When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."
Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.
They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.
Preppers, though are, worried about no government.
Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.
"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.
A wide range of vendors market products to preppers, mainly online. They sell everything from water tanks to guns to survival skills.
Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck seems to preach preppers' message when he tells listeners: "It's never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it."
"Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year," said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement.
A former Army intelligence officer, Rawles has written fiction and non-fiction books on end-of-civilization topics, including "How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It," which is also known as the preppers' Bible.
"We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots," he told Reuters. "The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures."
A sense of "suffering and being afraid" is usually at the root of this kind of thinking, according to Cathy Gutierrez, an expert on end-times beliefs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Such feelings are not unnatural in a time of economic recession and concerns about a growing national debt, she said.
"With our current dependence on things from the electric grid to the Internet, things that people have absolutely no control over, there is a feeling that a collapse scenario can easily emerge, with a belief that the end is coming, and it is all out of the individual's control," she told Reuters.
She compared the major technological developments of the past decade to the Industrial Revolution of the 1830s and 1840s, which led to the growth of the Millerites, the 19th-Century equivalent of the preppers. Followers of charismatic preacher Joseph Miller, many sold everything and gathered in 1844 for what they believed would be the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Many of today's preppers receive inspiration from the Internet, devouring information posted on websites like that run by attorney Michael T. Snider, who writes The Economic Collapse blog out of his home in northern Idaho.
"Modern preppers are much different from the survivalists of the old days," he said. "You could be living next door to a prepper and never even know it. Many suburbanites are turning spare rooms into food pantries and are going for survival training on the weekends."
Like other preppers, Snider is worried about the end of a functioning U.S. economy. He points out that tens of millions of Americans are on food stamps and that many U.S. children are living in poverty.
"Most people have a gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, but that doesn't mean that they understand what is happening," he said. "A lot of Americans sense that a massive economic storm is coming and they want to be prepared for it."
So, assuming there is no collapse of society -- which the preppers call "uncivilization" -- what is the future of the preppers?
Gutierrez said that unlike the Millerites -- or followers of radio preacher Harold Camping, who predicted the world would end last year -- preppers are not setting a date for the coming destruction. The Mayan Calendar predicts doom this December.
"The minute you set a date, you are courting disconfirmation," she said.
Tegeler, who recalls being hit by tornadoes and floods in her southwestern Virginia home, said that none of her "survival center" products will go to waste.
"I think it's silly not to be prepared," she said. "After all, anything can happen."
Reader Comments
If it comes to that (and it might), everyone who has stockpiled something or other is going to get robbed by the criminal gangs that will rise out of the chaos. Who ever has the most lethal weapons will win. My bet is on military deserters who steal some real hefty firepower when they flee.
Stockpiling food in an urban setting doesn't make sense to me. I keep a few weeks worth. After that it's time to go, depending on what happens. All i need is a good water filter. But! That would probably make me a target too.
I really don't think these people understand how bad it will get when the rug gets pulled out from beneath us. They'll have food for few days. They won't wake up till the RPG comes crashing through the front door...
what's most important isn't stockpiling your home with goods for your survival. Maybe what's most important is living your life while you still have it, because after all, a cataclysm that could come at any time is NO DIFFERENT than your regular life where you could die at any moment from anything--car crash, heart attack, random objects falling out of the sky--anything at ANY TIME. That's reality--you have no idea when you're going to die; maybe instead of trying to survive, what's most important is figuring out how to live.
As well, every american who is aware to some degree of the impending turmoil always speaks of the looters and how preparing won't do anyone any good. Instead of preparing to shoot looters, maybe it would be better to prepare to give to others and share with those in need. Maybe, instead of seeing all the supplies you have as things to ensure your survival that have to be defended (by deadly force, it always sounds), it'd be better to see them as things you have to offer to others in need in the time of upcoming crisis. Maybe the world would be a better place if, instead of being shot when you knock on someone's door post-collapse (maybe while just trying to travel to loved one's or asking someone for water), they offered you some water, food, or shelter if you needed it. Maybe you could be the one doing that offering, to those in need.
Maybe "surviving" isn't really all that important; maybe living is.
Just a thought...
The collapse of the Russian state gives some clues. And as the C's suggest, communities that help themselves and others may be the best suited for survival in the long term.
Thinking about society crashing is scary stuff, but letting fear drive us towards more violence isn't a good answer.
The smart bet is on getting as far away from a city as possible. Pick a disaster, any disater: a city has been through it, and has become history.
Stock piling is handy, only if its in the right spot.
Smarter planning would be learning to survive with nothing. Its much easier to carry.
But! (OK- go ahead. Throw the rotten veggies my way....) Given the level of consciousness displayed by way too many people around here (that would be America) I don't see that happening. I still hope you're right and I'm wrong though. Wishful thinking hasn't gotten me very far in life though...
Though, it's true, looking at the world (especially america), it's hard to see this happening on a large scale (and perhaps it's too late for it to happen on a large scale, I don't know)--but, really, what other option is there? Get a gun and shoot people? Could you really shoot someone who was starving, or thirsty, or needed shelter because it could jeopardize your survival? (The question is not an attack or assumption that you have such plans, by the way, but truly a question for everyone who's considering "surviving")
Guns could be used for hunting, which could feed many in a difficult time (don't eat lead, though) if people got together and started supporting each other.
Anyone reading this site in depth, for long enough, with a clear enough vision can see that we're facing some difficult times ahead. If everyone only works for themselves and looks out for themselves, the situation will rapidly devolve into global chaos and, while chaos to some degree seems basically assured (and, in a way, is the cost for the delusion we've both tolerated and enabled, externally and internally), there are "better" ways to handling chaos and there are "worse" ways. And, in considering what we're facing in the rapidly approaching future, how likely is survival, anyway?
As I mentioned, if one really meditates on the reality of death--that it can happen at any moment for any reason--then LIFE begins to emerge. Survival is not the meaning of life, because (excepting those who achieve the alchemical/esoteric Work) death is assured and no matter what, death of illusions about oneself and one's ego/false personality is assured either way.
The future is open and will be the result of the choices we make now and in the future.
I don't hope for people to see this upcoming calamity as an opportunity to serve others, act accordingly, and sacrifice where asked (including non-verbal requests) and, at this point, I generally expect to see large quantities of devolution. This is my plan of action: help where I am able to until I die or transcend death. What's yours?
...if you can afford it. I began prepping a bug out kit a few years ago, and damn it gets expensive fast doesn't it? Even with what I have spent and put together thus far it wouldn't last long regardless of whether I had to make a run for the mountains or stayed put.
I think survival is as much about attitude and mental toughness as it is about stocks of food and supplies, I mean imagine trying to live in a world where something so drastic occurred that it changed the very fundamental rules of how the world as we have come to know it works. The culture shock alone could kill you and getting past normalcy bias, developing that survival mode frame of mind would I think be a monumental challenge for many people, I know it would be for me. I can only hope that if/when the time comes I can make that mental adjustment, cause if not all the superfood and survival gear in the world isn't going to help.
Ms. Guittierez, may your Starbucks always be open and your grocery shelves always stocked full because Sweety, you are going to get one shitload of a surprise as to how quickly things can deteriorate in society should an interruption in the supply chain ever come to your little neck of the woods.
We need more preppers and less belly button gazing academic pseudo-intellectuals who think that food grows on grocery shelves and water will continually flow to the tap even after the electricity goes off.