Prepping – I’m coming round to it. I’ve had Prepare, the old government website that Oliver Dowden launched this spring, open on my laptop in a quivering tab for a while now, and this week I’ve been dipping in every now and then to remind myself of “how to prepare for an emergency”. How many bottles of water we may need, tweezers, a sage reminder about the fact of tinned meat.
I’ve dabbled in prepping before, without really realising what I was doing. A fear in the early 2000s that Rimmel might stop making my favourite eyeliner led to me dashing to Boots to buy five. Which is fairly normal, I think? On the spectrum of normal? Sensible probably, when so many, as you’ll know, have brushes too fine or ink that disappears in rain. In the grip of lockdown, as supermarket deliveries were increasingly scarce, when I was blessed with a Tesco slot I would focus not on toilet paper or flour, but on treats. I’d stockpile the good biscuits, and, in my naivety, Biscoff spread. I remember there were very large gift bars of Galaxy chocolate on offer for a while, bars the size of a small dinghy which I would buy in bulk, nibbling away at the corners like a parasite. That was when we started decanting our pulses. Still, beside the microwave sits a proud wall of oversized Tupperware, carefully labelled in my six-year-old daughter’s handwriting: “spageti”, “green lenttles”, “ryce”. It felt good. I felt prepared, but for what, was unclear.
The Doomsday Clock is now set at 90 seconds to midnight. Its operators, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who monitor the combined risks of nuclear annihilation, climate disaster, biological threat and “disruptive technologies”, say we have never been closer to global catastrophic destruction. So it should come as no surprise that the value of the preppers industry is growing – by 2030 it’s due to reach $2.46bn. It’s a lifestyle now, the purchases providing identity as much as security. Last week, a New Yorker piece on “The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War” reported that 20 million Americans are actively preparing for “cataclysm”. That’s almost double the figure from 2017, a rise largely due (according to Reuters) to growing interest from left-leaning families, nervous about AI taking over, or natural disasters. Preppers are not one thing – among those 20 million are homesteaders learning how to crochet, and billionaires building hideouts to escape those who may eat them.
In rural Colorado, at an outpost of Fortitude Ranch (a network of survivalist retreats), residents said they foresee society breaking down, either due to a nuclear detonation, another pandemic, or civil war. They’ve furnished the rooms accordingly, with “bare mattresses, stacked furniture, a PlayStation, sacks of rice, pallets of canned tuna, boxes of Pop-Tarts, Costco emergency food buckets, packs of D batteries, pairs of snake boots [designed to offer protection against venomous snake bites], reams of toilet paper, some Dan Brown novels, and containers of coffee.” I read the list as if it were a World of Interiors caption – the last room you’ll ever see has, inevitably, its own internal beauty.
But these Costco buckets. They’re slightly haunting me. I love Costco at the best of times, so at the worst of times I’m obsessed. When I read how they were selling out of these $80 buckets of apocalypse pasta (opinion: food never tastes better than out of a bucket – also, stackable) and 149 other dinners, each with a 25-year shelf life, I dug in deeper.
Even the catalogue is seductive, a Valentine’s card for the end of the world. “This meticulously curated package goes beyond just food – it’s about readiness in the face of uncertainty.” And more, “In a world where unpredictability has become a constant… Our selection of freeze-dried and dehydrated foods [are] a tangible expression of your dedication to ensuring you and your loved ones are cared for, no matter what lies ahead.” And all you have to do is add water. In the UK, the number of online prepper shops has multiplied dramatically over the last year – we’re catching up. In September alone, Amazon UK sold more than 3,000 of their top emergency food kits, that’s “4 buckets of breakfast, entrees, veggies, and fruits”, and it occurs to me that the value of these buckets might lie less in the calories contained but in their bartering opportunities. How many breakfasts for a sleeve of aspirin? How many entrees for a blade? Apart from the death, isn’t it all lightly thrilling?
I get it, is what I’m saying. While hoarding is seen as pathological, prepping instead is understood as a kind of activism. The impulse to prep belongs, I think, in the wellness sphere – stockpiling tins of spam is not so far removed from applying moisturisers or breathing deeply. They both provide a sense of control amid the chaos. Because, an emergency food kit is not just a supply of meals for when the power goes out. It’s also a bucket of dread, each catastrophe neatly stacked, and packaged in a way that helps us appreciate the distinction maybe, between what we really want and what we really need.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman
