Adam is a self-made man, married with two children. The owner of a successful road haulage business, he recently moved the family into a mini-mansion in a Warsaw dormitory suburb. He built the new place himself, more or less, with his father and brother-in-law lending a hand. As the men were laying the foundations in the basement, a neighbour walked over. Had they been sent by the municipality, the neighbour wondered, to start work on the town’s long-awaited bomb shelter? The nosy neighbour’s guess was not far off the mark, and the men put up a fence to keep prying eyes away. The large, reinforced basement was indeed intended as a shelter but it would be for the family’s private use, not for the general public. Adam spoke on condition that his real name was not disclosed, citing privacy concerns. He considers himself a liberal on social issues and a libertarian on economic policy, and he votes for Konfederacja, the far-right opposition alliance that has been courting small-business owners. The threat from Russia was in the back of his mind when he built the shelter: border closures to the east had already forced him to re-route his fleet of trucks. “Some friends and family call it paranoia – sure, go ahead,” he said. “When the sirens start, I wonder which of them will be the first to queue up outside my bunker.”
Ania Zapolska combines a corporate career and family life with maintaining an Instagram channel, the Polish Mother’s Urban Survival Guide. Posting roughly three times a week, she has amassed around 50,000 followers, and in September, she published her handbook, Protecting Yourself and Your Family in Times of Crisis or War. She was an “ordinary mother, not a security expert,” as she puts it, until Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. At the time, Ania’s husband reassured her that he would know what to do in case the worst happened. “But I realised that he would be taken into the army so I have to prepare myself,” she said. “I can’t imagine having to tell my children, ‘sorry, there will be no food and water for three days, mummy didn’t think about it.’” Ania’s content is pitched at an audience of women like her – centrist moms seeking practical tips for the apocalypse. In calm, matter-of-fact tones, she lays out what survival essentials can be squeezed into a handbag, how to pack an evacuation kit for the family dog, and where best to arrange an emergency rendezvous with the kids. Her Instagram follower-count got a boost this year as more and more Poles began asking what exactly they would do if their country were to be invaded from the east.
New Zealand offers private lairs for tech billionaires hedging against doomsday. The US has a booming “panic room” industry, equipping private homes with fortified hide-aways stockpiled with tinned food and weaponry. In Canada, there is an emphasis on outdoor survival skills. In Poland, next door to a country resisting a Russian invasion, the fear is very real and the “prepper” scene has gone mainstream. War-readiness has woven itself into the fabric of everyday life in ways explicit and subtle. Poles hit the gym or clock their 10,000 steps a day, following their exercise regimes but also quietly preparing for the day they might have to flee with a heavy backpack and a baby in their arms. They try to spend more time offline, not to detox from doom-scrolling but to master map-reading and the use of short-wave radios. Online, they scan foreign property listings and fantasise about cheap apartments in Portugal and Spain. Those with laptop jobs thank their stars they can go anywhere in the European Union. Or they say they will stay in Poland come what may, but when searching for their next home, they also weigh up the shelter potential and the distance from the eastern border.