Why Do People Prep? An Academic View

      A recent article at All Outdoors asks "Why Aren’t More People Preppers?" The author laments, "Despite knowledge and experience with multiple types of disasters over the years, the average citizen is still not ready for any type of catastrophic event. That is surely a sad state of affairs." He takes a look at an MSN poll and observes that "[b]asically 91% [of respondents] were not really prepared for any type of disaster event."

      Unfortunately, that number may get worse. An Insider magazine article reports that "Doomsday preppers are thinning out across the US, and it may be because President Trump quiets their fears." The article notes several "experts" on the prepper movement that say that the industry has been in a downturn since President Trump took office, suggesting that "[i]t's an indication of how Trump relieves many of the worst fears of his voters, including conservative preppers."  Or maybe its because many voters believe Trump will be more competent in responding to a crises than Obama, who infamously dined on wagyu beef while Americans in the mid-West where without food, water and electricity following a massive ice storm, ignored severe flooding in Tennessee, and vacationed rather than responding to flooding in Louisiana. 

      The focus on preppers and their reaction to Trump is mostly due to a paper published in the Journal of American Studies by Michael F. Mills entitled "Obamageddon: Fear, the Far Right, and the Rise of “Doomsday” Prepping in Obama's America." Unfortunately, the paper itself is behind a paywall.The abstract, however, reads in part:

This article examines the politics of American “doomsday” prepping during Barack Obama's presidency. It challenges claims that growing interest in prepping post-2008 arose exclusively from extreme apocalyptic, white supremacist, and anti-government reactions to Obama's electoral successes – claims that suggest prepping to be politically congruent with previous waves of extreme right-wing American “survivalism.” Drawing on ethnography, this paper argues that, while fears of Obama have been central to many preppers’ activities, much of their prepping under his presidency centred on fears that sit outside survivalist politics.

(Underline added). While I don't have access to Mills' paper, there are articles discussing his research and which have interviewed (or, at least, quoted) him, plus a news release from the University of Kent where Mills works. From the latter:

       Prepping, which involves stockpiling supplies including food, water, medicine and weapons, has been on the rise in the United States over the last decade. Many commentators and the mainstream media claim the rapid rise in the phenomenon after the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was driven by an extreme political reaction to his presidency.

       Research carried out by Dr Mills, Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, included interviews with preppers based in 18 states to examine their motivations for hoarding items. It found that, though fear of President Obama and his political agenda played a role, those who engaged in the activity were motivated more by the general culture of fear that informs modern mainstream American society. Further, the research argues that a regular flow of recommendations from the US government on how to prepare for potential disasters, including, for example, advice to stockpile water, have, to an extent, helped fuel the growth of ‘prepping’.

      Dr Mills’ research presents a more nuanced view of prepping, which has traditionally been portrayed as an apocalyptic belief in imminent disaster or the end of the world. Rather, modern preppers are responding to a general sense of fear and concern about risks including economic collapse, cyber-attacks, terrorism, pandemics and environmental disasters, causing them to seek self-sufficiency ‘just in case’ the worst should happen. Much of this fear is not derived from extreme ideologies, but nevertheless remains connected to established right-wing politics in America, which views Obama and other Democratic Party leaders exclusively through fear.

    It is not clear if the author of the Insider article is quoting from Mills' paper or actually spoke to him, but it adds:

      There is a spectrum to prepping that can range from stocking a little extra toilet paper and bottled water to elaborate multi-million dollar bunkers. One couple in their 70s who Mills met in Texas had several well-stocked gun safes in their garage with loads of hefty artillery stocked inside.

       "One of them contained this rifle that apparently could take out a car, you know, destroy its engine with one shot," Mills said. "The guy was lifting it out of the safe, but it was so, so heavy that he was visibly trembling."

       That man and his wife are the only preppers that Mills has ever met who were building a bunker (theirs was being fashioned out of old buried shipping containers, though they never finished it).

       "The people that I've interviewed include a fire chief, paramedics, firemen .... former doctors, people in retirement, business owners, people who worked for government," Mills said. "Everyday Americans — but they think about disaster in certain ways that a lot of people wouldn't."

In "Study Finds Rise In ‘Doomsday Prepping’ Due To Mainstream American ‘Culture Of Fear’", the author similarly relates:

       Researchers note that while extreme right-wing ideologies don’t seem to be the main cause of these fears and preparations, the general idea among many conservatives that if a Democrat regains control of the White House it will inevitably lead to chaos remains very much connected to the phenomenon of doomsday preppers. At the end of the day, though, that is just another possible event for conservative preppers to fear, and not the main cause.

      “Fear is now deeply entrenched in modern American culture and is the principal reason that so many citizens are engaging in ‘prepping’,” explains lead author Dr. Michael Mills in a release.

