‘People were buying crossbows faster than I’d like’ – how prepping went mainstream in Britain

‘When Russia invaded Ukraine we sold out of gas masks, nuclear protection stuff, potassium tablets. We did a month’s trade in a day and a half.’ Photograph: Simon Belcher/Alamy

This is a great time to be a shopkeeper, if that shop is for those worried about the breakdown of civilisation. “It started with Covid, and people weren’t looking for toilet rolls, put it that way,” says Justin Jones, who runs the online UK Prepping Shop, whose stock ranges from emergency food and wind-up radios to crossbows and body armour.

Business is booming, as is the British prepping scene – 22,700 members of the UK Preppers and Survivalists Facebook group, 6,000 in the UK Preppers Club Facebook group. The scene is not as well-known as its US and Canadian equivalents, but that’s partly by choice. “Preppers are by nature a little bit secretive,” says Bushra Shehzad, who is researching prepping for a PhD in marketing and consumer behaviour at Newcastle University. “They are sceptical of people who aren’t part of it asking questions, which I think is because they’re portrayed in a manner that many of them don’t agree with.”