> Due to visa limits, Bushby has had to break up his walk. In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days before leaving for 90, so he flies to Mexico to rest and then returns to resume the route.

Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order to avoid Russia and Iran because of legal issues, nevermind bring imprisoned in Russia due to what sounded like bureaucratic BS, it's more impressive than I first thought.

> They were detained by Russian border troop officers while they were crossing the Russian border near the Chukotkan village of Uelen, for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry.

Illegal border crossing is absolutely not bureaucratic BS in any country.

I'm laughing at the lack of nuance in laws in general. Some guy crossed the Bering Straight on foot as part of a 27 year quest to walk around the world and the law makes no exception.

I remember as a teen being hauled into a police station because a friend and I had been exploring the storm drains ("sewers") with a home-made flame thrower (okay, so the movie "Alien" had recently come out… Yeah, we left the flamethrower behind in the sewer when we popped our heads out and saw police).

Someone in the neighborhood had called the police because she had seen us going down the manhole opening. (The police said the report came through that some kids had "fallen" into the sewers.)

So I'm sitting in the police station with good cop and bad cop sitting there musing over my case. "How about 'Failure to use a sidewalk when a sidewalk was available'," bad cop said as he read from a book he was paging through. That got a laugh all around…

They let me off after an hour or so of this.

I am a little bit torn in this case. From our vantage point it's obvious that Bushby wasn't running an elaborate long scam to get into Russia. In the moment... I don't know, former UK special forces guy? Long history of espionage between UK and Russia? Two months seems too long; it's also not as easy as your case of a teenager in the sewer.

I'm saying this as someone who enlisted in the defense of said nations once. Most of the structures that make up a country these days are for the birds - let a guy hike for chrissake. I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense. We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately.

Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.

Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all.

Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today.

There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...

In starting to read through some of the criticism's of the book just now, I was reminded of the seasonal hunting parties where many smaller groups would band together for better kills. That's what I mean with "tribal fluidity".

And by freedom of movement, the impression that I had coming away from the listen was that there were many ways in which someone could find themselves in a role where the could migrate through several communities and still live. looking at things again presently, I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_tradition, which I think illustrates what I was trying to convey. "Border sovereignty" doesn't make much sense to me as a concept in that world... i think things were much more fluid. There weren't border checkpoints throughout prehistory.

And you're absolutely right that tribes could join forces to accomplish objectives. And the Hopewell tradition is mainly about trade and cultural dissemination -- of course trade involves traveling with goods to other tribes.

But none of that changes my point. Even if tribes allied for a purposes, they still had their distinct geographic areas. If if people traveled to other tribes to exchange goods, they were just visitors traveling through.

"Border sovereignty" was absolutely real, just as it is in primates. There weren't literal manned border "checkpoints", but you can be sure that as soon as a tribe got wind of a stranger approaching, they'd immediately investigate and either allow them in (if e.g. someone friendly temporarily traveling through) or send them back in the opposite direction with force if necessary. The idea that the norm was that some stranger could just waltz in with their family and they'd be welcomed to stay and share the land is not supported by evidence.

(Even though that's definitely the anarchist ideology that Graeber was trying to push in his book, because that's exactly where he gets criticized for ignoring most of the evidence and cherry-picking examples.)

> they'd immediately investigate and either allow them in (if e.g. someone friendly temporarily traveling through) or send them back in the opposite direction with force if necessary.

Was there never the case that they investigated, saw that the strangers were floating down a river on the border of "their territory" and simply let them pass through unmolested? That doesn't happen today, and my intuition is that was simply so much space in the americas before recorded history that it happened often then.

I didn't say that the nationalism and border sovereignty that exist in 2025 are exactly what prehistoric humans practiced. That would obviously be absurd.

What I said was:

> Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation

In other words, we have the same instincts operating whether it's with a group of 300 people or 300,000,000. People occupy a geographic area and call it theirs and control who can live there. Many primates do the same.

And is your case of someone traveling down a river trying to contradict me? My example was of that being allowed if they weren't threatening. And the modern equivalent would be something like like a transit visa or connecting international airports.

