In the current era, I feel like my understanding of the connotations of "Survivalist" are more positive than "Prepper". A survivalist is often shown as someone like Bear Grills, being more about wilderness survival, shelter building, hunting, finding water, starting fires etc. Maybe the meaning of the term has shifted?
I have also seen a resurgence on queer/left social media mocking the individualist preppers as gun nuts just happy to shoot "looters" as a dogwhistle for minorities, playing up their lack of preparedness to actually be a subsistence farmer. I saw a post today advocating for people to start growing potatoes in backyards to mitigate against tarrif based food price increases.
I feel there is an overlap in zombie based media with the prepper mindset, where having lots of guns and getting to shoot "zombies" is seen as almost desirable. In the 2000's there were a bunch of people who were preparing for zombies because it was fun, and prepared you for anything else also.
I believe your definition of prepper is too narrow. It may suffice for your purposes but to me prepper casts a very wide net and is not limited to those whose world view is apocalyptic.
I feel like this op-ed I wrote aligns with the long-term strategy of how peppers should raise their children. I hope sharing it here is acceptable to you and your subscribers:
I wonder if prepping/survivalism could be partly a reaction to the lack of civil defence in the western block. If the government fails to give you a fallout shelter, you have to make one yourself. For comparison, my country used to have an extensive civil defence program throughout the cold war, and prepping on the other hand was almost unheard of before 2020.
Also, I noticed you wrote "Which is to say, these were not "bunkers” in the Prepper sense. They are not meant to be occupied for long periods of time, they are not meant to be self-sufficient."
I doubt preppers mean to do those things either. A "prepper bunker", as far as such a concept is meaningful, is generally just a fallout shelter. Long-term bunker living is a thing only in fiction.
Great start to the series. I wanted to point you to another potential source:
GURPS Y2K is a tabletop roleplaying game book for playing games in or after an apocalypse. It has an entire chapter devoted to Survivalists, detailing things like examples of the movement, how they operate, and so on. It’s especially interesting because this chapter is written by Steve Jackson, founder of the company that published the game, who has a lot of personal sympathy with Survivalists (though I’m not sure he claimed to be one). The book was originally published in 1999 but is available now in electronic form from Steve Jackson Games.
In the current era, I feel like my understanding of the connotations of "Survivalist" are more positive than "Prepper". A survivalist is often shown as someone like Bear Grills, being more about wilderness survival, shelter building, hunting, finding water, starting fires etc. Maybe the meaning of the term has shifted?
I have also seen a resurgence on queer/left social media mocking the individualist preppers as gun nuts just happy to shoot "looters" as a dogwhistle for minorities, playing up their lack of preparedness to actually be a subsistence farmer. I saw a post today advocating for people to start growing potatoes in backyards to mitigate against tarrif based food price increases.
I feel there is an overlap in zombie based media with the prepper mindset, where having lots of guns and getting to shoot "zombies" is seen as almost desirable. In the 2000's there were a bunch of people who were preparing for zombies because it was fun, and prepared you for anything else also.
I believe your definition of prepper is too narrow. It may suffice for your purposes but to me prepper casts a very wide net and is not limited to those whose world view is apocalyptic.
I feel like this op-ed I wrote aligns with the long-term strategy of how peppers should raise their children. I hope sharing it here is acceptable to you and your subscribers:
https://thequillandmusket.substack.com/p/the-immutable-laws-of-parentingfrom?r=4xypjp
I wonder if prepping/survivalism could be partly a reaction to the lack of civil defence in the western block. If the government fails to give you a fallout shelter, you have to make one yourself. For comparison, my country used to have an extensive civil defence program throughout the cold war, and prepping on the other hand was almost unheard of before 2020.
Also, I noticed you wrote "Which is to say, these were not "bunkers” in the Prepper sense. They are not meant to be occupied for long periods of time, they are not meant to be self-sufficient."
I doubt preppers mean to do those things either. A "prepper bunker", as far as such a concept is meaningful, is generally just a fallout shelter. Long-term bunker living is a thing only in fiction.
Great start to the series. I wanted to point you to another potential source:
GURPS Y2K is a tabletop roleplaying game book for playing games in or after an apocalypse. It has an entire chapter devoted to Survivalists, detailing things like examples of the movement, how they operate, and so on. It’s especially interesting because this chapter is written by Steve Jackson, founder of the company that published the game, who has a lot of personal sympathy with Survivalists (though I’m not sure he claimed to be one). The book was originally published in 1999 but is available now in electronic form from Steve Jackson Games.