America’s Survival Subculture
Reuters reports on yet another uniquely American subculture:
When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
“In an instant, anything can happen,” she told Reuters. “And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared.”
Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as “preppers.” Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.
Preppers, though are, worried about…
Buy A House Atop A Cold War Missile Silo
Via Best Places To Live In NY, a home for sale for $1.76 million in the mountains of upstate New York offers the perfect retreat for the collapse of civilization:
It might be the closest you can come to having a secret lair. A home in the Adirondacks is for sale – that from the outside looks like a traditional mountain retreat. But underneath is a cold war-era missile silo that would make Dr. Evil drool.
The Condo at the End of the World: Life Inside a Nuclear Missile Bunker (Video)
Via The Verge:
Edward Peden purchased a former U.S. military launch site in the 1980s, and has been living in it ever since. Meanwhile, Larry Hall is building million-dollar condominiums inside of an underground missile silo.
Living In A Biodome In The Arizona Desert
Cabinet Magazine looks at one of the strangest experiments in American history, the Biosphere, a Lord of the Flies-style misadventure in utopian scientific overoptimism that spawned a terrible Pauly Shore movie and a fad diet:
At 8:15 am on 26 September 1991, eight “bionauts,” as they called themselves, wearing identical red Star Trek–like jumpsuits (made for them by Marilyn Monroe’s former dressmaker) waved to the assembled crowd and climbed through an airlock door in the Arizona desert. They shut it behind them and opened another that led into a series of hermetically sealed greenhouses in which they would live for the next two years.
The three-acre complex of interconnected glass Mesoamerican pyramids, geodesic domes, and vaulted structures contained a tropical rain forest, a grassland savannah, a mangrove wetland, a farm, and a salt-water ocean with a wave machine and gravelly beach. This was Biosphere 2—the first biosphere being Earth—a $150 million experiment designed…
Apocalypse Survival Goes Mainstream
In the “first” wave of 2012 apocalypse fears a couple of years ago, the media often paired disinformation (as the producers of the film 2012: Science or Superstition) with Dennis McClung, owner of survival supplies company 2012supplies.com. The 2012 hype faded after Roland Emmerich’s mega-disaster movie exited theaters, but with 2012 approaching interest is building again, as evidenced by the New York Times‘ discovery of Dennis and his survivalist swimming pool:
MESA, Ariz. — Swimming pools are one way of surviving Arizona’s sky-high temperatures, which hit triple digits in a recent uncharacteristically early burst of heat. But Dennis McClung’s pool, in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, has been redesigned into a survivalist refuge of an entirely different sort.
Mr. McClung has installed a subterranean garden in his pool along with a fish pond and chicken coop. The chicken droppings feed the tilapia, which swim in water that is pumped up through the blackberry, cherry…
Sales of Doomsday Bunkers Up 1,000%
Blake Ellis reports for CNN:
A devastating earthquake strikes Japan. A massive tsunami kills thousands. Fears of a nuclear meltdown run rampant. Bloodshed and violence escalate in Libya.
And U.S. companies selling doomsday bunkers are seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1,000%…
New York Publishes Official Apocalypse Survival Plan
Do the civil servants who run New York State’s legal and public health bureaucracy know something the rest of us don’t? Just in time for the next popular end times date in 2012, the state has published a doomsday book of sorts. William Glaberson analyzes its contents for the New York Times:
Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.
But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a…
A Free Buffet To Beat Whole Foods
The LA Times profiles Christopher Nyerges, founder of the School of Self-Reliance and an expert on how to survive on food he finds in the urban wild:
Nyerges, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, says that it isn’t uncommon for hard-core survivalists to take his class, as well as people with end-of-the-world-related fears. “There have been individuals who have been seriously upset about things over the years. During Y2K they were petrified; now I get a lot of that with the 2012 baloney,” he says, referring to what some believe is the Mayan calendar’s end date.
“I tell people that society is not going to change, only the individual can change and that’s the source of calm that comes from true self-reliance,” he continues. “I’m convinced I will never go hungry, I’ll never be homeless, I’ll never be broke…
FBI Raids Christian Militia In Michigan, Ohio, Indiana
The Detroit News reports that FBI has arrested at least seven members of an apocalyptic Christian militia group called Hutaree in raids conducted in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. The Hutaree website describes the militia’s mission as “preparing for the end times to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.” Apparently the arrests were for making violent threats against Islamic organizations and for a plot to kill police officers with pipe bombs. The below video, of members running around in the woods with guns, was taken from their Myspace, and oddly enough is set to a song by ’80s goth-metal band Sisters Of Mercy.
Is It Time To Stockpile “Survival Seeds”?
Are seeds the new gold? Advertisements for “survival seeds” are being run during Glenn Beck’s prime time show on Fox News, advising viewers to stockpile nonhybrid seeds rather than gold or silver. When the “politicians and bankers bring the whole thing crashing down,” you’ll be able to grow your own “crisis garden” with nutrient-rich foods to sustain your family…scary times.
Are Crop Mobs The Way To Survive The Apocalypse?
Or maybe just a way for agricultural workers to survive the enduring recession that no amount of stimulus seems to end? In the New York Times:
“Who brought their own wheelbarrow?” Rob Jones asked the group of 20-somethings gathered on a muddy North Carolina farm on a chilly January Sunday. Hands shot up and wheelbarrows were pulled from pickups sporting Led Zeppelin and biodiesel bumper stickers, then parked next to a mountain of soil. “We need to get that dirt into those beds over there in the greenhouse,” he said, nodding toward a plastic-roofed structure a few hundred feet away. “The rest of you can come with me to move trees and clear brush to make room for more pasture. Watch out for poison ivy.”
Bobby Tucker, the 28-year-old co-owner of Okfuskee Farm in rural Silk Hope, looked eagerly at the 50-plus volunteers bundled in all manner of flannel and hand-knits. In…
Americans Stock Up To Be Ready for End of the World
Paul Harris writes in the Guardian:
Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly.
Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs.
“I feel safe and more secure. I have taken personal responsibility for the safety of myself and of my family,” Pennington said. “We have decided to be prepared. There all kinds of disasters that can happen, natural and man-made.”
Pennington is a “prepper”, a growing social movement that has been dubbed Survivalism Lite. Preppers believe that it is better to be safe than sorry and that preparing for disaster — be it a hurricane or the end of civilisation – makes sense.
Unlike the 1990s…
Gerald Celente Forecasts ‘Shattering’ 2010
Modern day soothsayer Celente is interviewed by Russia Today’s Marina Portnaya:
The year 2010 and following decade will be marked by an increase in terrorism, says trends forecaster Gerald Celente, who believes the US and NATO are “fertilizing the foundation” for it.
He also says a strong anti-immigration movement will start in 2010 in “every major country.”
Survivalism Lite: Rise Of The Preppers
They call themselves ‘preppers.’ They are regular people with homes and families. But like the survivalists that came before them, they’re preparing for the worst. Jessica Bennett reports for Newsweek:
Lisa Bedford is what you’d imagine of a stereotypical soccer mom. She drives a white Tahoe SUV. An American flag flies outside her suburban Phoenix home. She sells Pampered Chef kitchen tools and likes to bake. Bedford and her husband have two young children, four dogs, and go to church on Sunday.
But about a year ago, Bedford’s homemaking skills went into overdrive. She began stockpiling canned food, and converted a spare bedroom into a giant storage facility. The trunk of each of her family’s cars got its own 72-hour emergency kit—giant Tupperware containers full of iodine, beef jerky, emergency blankets, and even a blood-clotting agent designed for the battle-wounded…