I really don't know what you're arguing. We're not talking about people traveling anyways, the subject is whether tribes would just let random people come in and share their land. They didn't. They had a concept of group sovereignty, the same idea as national sovereignty, and of land they occupied.

If you want to insist that modern national sovereignty and borders drawn on maps are completely and utterly unrelated to tribal sovereignty and tribal borders -- if you don't see the obvious similarity, the same human group instinct and human territorial instinct -- then I really don't know what to tell you.

Further, trade goods are found over large distances, which doesn't work over large distances and many alleged single-tribe-lands unless the good is extremely valuable and defensible from theft.

Your claim that great powers style organization is specifically refuted.

The original comment was about nationalism and borders, not nation-states and great powers.

I explained that the same concepts are found at the tribal level and even in primates. To occupy and defend your territory, and territory is defined by borders, even if they're just a river or the edge of a forest. And gunpowder has nothing to do with anything.

And I don't have the slightest idea what you're trying to say with trade goods.

So no, nothing I said is refuted. It would be helpful if you stuck to the subject at hand, however, without going off track entirely to modern nation-states. Nations are not the same thing as nation-states.

Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us.

But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.

By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’

We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.

Fundamentally, everything in your post down to this ending boils down to whether or not you think that immigrants coming into the country is a good thing or not. People will try to split hairs over "doing it the right way," when until the 1900s doing it the right way was basically just having enough financial stability to make it here - many states had nothing beyond 'means testing' that would easily be passed if you could afford to make it to America rather than stowing away, and many states had less than that. For most of American history, immigrating properly was literally just showing up.

For the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, the only difference between them and the legal immigrant is the amount of paperwork on file. And many of us arguing that that paperwork matters are beneficiaries of a time where that paperwork wasn't necessary.

It's very explicitly a case of "Fuck you, got mine."

Well, it looks we'll have some kind of global government within a couple of decades. It won't be better than what we have now, in fact it will be even less accountable.

Neither the US nor Canada does that now, effectively slicing the Pacific Coast Trail at the border. And now we have the scumbags for no good reason blocking off access to the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail. That fence isn't going to stop someone trying to sneak into the country!

If you enter the territory of a swan, especially during nesting season, the swan might attack you.

If a foreign object enters some animal's body, the immune system may attack that object.[0] Allergy might be related to the immune system misidentifying allergens.

Squirrels can be surprisingly territorial.

Ants have wars. [1]

This is not surprising, since the consequences of territory being compromised can be severe. For instance, in this case [2], the territory was compromised through deception, like pretending to be one of them, and it led to the severe weakening or death of the whole colony through the mass devouring of their offspring.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_body_reaction

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_ants

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/123ke...

We must ban the squirrels from ever leaving the tree they grew up in! Let no bear seek a new cave lest she be punished with a swift death.

In that video, was the ewe and lion cub pets or wild animals?

One definition of "better" could be to seek to avoid the extinction of the human species and of civilization. With that definition, in the current situation, taking measures to help avoid nuclear weapon usage, could be considered in depth and genuinely "better".

Some cells have cell walls, and viruses as I understand it have to penetrate that wall.

Nuts and fruit sometimes have protective shells.

An argument could be made that borders and territory are fundamental.

For an agent that seeks to defeat border control mechanisms, it can potentially be effective to convince the target parties that border control mechanisms generally or specifically are harmful, are useless, or have drawbacks. This is not always completely false in all cases, for instance regarding immune systems misidentifying harmless allergens as harmful, causing potentially significant harm as allergy. However, if an agent uses such approaches, they have to be careful not to buy into that idea themselves, lest matters may become strange and weird. And, in the modern day, if an agent is especially successful and competent with defeating border control mechanisms, considering the extreme power that the human species holds these days, such as with nuclear weapons, it puts an extreme responsibility on such successful agents, at least in the current systems. Otherwise, the consequences might be extremely detrimental to the human species as a whole.

IT defenses are just an existing human cognitive bias carried forward into a new realm… a bad idea carried forward is still a bad idea.

