United States 'Prepping' for Disaster Diversifies as More Americans Lose Trust

[DarthOne]

'Prepping' for Disaster Diversifies as More Americans Lose Trust

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2024-03-09/prepping-for-disaster-diversifies-as-more-americans-lose-trust

LONGMONT, Colorado (Reuters) - Brook Morgan surveyed booths at the "Survival & Prepper Show" in Colorado that were stocked with boxes of ammunition, mounds of trauma medical kits, and every type of knife imaginable.

A self-described "30-year-old lesbian from Indiana," Morgan is one of a new breed of Americans getting ready to survive political upheaval and natural catastrophes, a pursuit that until recently was largely associated with far-right movements such as white nationalists since the 1980s.
Researchers say the number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017. Much of that growth is from minorities and people considered left-of-center politically, whose sense of insecurity was heightened by Donald Trump's 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, more frequent extreme weather and the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.

"I'm really surprised by the number of people of color here," Morgan said. "I always went to these shows with my family in Indiana and it was just white people who were my parents' age. There are a lot of younger people here, too. It's a real change."

Morgan grew up in a prepper family and still considers herself self-reliant and ready to handle a disaster but she left the prepper world of her youth behind in part to escape the conservatism associated with the movement.

The diversification of prepping was clear last weekend at the Survival & Prepper show at the fairgrounds in Boulder County, a liberal district which President Joe Biden won in 2020 by nearly 57 percentage points over Trump. Over 2,700 people paid $10 each to attend the show, organizers said, and attendees were varied.

Bearded white men with closely cropped hair and heavily tattooed arms were there. But so were hippy moms carrying babies in rainbow colored slings and chatting about canning methods, Latino families looking over greenhouses and water filtration systems, and members of the local Mountain View Fire Rescue team, who in 2021 battled a devastating fire in the region, giving CPR demonstrations and encouraging citizens to be more prepared for extreme events.

Attendees and those running the booths said the show reflected the concerns of millions of Americans who no longer feel that they can always count on the government or private industry to provide the basics, like electricity, water and food.

They cited the pandemic disruption of supply chains, the 2021 power grid crisis in Texas that left millions without power, and the recent outages for thousands of AT&T mobile users.

Chris Ellis is a colonel in the U.S. Army who works on disaster preparedness and recovery and is a leading researcher into the prepper movement who has tracked its growth to 20 million people based on household resiliency data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He said that what shapes individual preppers - which he defines as someone who can live for a month with no outside support - is how they react to a single question: "Do I feel safe?"

"People want to regain their agency, their sense of control, and do something to match their fears to their actions," said Ellis, who underscored that he did not speak on behalf of the Department of Defense.

People motivated by climate change, Ellis said, tend to be homesteaders who grow their own food and move to more "climate proof" locations, such as the mild summer haven of Duluth, Minnesota.

Others whose main fear is lawlessness are frequently the gun enthusiasts stereotypically associated with the prepper movement. The super rich often respond to their fears by spending millions to build bunkers in remote spots.

For John Ramey, a former innovation advisor to the Obama administration and creator of the prepper website The Prepared, the community has grown to reflect American society at large in terms of political beliefs and demographic categories.

"The only real unifying denominator among preppers these days is people who are smart enough to be aware of what the world is like … and they have the gumption to do something about it," Ramey said.

Back at the prepper show at the Boulder County fairgrounds, Jennifer Council strummed her thumb against the edge of an ax, balanced it in her hand and said it was perfect for both cutting down small trees and doing the delicate shaving work needed to create tinder.

Council, a 50-year-old mom of three adult children and self-described Black urban farmer, lives in a suburban home northwest of Denver.
"Preppers used to be seen as extreme weirdos," Council said. "Then the pandemic happened and grocery stores were short on food. Then you had the unrest of protests around the police killings of young Black men. Then you had the storming of the Capitol in Washington."
"People are realizing that it's important to be able to depend on what you can do for yourself."

(Reporting by Brad Brooks; editing by Donna Bryson and Alistair Bell)

 

[colorles]

Too many "preppers" think they are going to be a lone survivor out inawood type of person at best...or a rambo "raider" type at worst. This is another psy op TO DRIVE PEOPLE AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. that is the point of all of this. just to isolate people further. low trust, high crime society.

you don't "prep" for disasters by going it alone. you prep for disasters by forging relationships in your community and being a leader and/or contributing member of your community. you prepare for disasters AS A COMMUNITY.

But of course, this is all a psy op and people losing even more trust in one another and isolating themselves is entirely the point of it.

