Wireless ad hoc networks are inherently vulnerable, as any node can disrupt the communication of potentially any other node in the network. Many solutions to this problem have been proposed. In this paper, we take a fresh and comprehensive approach, simultaneously addressing three aspects: security, scalability and adaptability to changing network conditions. Our communication protocol, Castor, occupies a unique point in the design space: it does not use any control messages except simple packet acknowledgments, and each node makes routing decisions locally and independently of other nodes without exchanging routing state with them. This novel design makes Castor resilient to a wide range of attacks and allows it to scale to large network sizes and to remain efficient under high mobility. We compare Castor against four representative protocols from the literature. Our protocol achieves up to two times higher packet delivery rates, particularly in large and highly volatile networks, incurs no or only limited additional overhead and it is able to survive more severe attacks and recovers from them faster.