The cell wall of the vascular plants doesn’t exist to keep viruses (or anything) out, it exists to provide structural rigidity and keep water pressure in… in fact any plant without a sufficiently permeable cell wall dies as a consequence.

The virus in turn isn’t an agent at all, it just passively exploits the permeability of cell walls and membranes in order to replicate. In doing so it helps drive the cell’s evolution, by both acting as a pressure and a mutagen. Life, again, depends on information transfer across permeable membranes.

Nuts and other fruits, by the way, are the sexual apparatus of the plant… they don’t even begin to develop until a migration has occurred, and once they’ve developed their primary purpose is, again, to keep energy and water in more than they’re to keep anything out… in fact they universally fail to function if they’re too good at keeping the outside out.

People didn't receive handouts from governments in centuries past for just showing up and performing no contributory function. Kill all entitlements and let's open em' back up!

> still isn't like this for other animals

What reality are you living in where countless animal species aren't territorial? This is common sense.

In English it's "have enforced their borders for millennia"; the phrase "since [length of time]" is almost always grammatically incorrect and a giveaway that someone's not a native English speaker.

Eg Iberian Peninsula (Reconquista and later): Foreign parties >10 armed men could not cross without permission between christians and muslims.

Chinese frontier zones, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks etc all had similar rules. If you want to go back further, then Assyria, Egypt, Hittites, Greece had such limits.

Some nations, countries or groups, or other levels, did play with some of those mentioned ideas of less border control mechanisms in some ways or levels, also going back thousands of years.

Countries that were not successful with border control mechanisms, sometimes ceased to exist.

But there are many different levels and ways, and the whole topic is, to put it very mildly, extremely complex.

I'd say no-border cosmopolitanism is more of a classic liberalism thing.

There are many that think themselves "cosmopolitan", when it is a delusion and coping mechanism about being a parochial hicklib. A chip on their shoulder that makes them especially fervent acolytes of liberalism (as in: Obama flavoured, not the other kind), hoping it offsets their humble origins after moving to the big city, so folks won't get the idea that they are flyover country chuds that vote the wrong way.

A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.

The core tenet that makes this communism-adjacent is the denial of differences: everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc pp. Ignorance of history and the nature of man is a must to take this position.

This is the most incredible No-True-Scotsman fallacy I've ever read.

Tell us how you really feel, good grief.

> everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc

This but unironically.

This is not "how I feel" or my actual opinion of liberals in general. It is a certain archetype that I unfortunately know all too well.

> This but unironically.

You can just say you're a communist, you know. The core tenet will always be some appeal to equality, no matter how you like to describe yourself ("socialist", "liberal", "a decent heckin' human being" in Reddit speech or what have you).

that doesn't make any sense for two reasons. first, he only entered the EU in september this year, so either the 90 days are not up yet or he should be in mexico now. is he? but why would he fly to mexico when he could just go to the UK?

but more importantly, he is a british citizen. getting a visa to walk through europe, especially now that he already has a track record of walking for so long should really not be an issue.

Many europeans have never had to apply for a real visa in their life (I don't mean the online ones, or the apply on arrival ones, I mean the ones where you submit a 20 page form of personal details and hotel bookings and letters from friends you'll be staying with and bank statements and a full travel history) and they assume that I'm just making life difficult for myself by not doing some simpler option that they assume must exist.

I don't know about what visa options UK citizens have for the EU since brexit, but I'd be surprised it was as simple as "I feel like spending more than the 90 days I get".

why? that's exactly what i think he should be able to do. it's not like he spent 27 years walking across the planet in order to then misrepresent what he wants to do in the EU.

for the third time: i am talking about how easy it should be for a UK citizen with his track record, to get a visa that allows him to walk through the EU for longer than 90 days.

The facts are:

1. The only EU-wide visa is 90/180. Citizens of UK don't need to apply for a separate visa.

2. Past the duration of 90 days, the matter goes to the national level. EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

3. So the long stays require one country as your base. Long STAYS, not TRAVELS. Meaning that you get your official EU country of residence. Yes, you can travel to other EU countries, but outside travel still remain capped at 90/180, which is not useful in case of traveling through more than 2 countries.

some EU countries offer extended tourist visas and there is the digital nomad visa, for which while tied to a country, it doesn't even make sense that it would only allow to stay in one country. the point of being a digital nomad is after all to be nomadic.

so yeah, it's going to take some research. but i don't think it's impossible.

EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

this being done purposefully suggests you have read that somewhere. got a reference?

This is absolutely not how bureaucracy works. In cases when there are special visas (like USA's talent visas), they are well documented. There are no special under-table visas that are given to people who a clerk at the Embassy likes.

> there is the digital nomad visa, for which while tied to a country, it doesn't even make sense that it would only allow to stay in one country.

Once again, we are talking about reality, about how things are, instead of how things ought to be in your mind...

E.g. check Portugal D7 / digital-nomad visas: https://www.portugalist.com/d7-vs-d8/

> The term “Digital Nomad Visa” can create a lot of confusion as many other countries offer digital nomad visas that are temporary, and do not offer a path to permanent residency or citizenship. Some also don’t require you to pay taxes. Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visa is aimed at those that want to live in Portugal more or less full-time and make Portugal their home. In return for downsides like physical stay requirements and being taxed on your worldwide income, you do get access to the public healthcare system and you can later qualify for permanent residency and Portuguese citizenship.

> this being done purposefully suggests you have read that somewhere. got a reference?

Can't really provide you with the proof of something (work to unify EU visas) that doesn't exist. You can just check how the system works and how purposefully visas are left to be decided on the National level.

Even with the EU-level status of long-term residents ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U... ), the details depend on the individual country. And even then, this is how it goes e.g. in Finland ( https://migri.fi/en/permanent-residence-permits ):

> If your stay in another Schengen country takes more than 90 days, you must apply for a national residence permit of that country.

> Your P-EU permit granted by Finland will expire if another EU Member State grants you a long-term resident's EU residence permit for third-country nationals (a P-EU permit).

So it's the same limit again.

that's not what i meant. only that, if an exception is possible, then the embassies are the first point of contact. the second point of contact are the foreign ministries of each EU country. there are special visas for artistic or sports activities, so i believe that a special visa for this trip is possible, and that there is an institution that has the authority to grant an exception to the 90 rule. some countries do for example allow an extension, so that would expand the time possible to 180 days, and that's not even very special. longer visas can also be granted for medical or other reasons.

for example this trip could be defined as an EU wide sports activity that takes a year. i didn't see anything in the regulations that would prohibit that.

the problem with getting such a visa is less rules that would prohibit it, but that getting any exceptions requires the trust and goodwill of the involved institutions and that may be harder than it looks.

Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visa is aimed at those that want to live in Portugal more or less full-time

ok, well, but that kind of misses the point of a digital nomad visa. as a digital nomad i am not at all interested in staying in one place full-time, much less in permanent residency or citizenship. but that's not the point of this discussion, just a comment.

Can't really provide you with the proof

i wasn't looking for proof, just that saying that it was purposefully designed implies intention, and that intention ought to be documented somewhere. my question is rather: are you basing that intention on something or do you just assume that the intention is to not allow long term travel? i am not trying to imply anything here, i am just curious if you came across something that would support that idea.

i appreciate your detailed response. i did some searches but i could not find anything that specific.

What is prohibiting it is the fact that longer term things are decided on the national level (EU is not a nation). Some countries may (or may not) have whatever exceptions (Presidential, humanitarian), but they would only apply inside that country.

1. Short stays (<90 days). Schengen sports visa or standard visa exemption. Only for competition/training travel.

2. Long stays (>90 days):

- National sport or work/residence visas/permits specific to the country where you will base training and competitions.

- Once you hold a national residence permit, you can travel in other Schengen states, but long stays elsewhere are still restricted by Schengen rules (90/180 days).

> that kind of misses the point of a digital nomad visa.

Often what one wants or imagines is not what it is in reality. You can freely check what other nomad/IT options other EU and non-EU countries have and you will be surprised. Afaik Portugal's rules are a norm, not an exception.

