mostly present in fairytales these days

It’s also the currency in the german language donald duck comics.

Not when the critical infrastructure is the infrastructure for storing and moving those materials.
Also people tend to settle where trade happens and work is available.

And how many Palestinian children are in ‘dire’ conditions?

Betamax was used by climbers^1 , clearly everyone went with vhs to avoid them.
^1 a recomended sequence of moves is called a beta to this day

Guardian is british, so she should have dumped sewage or murdered a trans woman if she wanted to go free.

Should they do that more often but are frequently undereqiped? Certainly.
Do they need other options if that doesn’t work? Also yes.

For an extreme case, there are already drones controlled by fiber optic cable on both sides of the Ukraine war.