Doomsday Prepping

A Uniquely American Hobby

An article by guest contributor Jon of Knights of Dissent.

I vividly remember the year 2012 as the height of American prepper culture. Everyone was obsessed with zombies, and Obama was set to win reelection, which triggered a fever of apocalyptic predictions.

Americans love prepping for disasters. The crises vary, from the realistic hurricane or economic crash to notions of ravenous zombie hoards and catastrophic nuclear EMP attacks. Doomsday prepping is so ingrained in American culture that entertainment media has stopped trying to mock it and started trying to subvert it, as demonstrated by the character Bill in Pedro Pascal’s show The Last of Us.

Origins of Survivalist Culture

Americans have always possessed a survivalist spirit, which re-emerges in response to crisis. The modern American survivalist movement began with the 1973 oil crisis. After nearly 20 years of unprecedented economic prosperity, Americans felt the sting of inflation and political corruption, as well as racial strife, which the civil rights movement hadn’t seemed to alleviate. A cottage industry of “survivalist” or “retreatist” literature popped up with a wide array of useful tips for surviving the coming collapse. The vanguard of survivalism was the eccentric author Kurt Saxon, who circulated a monthly newsletter called The Survivor, which gave practical advice on feeding, sheltering, and protecting yourself in the likely case of a collapse. Saxon also published an edgier series of how-to guides called The Poor Man’s James Bond, which contained detailed instructions for bomb-making, sabotage, poisoning, and hand-to-hand combat. In a 1980 interview, Saxon claims to have coined the term “survivalist,” saying that the common media label “retreatist” was too passive, remarking: “He who prepares to survive is he who deserves to survive.”

For the next 30 years, survivalism was a staple of radical America. Everyone from former weathermen to the nascent libertarian movement got in on the action. Survivalism was an edgy thing to do. Radical booksellers like Paladin Press distributed survivalist books to a small but devoted audience. There was even a libertarian children’s book, written in 1997 and titled 101 Things to Do ’til the Revolution, which listed various fun activities kids could do to prepare for a hypothetical civil war.

9/11 – 2020

The September 11th attacks brought an entirely new group of people into the fold of survivalism. Y2K had certainly caused some panic buying, but the twofold threat of foreign terrorists and an increasingly paranoid government provided the perfect fuel for preparedness to go mainstream. Survivalism was no longer the purview of the Unabomber, but something that respectable conservatives could dip their toes into. Moreover, in 2004, Clinton’s Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 expired and Congress failed to renew it, which brought a slew of new firearms and firearms manufacturers onto the market. The AR-15, largely ignored before the ban, became the most purchased rifle in America.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan created thousands of new combat veterans with a grudge against the United States government. Militia movements became more common, especially after Obama’s election in 2008. These movements were taken more seriously by the public than the ’90s militias, since many of them were real soldiers who had actually seen combat. Militia culture and survivalist culture were inextricable, and the newest expression of this union would come to be known as “prepper” culture.

Unlike the survivalists of the 1970s, 21st-century preppers did not rely on newsletters. The Internet provided instant communication, allowing for a constant stream of new prepper content. Sites like YouTube allowed preppers to share their ideas and equipment with the world and get instant feedback. The long-form video format allowed for detailed reviews of weapons, gardening methods, MREs, tools, etc... This online prepper culture also developed its own set of slang, a mix of military jargon and old survivalist code words, including — SHTF, TEOTWAKI, Bugging Out, Bugging In, and Gray Man.

Contemporary Doomsday Prepping

Today, prepping has become a key part of American identity. Prepping is not only uniquely American but uniquely right-wing: it requires low time preference, future orientation, and a strong sense of in-group vs. out-group. The events of 2020 finally silenced the maligning of right-wing prepper nut jobs. Simply put, they had food and toilet paper, while you didn’t. In 2021, Facebook started sending warnings about people becoming too prepared, but the cat was already out of the proverbial bag. Doomsday prepping has lost its radical edge; it’s a hobby for the whole family now. YouTube has thousands of various prepper channels dedicated to various niche parts of surviving the collapse, including: first aid, Gray Man Theory, aquaponic gardening, small-unit infantry tactics, ham radio, water purification, and much more. There are even prepper mom blogs!

Doomsday prepping is part of what it means to be American. Unless some economic miracle happens soon, I think it will stay that way.