 

[Morphic Tide]

But of course, this is all a psy op and people losing even more trust in one another and isolating themselves is entirely the point of it.

Wrong way around, the individualized prepping is downstream from the end of cohesive communities. In the sense that they have blurry and frayed edges of social connections and aren't particularly geographically constrained, so there's no clear line of "the community" to prepare.

And the groups who'd do psyops like this don't want rugged individualists actively trying to figure out how to live alone, as they're relatively poor at handling lone wolves. What they want are exactly the sort of communities you call for, because such communities NEED to be relatively insular and organized. This makes it far easier to deal with because it's a solid target containing a lot of opposition dependent on eachother.

 

[Cherico]

Lets see we just had a global pandemic that saw the governments in the world purposefully shut down the global economy, mass riots across the city and so much other crazy shit I mean yeah having extra food, and preparing for disaster is kind of a rational response to all of that.

 

[prinCZess]

The...broadening, I suppose might be the best word...of the 'prepper' community has kind of gone hand-in-hand with the same thing happening in the firearm-centric self-defense world. There's a lot more range to the people in it nowadays specifically because government failures and screw-ups (or malicious actions) have been more visible. But there's always been some overlap--Mother Earth News and the sustainability/enviro-hippy movement has always been hand-in-hand with prepper stuff.

And while there's point to the whole 'no person is an island in a disaster' and the push to get people to do the community-outreach and relationship-forming stuff...the individual-skills and resources thing is and always has and will be an important component--perhaps especially for the non-'emergency' times. CPR or how to perform the heimlich or how to bandage a wound/stop a bleed are things you might well need outside of a broad disaster. Having some spare toilet paper may just save you discomfort from having to brave long lines and high prices (or worse) the next time a probably-engineered virus escape from a poorly-maintained or secured Chinese laboratory. They're things worth investing in before trouble hits.

Just like community stuff. Say hi to your neighbors. Make them some cookies or such if they or you are new to the neighborhood. Some really basic meet-and-greet stuff can make it much easier to come together for things later if need be--and once again, not even necessarily 'emergencies'.

 

[colorles]

Wrong way around, the individualized prepping is downstream from the end of cohesive communities. In the sense that they have blurry and frayed edges of social connections and aren't particularly geographically constrained, so there's no clear line of "the community" to prepare.

And the groups who'd do psyops like this don't want rugged individualists actively trying to figure out how to live alone, as they're relatively poor at handling lone wolves. What they want are exactly the sort of communities you call for, because such communities NEED to be relatively insular and organized. This makes it far easier to deal with because it's a solid target containing a lot of opposition dependent on eachother.

While what you say has some merit I can't say I agree with it. I agree with the first paragraph to an extent; although this depends greatly on the part of the country we are talking about. But the second paragraph? Lone wolves are not as hard to deal with as you are playing on. Nor are solid communities that are self sustaining or damn near it and full of skilled and capable people...as easy to deal with as you are playing on.

Not to mention you have to question why "prepping" and "preppers" are so commonplace on the internet and why the culture is spreading; or, to word it another way: why the culture is being allowed to be openly spread. Who benefits? You always have to ask yourself who benefits.

 

[Cherico]

While what you say has some merit I can't say I agree with it. I agree with the first paragraph to an extent; although this depends greatly on the part of the country we are talking about. But the second paragraph? Lone wolves are not as hard to deal with as you are playing on. Nor are solid communities that are self sustaining or damn near it and full of skilled and capable people...as easy to deal with as you are playing on.

Not to mention you have to question why "prepping" and "preppers" are so commonplace on the internet and why the culture is spreading; or, to word it another way: why the culture is being allowed to be openly spread. Who benefits? You always have to ask yourself who benefits.

People who sell prepper stuff.

But that said its actually in a governments benifit to have people who are prepared for natural disasters because it means you get fewer people running around like headless chickens making everything fucking worse when a natural disaster happens.

 

[DarthOne]

People who sell prepper stuff.

But that said its actually in a governments benifit to have people who are prepared for natural disasters because it means you get fewer people running around like headless chickens making everything fucking worse when a natural disaster happens.

Which is why a lot of them hate it because it means people won't rely on Big Mommy Government to solve things. And people are less likely to blindly follow obviously stupid (if not malicious) advice from the government during disasters. See also, Maui, Hawaii in 2023.

 

[Cherico]

Which is why a lot of them hate it because it means people won't rely on Big Mommy Government to solve things. And people are less likely to blindly follow obviously stupid (if not malicious) advice from the government during disasters. See also, Maui, Hawaii in 2023.

Those people are idiots, because a government only has so many resources and can only do so much, an crisis moments can break governments.