea.
In short, preparing for the worst has become a significant movement in Poland. The time’s passed when this subculture was dominated by obscure right-wing weapon enthusiasts: eco-leftists, liberals and even feminists fighting against the patriarchal nature of the military are among the preppers. Let’s hope that the question of whether we are facing a fad or a fundamental trend of civilization, is not going to be decided by the outcome of the war.