How to survive the end of the future: Preppers, pathology, and the everyday crisis of insecurity

Abstract

Emergency preparedness is a distinctive feature of contemporary anticipatory politics, yet “preppers,” a sub‐culture who prepare to survive a range of possible crisis events through practices including stockpiling and survival skill development, are subject to media ridicule and academic dismissal. If the hoarder is the symbolic deviant figure of the consumer society, the prepper is that of the security society. Such constructions of prepper pathology, however, work to reinforce the neoliberal security state. By repositioning the prepper as an amplifier of conditions of the present, what emerges is an emblematic and anticipatory figure who troubles the cracks in the security state's governing logics, exposing its social differentiation and rehearsing the inevitability of its future failures. Drawing on qualitative research on UK prepping cultures, I define prepping across three constellations of imaginative‐material practices, concerning “value,” “temporalities,” and “crisis.” I argue that prepping exposes the contradictions of infrastructural weakening alongside the networked dependencies and restricted agency felt within late modernity, challenges the expert determination of what constitutes crisis, and unveils the myth of the universality of state security protection. Living with profound crisis attunement, preppers nevertheless recuperate pleasure in material potentiality and skilful practice, in thoughtful engagement with temporalities, and in the vitality of community and meaning formed in the times and spaces in, and around, crisis.

Access Over Ownership: Case Studies of Libraries of Things

“…There is growing anxiety about potential shortages or disruption due to war, pandemic, climate change or hacking. This is evidenced by the increase in the prepper movement and those preparing for the end of the world as we know it [67]. Developing a community-level provision of goods helps to assuage such anxiety by providing a degree of resilience and community cohesion.…”

Awakening from the sleep-walking society: Crisis, detachment and the real in prepper awakening narratives

“…There has been an upswell of academic research and media interest in prepping in recent years, with increasingly nuanced and context-sensitive accounts repositioning prepping not as a maverick, fringe activity, but as a social identity expressed across socio-economic and political spectrums. Prepping takes on different inflections from the mainstream political right (Mills, 2021) to left, from high net worth individuals to ‘ordinary’ preppers (Bounds, 2020; Kerrane et al., 2021), from majority white suburban and rural prepping groups to black urban communities (Bounds, 2020); and across national contexts and differing crisis complexes (Barker, 2020; Kerrane et al., 2021). The personal awakening stories narrated in this paper correspond to this reframing.…”

“…The personal awakening stories narrated in this paper correspond to this reframing. They are taken from an ongoing research project exploring prepping in everyday life in the UK (Barker, 2020). This has included 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews with UK preppers online and in their homes; observant participation and further ‘campfire interviews’ at over a dozen prepping-related meets and survival training weekends; social media analysis of five online prepping groups in 2018–2022 and 15 prepper-related YouTube video channels, blogs, individually-hosted Facebook pages and Instagram accounts.…”

“…'Prepper' is a contested term for someone who uses scenario-thinking to focus and justify their often hidden preparations to survive crisis. Material practices invested with this crisis-imagination may include gathering, preserving and managing stores of food, medicine and equipment to 'bug in' at home, packing a range of mobile carries to 'bug out', or developing survival and self-sufficiency skills to adapt to a post-collapse environment (Barker, 2020;Bounds, 2020;Campbell et al, 2019;Kabel and Chmidling, 2014;Kerrane et al, 2021;Mills, 2021). Preppers may operate individually or form mutual assistance groups, learning and sharing in social media groups and connecting in person at regular camps.…”

“…But what form does this 'hope' take, and how will 'the worst' be distributed? Preppers are often asked why they would want to survive into the catastrophic worlds they imagine; and are misconceived as waiting and wanting for catastrophe to happen (Barker, 2020). But if left with no choice, in a position of distributed culpability but perceived powerlessness in the face of implacable crisis futures, preppers choose to imagine they will survive, or even thrive.…”