The universe is large, mostly empty, and fond of sudden weather. That is not an argument for screaming. It is an argument for knowing where your towel is before the weather arrives.
Panic is motion without a destination. It burns calories, friendships, and the last dry corner of your rucksack. Caution is slower and less photogenic: a folded map that still works after the engine swap of plans, a spare sock, the phone number of someone who will answer at 3 a.m. without asking you to justify the hour. One true friend is not a slogan. They are the person who will hold the other end of the tent while you argue with the pegs.
A towel, as any hitchhiker eventually learns, is not a fetish. It is a portable climate. Dryness is a small republic you can carry. Wave it and you signal “I am not yet a crisis.” Lose it and you discover how quickly wetness becomes a personality.
Maps are the same trick in two dimensions. The useful ones survive being sat on. They do not require the planet to stay still. They merely refuse to pretend that “this way” is a moral fact. If the road is gone, the map still tells you which river you are about to befriend.
The difference between caution and cosmic flailing is inventory. Caution counts: water, light, a joke that still works when the battery dies. Flailing counts threats until the numbers become a religion. Forty-two is a tidy answer to a question nobody asked; it is a terrible packing list. Pack the list instead.
Don’t Panic, as packing advice, is not numbness. It is the decision to keep your hands free. You may still run. Running with a towel and a friend is travel. Running with neither is a rumor you tell later, if there is a later.
On Earth, this looks almost boring: check the tide table, tell someone your route, carry the thing that dries. The Guide’s older editions were not being cute. They were trying to keep you from becoming a cautionary footnote in someone else’s weather report.
Preparedness without doom is just this: leave room in the bag for the unexpected, and leave room in the unexpected for a dry place to sit.