Learning to grow your own vegetables
and set aside seed to plant next year, to raise chickens, bake bread
and make jam, to medicate yourself with aloe vera, knit a sweater,
run a diesel engine on recycled cooking oil, collect rain- or
well-water, make your log cabin energy self-sufficient -- to most of
us these are innocent, even heart-warming, activities. To "preppers"
these aren't pastimes; they are skills needed for the dark days
ahead.
This subculture of Americans preparing
for civilization's collapse covers a vast range of fears and extends
the idea of being prepared, as it is usually understood in the
context of hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters, to
all possible crises, local or systemic.
There are now at least three million
preppers in the United States making detailed plans for surviving
"the end of the world as we know it." Though there have not
been many sociological studies of preppers, they seem to come from
all backgrounds, but especially from among the young and heavily
indebted suburbanites.
National Geographic's television
channel has a reality show dedicated to prepping. Every month 300,000
people log on to SurvivalBlog.com, and many other websites have been
created in the United States and Canada (Viking Preparedness, The
Survival Mom, Ready Nutrition, Pioneer Living Survival Magazine,
Prepper, The Suburban Prepper, The Prepper E-Book) and are now
spreading in Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Blogs, books and radio shows have
produced figureheads, such as the high priest of prepping, James
Wesley Rawles, a former U.S. military intelligence officer and a
conservative Christian whose books sell hundreds of thousands of
copies. Mr. Rawles shrouds himself in mystery, preferring not to
reveal the location of the "secret ranch" where he has
moved his family to ensure their survival.
There's always someone predicting the
end of the world, including millenarian sects. But, unlike the
millenarians, the preppers are not expecting a specific disaster on a
particular date. Anything could happen, at any time: a giant
meteorite or another planet hitting the Earth, a massive volcanic
eruption, a combination of ecological disasters, a nuclear war
between China and the West, hyperinflation, the collapse of the world
banking system, revolutionary insurrection, martial law -- Preppers
aren't choosy.
Their opportunism means they can avoid
post-apocalyptic blues -- an affliction suffered by Harold Camping,
president of Family Radio, whose followers were disappointed not to
witness the end of the world in October 2011, his last prediction. It
also allows them to cast their nets wide: The preppers recruit
paranoid conspiracy theorists, urban bobos, isolationist populists
and ecologists. They raise awareness among those who just want to
know what to do in a water shortage or power outage.
By imagining all possible scenarios,
preppers herd materialist sheep towards Calvinist predestination that
separates the "blessed," or the winners (recognizable by
their active vigilance), from the "damned," or the losers
(victims of their own shameful frivolity). Many churches are
irritated by this aggressive competition and argue that material
training for survival is worth little next to spiritual training for
the salvation of the soul.
Unlike the hippies of the 1960s and
1970s and the survivalists of the 1990s, the preppers are not
rejecting a way of life or defying a government they suspect of
betraying them in favor of the elite of the New World Order. They
claim to be just ordinary citizens seeking to inform themselves.
Although rediscovering practical skills revives worthwhile
traditions, online forums have two recurring themes that go a lot
further: isolationism and preparation for armed resistance against
the "unprepared," who are suspect as they may become
looters.
Contributors to forums hosted by Joel
Skousen, a former fighter pilot turned catastrophe commentator and
"strategic relocation" specialist, discuss how to prepare
to relocate when society collapses, when to leave the big cities
(especially the more dangerous ones, infested with "zombie
unemployed"), what to put in your "bug-out bag" (a
72-hour survival kit for use during evacuation from a disaster area),
how to choose a safe haven in the United States with plenty of
Christian neighbors and how to survive for six months in a
"self-sufficient residence" or even a concrete pipe in the
back garden. One couple boasted of having 50 years' worth of
provisions and 25,000 rounds of ammunition. Another contributor
explained how he keeps 1,000 tilapias (freshwater fish) in his
swimming pool.
Some preppers wonder if, after the
apocalypse, we will all have to become hunter-gatherers again, and
they believe we must preserve knowledge essential for the rebuilding
of civilization (how to weave, solder, secure a supply of clean
water, self-medicate). How many horses and cows would each family
need? The idea of the closed community, as depicted in M. Night
Shyamalan's 2004 film "The Village," appeals to preppers --
though they probably prefer Roland Emmerich's "2012" or
John Hillcoat's "The Road," which don't make the audience
think too much.
The second-favorite prepper theme
derives from a fear of others. Maps of "suspected terrorist
activity" in the United States and around the world are
available, as is information on how to build a gated community in a
hurry and set up armed patrols in preparation for the arrival of
hordes of unprepared, who will soon try to violate your sanctuary.
What starts off as practical recognition of the need for a fire drill
can end up as paranoid anticipation, just as bad as the disasters it
is intended to guard against.
Yet most preppers are still consumers,
as compulsive as those who empty the supermarket shelves before a
holiday. In frantically stocking up on weapons, basic necessities and
medicines (the three Bs: bullets, beans and Band-Aids), they replace
one form of over-equipping with another. Their ideal of pioneer-like
self-sufficiency is encumbered by clutter. Possibly the most extreme
manifestation of this are the pallets of freeze-dried food (a
nine-month supply for four people) that "emergency stockpile"
specialists sell in quantities to the more pessimistic preppers.
Of course, like Boy Scouts, who are
always prepared, good preppers should be able to make do: They should
know how to use a potato to power a light bulb, how to make a spoon
from cardboard or how to light a stove without matches. But to learn
these skills, they need the paid services of TV experts -- more
consuming. They may make their own soap, but they use ingredients and
utensils (borax, sodium carbonate, a cheese grater) bought at the
local store.
Anticipation of future disaster and how
to survive it prevents people from thinking about what is happening
here and now. Preppers do comment on greed in the financial sector
and, in the United States, on the Second Amendment right to bear
arms, but their individualist ideas of self-sufficiency and their
instinct for flight mean they typically participate little in social
or political action. They are unable to imagine civilization
correcting course and, lost in their ideology of the struggle of all
against all, cannot, for example, envision that a simple
redistribution of wealth could be more effective than strategic
relocation to avoid the horrors of economic calamity. They refuse to
prepare for the possibility that the world will survive.
(Source)
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