Wearied watching American politicians snap at each other over the price of eggs? Fed up with fretting about illegal immigrants swelling the fruited plain?
Troubled about how to save the environment without buying a Tesla, survive without diversity, equity and inclusion departments, or launch a preemptive strike on an offshore windmill farm?
This is in addition to impending doom of climate change and artificial intelligence.
The Swedish government says another tomorrow is out there, a more survivable future centered on a generous supply of toilet paper and menstrual pads.
“A bucket with a lid is essential,” is one of the principal recommendations contained in the country’s new Nordic bestseller “In Case of Crisis or War.”
More than a 1,000 days into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine and a few days after President Donald Trump directed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to lacerate budgets and payrolls across Washington, Sweden’s 32-page paperback is the latest entry into the Duck-and-Cover Book Club that includes the American Cold War classic “Survival Under Atomic Attack,” the Britain’s “Mine and Sub-Munition Guide,” and the 1990 Saudi Arabian sizzler “Brief Notes & Guidelines on Toxic Chemicals and Their Effects, Air Raids and Siren Instruction.”
No surprise the paperback's release coincided with the Kremlin tyrant lowering Russia’s threshold for using nuclear weapons and the Trump administration’s ongoing calls to annex Canada, adopt Greenland and re-assert ownership of the Panama Canal.
Danish parliamentarian Anders Vistisen wasn’t having any of it.
“Greenland is not for sale,” he said in a speech before the European Parliament. “Let me put it in words you might understand, Mr. Trump, f*ck off.”
The hyperbole boiled over in Davos, Switzerland, where global politicians, corporate executives and academics last month assembled for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.
“I was told that Trump is quite serious about Greenland,” Zaki Laïdi, a professor at Sciences Po and an adviser to the former E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles, told reporters. “The Danes are saying, ‘Keep it down,’ but they’re scared.”
Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Putin’s chief propaganda flunky, Sergei Markov, warns Americans to prepare themselves for a thermonuclear St. Valentine’s Day massacre.
“You will. stay in the hole, trying to hide away your family from the nuclear catastrophe,” said Markov, director general of Russia’s Institute of Political Studies. “It can develop very, very quickly.”
NATO officials now suspect it was Russia who sabotaged two fiber-optic
data cables running below the Baltic Sea, including a 135-mile internet link between Sweden’s Gotland Island and Lithuania and a 700-mile cable linking Finland and Germany.
Reading all about how to survive Putin’s belligerence and Trump’s isolationism, you’ll learn stuff that you likely wish you hadn’t.
“Restrict your news intake,” is the Swedish government’s recommendation. “Spend more time doing things that make you feel good.”
Like practicing what you’ve learned from the chapter on “How to Stop Bleeding.”
“Apply direct, firm pressure on the wound with your arms, preferably using a bunched-up t-shirt or scarf.”
Sweden’s Defense Minister Pål Jonson isn’t joking.
“Russia is the principal threat to Sweden, and it constitutes a threat to the whole NATO alliance,” he said at the book’s ersatz launch party, adding that a Russian invasion of the region “cannot be excluded” and that Sweden in 2025 will escalate military spending to 2.4% of GDP.
Paranoia, distrust and terror are striking deep into the joy Valentine’s Day.
There’s tension amid the hearts and flowers. Survival books in Sweden, Denmark and Norway are stacking up as popular gifts wrapped in dark sub-plots.
According to a 1,000-page guidebook titled “Operation Deutschland,” the German newspaper Frankfurter Allegmeine reports NATO is concerned that 70% of all trucks on Germany’s roads are conceivably driven by fifth columnists from Eastern Europe.
One of the document’s authors, Lt. Col. Jörn Plischke, is advising shipping companies to train at least five additional truck drivers for every 100 employees.”
And if you do hear a boom, Jonson says your best bet is to “run…with enough cash for at least a week, preferably in different denominations.”
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