Diving into the World of Preppers
When I told my mom about this book idea a few months ago, she visibly cringed. If you know my mother, you know she’s the most supportive, loving person in the world, so this visible cringing at her dear child, her eldest daughter’s very own book idea (versus immediate pride) came as a bit of a surprise.
“What’s that look all about?” I asked her.
“I don’t want people to think you’re, you know…one of those crazy doomsday preppers,” she said.
The cringe then was out of love and worry. She had a vision in her mind of what a “prepper” looked like and it was not me, the liberal, tree-hugging pacifist. Being from eastern Washington State where, those of us who grew up in the 90s very clearly remember the 11-day Ruby Ridge standoff with survivalist Randy Weaver and his family, in northern Idaho (just over the border from us) have a certain vision in our mind of what a “prepper” is. The picture we conjure is usually of someone with right-wing perspectives on politics, adamantly focused on individual freedoms, and who hoards a whole lot of guns.
And you know what, my mom isn’t wrong when that’s the picture that she conjures in her mind. At least not completely. No one group is a monolith, but there is a certain cultural assumption made about preppers. This was almost immediately apparent when I started following some self-identified preppers on Instagram the algorithm immediately suggested I follow Fox New, Breitbart, and Newsmax (I almost threw my phone across the room as if it was on fire). This certainly made me uneasy, but it wasn’t just the algorithm, the more I got into the posts, the more I wondered how I would find a place in this world of preppers. Because, to be clear, I’m not on a path to completely changing my identity. This mission will always be centered around my progressive values of collectivism, social justice, and creating a better future for all. And because of that, I’m dipping my toes in gently and mostly following folks who are women who may be less likely to possess that toxic masculinity that I associate with the world of prepping.
The approach of these women-preppers is definitely distinct from the hyper-masculine, almost militia-mindedness of what I think of when I hear “prepper.” But there’s still some of that in there. I appreciate the tips on stocking up on emergency supplies, suggestions for making emergency plans, and the gardening tips. But there are still guns and there’s still a heavy focus on individualism. The message is: in case of emergency or societal breakdown you are on your own and it is up to you to protect yourself and your family. That, to me, is unsettling and runs counter to my idea of what I think prepping can and should be.
This was already something I was thinking about when my friend Liz (friend and, of course, dear reader of this very newsletter) suggested I check out the podcast episode from Wild with Sarah Wilson where she interviews Mark O’Connell about his book, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back. O’Connell’s book is focused on the three years he spent learning about these extreme preppers. Not necessarily the kind of back-to-the-land survivalists, but the extremely wealthy White, American men (and they are all White men) who, as he sees it, are playing out their childhood fantasies rooted in colonization and going off alone and heroically conquering the “wild West.” We’re talking survivalist bunkers in South Dakota and New Zealand and Mars colonization (hello Elon Musk). I immediately got the book from the library after listening to the episode because the themes that O’Connell brings up in the book are so very similar to the themes that I want to come out of my book and this process, but perhaps the outcome is a little different. I want to manifest a better future for all, they want to manifest a better future for them.
“Preppers are preparing not so much for their fears, but for their fantasies,” says O’Connell in the interview. “There’s something about civilization collapse…that at some level they want this to happen….[They envision] a Hobbesian war of all against all…and that civilization is just a thin veneer across chaos. When it breaks down, you get this sort of individual having to protect himself against inherent ‘savagery.’”
And that it’s-me-against-the-world mentality is often how you see these folks–usually White people from all classes, but often a fear stoked by the wealthy–react in times of disaster. Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster shows through the various disaster communities (from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to Hurricane Katrina in 2005) that the elite often responded to disasters in defense mode. And in the case of Hurricane Katrina racial tension was played out in dramatic ways in New Orleans where White vigilantes acted (with impunity) as if they had finally reached their end times fantasies.
But what they were reacting to was a myth. The myth that human nature is prone to chaos. Rather it’s the other way around. Human nature is actually more rooted in altruism and solidarity and empathy. Yes, you had horrific examples of White vigilantes in New Orleans shooting unarmed Black men as if they were in a video game and police in San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake shooting people trying to save others from rubble because they thought they were looters. But they weren’t reacting to chaos, they were reacting to the fear of chaos and, therefore, becoming the chaos themselves. The vast majority of people were in survival mode, helping one another. With that, you had the community kitchens that sprang up spontaneously, the heroic rescues by ordinary citizens, and the many stories of mutual aid that led to collective survival during those apocalyptic periods.
The lesson that I take from this when I think about “prepping” is that it is a matter of “both/and.” Sure, I need to take agency over my own future, I need to stock up, and I sure as hell need to make that emergency plan (it is, in fact, National Preparedness Month, so we all should do this). But I don’t have to do it alone. I don’t have to think about prepping as an individual act.
In fact, that’s part of the reason I started this newsletter. I want your voices and your ideas. I mean, Liz’s comment helped lead me down a path to this very post you’re reading right now. We’re all in this together. It’s cliche now in these pandemic times, but face it, we are whether we like it or not.
And, together, especially those of us who really do have this negative vision of what a “prepper” looks like can also think critically about our reaction which Sarah Wilson probed a bit in the conclusion to the podcast interview with Mark O’Connell.
“I think that fleshing out and learning about this movement and the visceral horror and disdain that we feel when we learn about it is very important,” she said. “It’s the extreme neoliberal individualism and selfishness that is so abhorrent. But it's the same neoliberal individualism and selfishness that we are all engaged in now. That we are all allowing to play out all around us in the present moment at the expense of care and cooperation.”
So maybe the other lesson is that we need to investigate that inner individualist-prepper inside of us and see what’s going on with that. That, my friends, is something that I will most certainly continue exploring on this journey.