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Comment by walthamstow | Hacker News Reader

Did the guy above source their made-up number?

For the positive, see Finland, which is working hard to be a very well-prepared nation. Heavy buy-in from all across the populace. Exactly the kind of nation I was talking about - their survival depends on it. Poland, Sweden, Denmark all doing similar.

For the negative, see UK and US during COVID. The individualism that has underpinned society since Thatcher/Reagan as made us less likely be prepared, less likely to look out for our neighbour. Both are isolated by water, so we're naturally less bothered about invasion.

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I live in sweden and I can tell you that over here it's all idle talk, nothing and nobody is prepared for anything at all.

And the only ones who do buy-in are gun lovers and preppers, which are not a major demographic.

But if the time came, would you trust your neighbour to do the right thing? Sweden is a high-trust society based on friends in London and from visits there, especially outside Stockholm. The UK and US are definitely not.

I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?

> But if the time came, would you trust your neighbour to do the right thing?

You don't know anything about sweden, clearly. The only people I speak to in the neighborhood are immigrants and homeless people who live in the nearby shelter.

> I thought I had read that Sweden had made some changes to military service recently, is that not true?

Yeah they are wasting time and money with conscription. Very useful.

Maybe all the nice people left and came to London to work with me!

I'm from Sweden, I 100% would not trust my neighbors. Sure, maybe if you live in a tiny tiny village in the countryside, but if that's the case you probably have the same thing if you're living in a tiny tiny village in a in the US too. Like that's more of an effect of living in a very small village, not anything about the country.

And regarding the changes to the military, that is still a very small amount of people who are doing the basic conscription service.

Interesting, thanks. Doesn't Swedish have a word for community responsibility, are you saying that sense is breaking down in modern Sweden, that people no longer feel that responsibility?

Friends in London seem to talk about it as if we don't have it in the UK (I know that's true) but that Sweden does.

You have to understand that sweden does a lot of marketing but at the end of the day it's just marketing. Things here aren't nearly as great as everyone abroad imagines them to be.

Not claiming it's a bad place to live in or that there aren't worse places, but the high trust society thing is a myth.

I've had my wallet disappear while I fell asleep on the shore of a lake, in one of those tiny villages where everybody knows each other for example :)

Have you been to these countries lol ? It's not like they're all preppers who could be fully self sufficient in case of an alert, not even for 3 days.

The people in Warsaw, Stockholm and Copenhagen aren't more prepared than the people in Madrid or NYC, most people in medium/large cities give 0 shit about these scenarios, they're the same as everywhere else. Having studied in Denmark I can tell you that if anything the Danish youth is even more oblivious to risks in general given that they live in such an utopia. The state and older generations might be more aware of their perilous position but that's about it.

I've been to most of them, though since COVID only to Denmark. I have friends in London from all of them too, and my cousin from London lives in Stockholm.

In my opinion, and that's all I have here, they are much, much more likely to do the right thing for their neighbour in an emergency than a Briton or American.

All of my friends from Baltic nations are concerned about Russia. All of them. Maybe its an age thing, we're early 30s and some have children.

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