> that intention ought to be documented somewhere. my question is rather: are you basing that intention on something or do you just assume that the intention is to not allow long term travel?

I base it on:

1. Understanding that EU was created from bottom-up. EU has only the powers that countries agreed and allowed to be given. EU is not "created on top and then decided to downstream some of the decision power to lower levels".

2. Following the political discussions, polls, etc. This is so far fetched, to put all the visa decisions on the EU level, that there is not even a discussion about it. There is no opposition to the idea, because the idea itself is so outside of Overton window that it is not funny. This is akin to asking for evidence of American individual states being against making all the taxes Federal.

3. For more info, research the discussion and opposition to EU level of refugee agreements (be it Libya, Syria or Ukraine). It's a mess, all the countries want to decide for themselves.

> i did some searches but i could not find anything that specific

I hate to be that guy, but please use AI instead of Google. AI is really good at searching and explaining these types of questions.

if i ask AI i get this:

Yes, an EU embassy can issue special visas in exceptional cases, even if they do not fit the standard types of visas. These may be granted based on specific circumstances or urgent needs, but they are not commonly available.

which is what i have been saying all along, but i could not verify even that answer. the reference links didn't contain any text that would confirm this. so i didn't bring it up here.

asking further i get that a long-stay visa should be possible as long as he spend less than 90 days in each specific country, and maybe he has to travel back and forth between the chosen long-stay country and the countries he wants to walk through, but in practice, without checks, or without explicit registration every time he crosses an inner-EU border, how would anyone know? i guess 3 months could be enough for each EU country he passes through, so maybe that could work.

that too, i already concluded from the basic search i did before and from your comments. given that the AI answer here only confirms what i already understood, combined with the unreliability of AI in general, i don't find AI helpful enough to be worth it.

This is garbage from the very beginning, since the EU does not have embassies. All the embassies belong to individual EU countries, further demonstrating that visa arrangements are done on national level.

> a long-stay visa should be possible as long as he spend less than 90 days in each specific country, and maybe he has to travel back and forth between the chosen long-stay country and the countries he wants to walk through

This is exactly what I told you. So basically it is exactly how he has it today (can travel 90 days out of 180), except:

1. The non-travel days he can spend at his base in Mexico, instead of unfamiliar country.

2. Doesn't have to do bureucracy in order to get a long-stay visa. You are severely underestimating how difficult this process is. Imho he wouldn't even be able to get it, at least I don't see compelling reasons to give him a visa by any of the EU countries.

> in practice, without checks, or without explicit registration every time he crosses an inner-EU border, how would anyone know?

Because he is famous enough (and certainly will be after he finishes his trip) for the officials to pay attention. He doesn't want to get an EU-wide ban, especially before completing his journey.

I live in Norway, have residence and stuff. I can travel freely through most of europe without much hassle - but I can only travel 90 days out of 180 days - then you gotta go out of the area (or back to your home country if it is inside), stay out or home for 90 days, and then start anew. The closest border to me - one to Sweden - has no real security. A customs office because there is border shopping in the area and I know they very occasionally stop folks. A crossing an slightly inconvenient distance north just has signs.

Anything outside of this requires paperwork.

Because of one of the original 2 rules he set up from the beginning.

https://uk.diplo.de/uk-en/02/visa-information-2441822

By definition anything illegal is illegal, and no, you cannot bring a firearm across the border into the USA without a paperwork process.

Of course it's illegal. But it used to be open season on the US border was the point. There were so many crossings, this dude would have gone unnoticed. Carrying or not. Nowadays not so much.

Nothing racial about it, many races from many nations crossed illegally. It's about legality, not race.

Did it not occur to him that this might be a bad idea?

Why didn't he take the ferry there?

> “I can’t use transport to advance, and I can’t go home until I arrive on foot,” Bushby said. “If I get stuck somewhere, I have to figure it out.”

After that he really slows down to a crawl and has long periods away from the trail entirely. Whats crazy is that he doesn't like... go home to visit his son and family or try to somehow help the people in his life, he just goes to South America until he can continue.

The fact that when he was forced to take extended (3mo+) breaks he still refused to go home is a bit telling.