An increasingly diverse group
Though the movement has long been associated with libertarian-fueled apocalyptic scenarios like a zombie infestation or the collapse of modern society, as highlighted by the 2020 television show “Doomsday Preppers,” Wagoner is among younger, more liberal people who say the Trump administration flubbed its responses during the 2017 hurricane season, particularly in Puerto Rico, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall, prepping appears to reflect the deep uncertainty many Americans feel: A recent USA TODAY/ Suffolk University Poll found that 67% of Americans think the country is facing either bigger problems than usual or is in the most troubled state they’ve ever seen. The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken Oct. 17-20 by landline and cellphone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Experts say younger preppers like Wagoner reflect broad concerns for the nation’s future as we choose our next president. Some are stockpiling weapons and medical supplies in armored bunkers. Others are urging their neighbors to set aside enough food to survive for weeks or months without outside help.
“If you can be prepared, you won’t be a drain on the resources needed to help the people who didn’t prepare,” said Wagoner, who has a 90-day supply of food set aside for her six-person family. Wagoner, who works for a nonprofit, runs a YouTube channel where she offers prepping advice to young people, urban residents and people who have small homes.
“In the face of an apocalypse, I want to come out and calmly help people,” Wagoner said. “I want to be able to create a society that instead of wanting to shoot every stranger, understands our interdependence and creates a better society.”
Many disaster response experts say the ideas espoused by Wagoner is the most reasonable and responsible approach for Americans to take, building off the assumption that neighbors, churches and nonprofits like the Red Cross or Salvation Army will always play a front-line role in helping recover from a disaster, filling in the gaps until the federal government gets organized. 2020. The overwhelming majority of protests were peaceful, although some caused significant property damage in multiple cities and drew threats from Trump that he would send the military to stop them.
“There could easily be a civil war during a BidenTrump election,” he said, referencing the violent 2020 clashes in Portland between armed federal agents dispatched by Trump against Black Lives Matter protesters, some of whom shot fireworks at officers.
Miller’s group deliberately avoids getting into the political debate, although he acknowledges many members have military training. And scattered around the compound are multiple copies of his 2011 novel “Rohan Nation,” a libertarian-focused tale of survivalists written as a call to break the “nation’s addiction to socialist entitlements and return to Constitutional, strictly limited government, focused on security.”
Miller said your politics don’t matter in a cataclysm – only your willingness to work with the small number of survivors in the compound to get through the first, worst months of an emergency so you can launch a business to take advantage of vacant real estate and free-market needs.
“I want middle-class Americans to survive, and we make it affordable to do that,” Miller said. “I think eventually things will recover – and I want to be alive for that.”