Robert Kirsch

So it can be hard to track because on the one hand, there's no like bright line where a certain behavior turns into prepping. Right. But FEMA does give a national household survey, and their 2023 results indicate that about half of Americans indicate that they are engaging in some kind of preparedness for some kind of adverse event.

I think you're right that there's a sort of media spectacle version of a prepper, and that gets informed by a lot of cable reality television.

I think you're right that there's a sort of media spectacle version of a prepper, and that gets informed by a lot of cable reality television.

I think you're right that there's a sort of media spectacle version of a prepper, and that gets informed by a lot of cable reality television.

And I'm not even just talking about the extreme preppers. There's an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians where they go into an Atlas bunker and try to imagine what it would be like to ride out the end of the world.

And I'm not even just talking about the extreme preppers. There's an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians where they go into an Atlas bunker and try to imagine what it would be like to ride out the end of the world.

And I'm not even just talking about the extreme preppers. There's an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians where they go into an Atlas bunker and try to imagine what it would be like to ride out the end of the world.

And so I think that's an interesting starting point. But again, as Emily and I were digging into this, what we eventually concluded was that this behavior can be sort of marginalized and sort of seem to be extreme, but it actually is a kind of behavior that is constitutive of being Americans.

And so I think that's an interesting starting point. But again, as Emily and I were digging into this, what we eventually concluded was that this behavior can be sort of marginalized and sort of seem to be extreme, but it actually is a kind of behavior that is constitutive of being Americans.

And so I think that's an interesting starting point. But again, as Emily and I were digging into this, what we eventually concluded was that this behavior can be sort of marginalized and sort of seem to be extreme, but it actually is a kind of behavior that is constitutive of being Americans.

In other words, we argue that prepping is an American institution and that from the founding, Americans have seen themselves as a prepared citizenry where Americans are invited to see themselves as the self-sufficient frontiers people who are able to tame the elements and dominate the wilderness and sort of bring America into into new spaces.

In other words, we argue that prepping is an American institution and that from the founding, Americans have seen themselves as a prepared citizenry where Americans are invited to see themselves as the self-sufficient frontiers people who are able to tame the elements and dominate the wilderness and sort of bring America into into new spaces.

In other words, we argue that prepping is an American institution and that from the founding, Americans have seen themselves as a prepared citizenry where Americans are invited to see themselves as the self-sufficient frontiers people who are able to tame the elements and dominate the wilderness and sort of bring America into into new spaces.

This kind of behavior is actually pretty close to the heart of the story Americans tell themselves about who they are.

This kind of behavior is actually pretty close to the heart of the story Americans tell themselves about who they are.

This kind of behavior is actually pretty close to the heart of the story Americans tell themselves about who they are.

There's a couple of ways to tackle that. The first is that I think at the sort of like apocalyptic register, I think things like nuclear war, right? Or the sort of like total social collapse. Americans really haven't had to deal with that. And that's an important part for our analysis too, because we argue that one of the reasons maybe what we call a bunkerization fantasy, right?

There's a couple of ways to tackle that. The first is that I think at the sort of like apocalyptic register, I think things like nuclear war, right? Or the sort of like total social collapse. Americans really haven't had to deal with that. And that's an important part for our analysis too, because we argue that one of the reasons maybe what we call a bunkerization fantasy, right?

There's a couple of ways to tackle that. The first is that I think at the sort of like apocalyptic register, I think things like nuclear war, right? Or the sort of like total social collapse. Americans really haven't had to deal with that. And that's an important part for our analysis too, because we argue that one of the reasons maybe what we call a bunkerization fantasy, right?

is potent because Americans have never actually had to go to ground, never actually had to sort of take cover in the way that, say, many Europeans had to during the Second World War. And so that's one part of the story is that it's easy to sort of think about readiness and what to do in the face of total collapse because it's sort of been deferred. And so it becomes a site of fantasy.