       According to Mills, these preppers believe that if the worse were to happen, the government’s response simply wouldn’t be adequate and many people would be left to fend for themselves.

      “Rather than seeing prepping as an exception within America’s right-wing political culture, we ought to see it as being reflective of increasingly established and popular outlooks,” Mills comments.

    This is actually quite similar to European preppers interviewed by Irish researchers. The three Irish researchers--Gary Sinclair, Norah Campbell, and Sarah Browne--found that while fear played a role in a prepper's decision to take up prepping, it was generally the result of personal experience. From "We spoke to survivalists prepping for disaster: here’s what we learned about the end of the world" in the Conversation magazine:

      Media accounts tend to focus on the peculiarities of prepping through extreme examples: reports of the Silicon Valley elite buying up bolt holes in remote New Zealand or the tin-foil hat wearing, forest-inhabiting eccentric. But prepping is not a marginal subculture, but a precautionary response people have to permanent crisis, as our research reveals. By analysing and engaging with online forums and speaking at length with a series of self-identified preppers, it became clear that most preppers aren’t so out of the ordinary.

       Listening to preppers, you can begin to understand their reasoning. They often talk about their prepper lives as originating from some trigger or turning point – such as an insider seeing financial collapse firsthand and the house of cards it reveals, or the difficulties that come with illness or unemployment. After these realisations, our interviewees explained that they transition from being a woefully under-prepared to a prepared individual.

Later, the authors write:

Preppers consider people who don’t prepare – the rest of society – as shockingly ignorant of the world around them. It is “we” who are abnormal. The dependent civilian is variously viewed as oblivious, dilettantish, complacent and trusting, while the prepper is watchful. Preparation is seen as a type of foresight that is missing in ordinary consumers.

        One of the interesting points of this article, however, is that European preppers want to be distinguished from their American counterparts.

       Our research concentrated on European preppers, who are somewhat differentiated from the American stereotype. We found that the European prepper views the culture of their American counterparts as political, religious, weaponised and misogynistic. They feel that the media attention this receives delegitimises the emphasis on rationality and practicality that is embedded into their practices.

       Instead, common sense is the most valued currency in European prepper culture. They are profoundly distrustful of the ability of institutions to face crises. And in comparison to some popular accounts, we found that preppers are often more concerned with mundane failures of the system (electricity cuts or pension losses) than the more spectacular apocalyptic aesthetics associated with prepping culture (such as environmental collapse or nuclear fallout).

      They know they are ridiculed and stigmatised – a consequence of the American stereotype. ...

    There is something that appears to be unique to American preppers, but it is not the stereotype held by Europeans. Rather, it is a frontiersman attitude. Back to the Insider article:

       Mills says prepping is an American-born tradition. The preparedness phenomenon aligns with the US history of prizing ideals of individualism and self-reliance. Preppers often talk about "homesteading" and learning "forgotten ways" of living off the land.

The author of the article adds:

       "You go down the tributary of gardening, of livestock, of woodworking, of wild and herbal medicinals, and you reconnect with everything that we've forgotten just in 60, 70 years," prepper and "I am Liberty" podcast host James Walton told Business Insider. "This is my life. The gardens, the chickens, the self-reliant lifestyle, the hiking, the fishing, the hunting. You know, I even blacksmith now just because it's fun."

A Guardian article from 2017 notes a similar attitude among American preppers. Most of that article concerns the authors impressions of the Ohio Prepper and Survivalist Summit for that year and the specific courses he attended. But although the author seems to think all of it a bit odd, he writes:

      I like the preppers, I have to admit. They’re the MacGyvers of their own lives. But there is a sense that everyone is making it up as they go along. There hasn’t actually been a civilization-ending event, so it has to be imagined. All the classes are exercises in participatory storytelling; the audience knows the basic story but what the bug-out bag and the plans and the gardening advice provide is realism, the telling details that make the story credible.

       When the preppers do bring up a scenario, it’s a nuclear EMP or a solar flare. It’s something that knocks out technology rather than, say, permanent winter. I guess sprouting isn’t worth much as a skill if there’s no sunlight for 20 years. Bug-out bags and survival caches aren’t worth much if the climate makes the entire surface of the Earth uninhabitable. But that’s human nature: we’re all preparing for the catastrophes we want rather than the ones we’re going to get.

       Their version of the collapse is highly specific. It is a world without technology in which roving bands attempt to raid your hard-won supplies, and self-sufficiency and self-defense determine survival. It’s all suspiciously similar to what the American frontier looked like – or, rather, what the American frontier looks like in the movies. The students are often enjoined to “think like the pioneers”. The preppers and survivalists aren’t really imagining the end of America. They’re imagining it beginning again.

(Underline added).