What makes people prepare excessively for an emergency?
This is of course a little different for every prepper, but a number of factors can be reconstructed as to why people start doing this: On the one hand, it can be self-made experiences of deficiency, for example when people have experienced a long-lasting power outage or were snowed in on the motorway. Experiences in which people have experienced uncertainty and fear and wonder whether something like this could happen again.
What other factors also play a role?
Prepping is encouraged by value orientations that are acquired in the family, for example the emphasis on manual skills, striving for autonomy or the practice of stockpiling. Experiences of deprivation passed down transgenerationally, such as stories about the winter of hunger after the Second World War, can also play an important role.
In parts of the scene there is also a strong mistrust of other people, government institutions, technology and politics. For some, this distrust is mixed with the feeling of living in uncertain times, as well as with culturally pessimistic contemporary diagnoses of moral decline and decadence. The preppers want to arm themselves against identified vulnerabilities by becoming self-sufficient experts themselves. Prepping can therefore also be seen as a type of proactive coping that is intended to counteract feelings of insecurity, powerlessness and vulnerability.
They were able to identify two main types of preppers. How did these differ?
These two types are ideal types and in reality mixed types often occur, but in simple terms a distinction can be made between “adaptive preppers” and “conservative preppers”. The adaptive ones rely primarily on learning skills and survival techniques. They strive for mobility and flexibility and therefore pursue a so-called “bug-out strategy”, in which they leave urban areas and move to remote areas in the event of a crisis.
Their goal is to adapt to local conditions and survive as hunters and gatherers. Conservative types, on the other hand, aim to maintain their usual standard of living in the event of a crisis. They remain stationary and pursue a “bug-in strategy”. The house or apartment is upgraded accordingly and the aim is to create a self-sufficient subsistence economy. Their precautionary practices are based on a complex technical infrastructure such as bunkers and extensive stockpiling.
The prototypical prepper often appears in media portrayals as a mostly male sociophobic outsider, often with a conspiracy mentality. Does this picture match your experiences?
The reality is of course much more diverse than the cliché. During my research, I encountered approachable and humorous people as well as serious and suspicious people. I spoke with preppers who have a manifest conspiracy ideology worldview, with those who practice putting on NBC protective equipment with their children, and with concerned fathers who are enthusiastic about technology and weapons. However, everyone tried very hard to combat the negative image and to legitimize their practice using arguments and make it plausible.
Dr. Mischa Luy is a social scientist and works in the area of combating anti-Semitism. The main research areas are practices of prepping and survivalism, disaster sociology, conspiracy thinking, anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism as well as qualitative methods and cultural psychology
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