Why the doomsday prepping business is booming – Marketplace

Ahead of the election, prepper meal kits have become a hit with both sides of the aisle. Emergency food supply kits, like the one seen in a now-viral video, are selling at most major retailers like Costco, Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon. In the past month alone, Amazon sold upwards of 3,000 of a kit deemed an Amazon Best Seller.

“The past few weeks and months, it’s been like a tsunami,” said Aton Edwards, the founder of an emergency preparedness organization called International Preparedness Network, which he started in 1989. 

Around one-third of American adults are now spending money on prepping, according to a 2023 Finder.com survey. Laura Adams, a senior analyst at Finder, looked into how households are including catastrophe in their financial planning. 

“Whether it’s thinking about a natural disaster all the way up to something global, a war, a civil war, people are trying to prepare for whatever they feel might be some doomsday scenario,” Adams said.

The survey found that, collectively, preppers spent around $11 billion within a 12-month period. According to the survey, preppers tend to live in the Western part of the U.S. and spent the most money on basics like food, water and toilet paper.

“I do think that people have a lot of uncertainty — about the economy, about the future political election — and I think for a lot of people prepping makes them feel more calm,” Adams said. “It can really be an anti-anxiety type of activity.”

Traditionally preppers have tended to be on the right side of the aisle and voice concerns about catastrophes like nuclear warfare or World War III, a sentiment echoed recently by former President Donald Trump. Others believe a civil war is on the horizon or that there’s an “existential threat” to American life as we know it.

But another segment of the market, like Brekke Wagoner, who started the YouTube channel, “Sustainable Prepping,” in 2020, are preparing for natural disasters.

Wagoner became a prepper right after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. She was living in California at the time and was worried her state might experience a disastrous-type earthquake. She believed the former president would be the type to withhold funding and supplies out of spite. That’s when Wagoner began accumulating basic survival supplies.

In 2020, during the pandemic, friends started coming to her for advice, knowing she had already been prepping for years before. This was the genesis of her YouTube Channel. She calls herself a “liberal prepper” and seeks to broadcast a different voice in the online prepper world, challenging the conservative stereotypes.  

“The top videos are all people in their basements with guns, and beans and a bunker,” she said. 

Wagoner’s prepping strategy aims to deepen her already-stocked pantry. She sticks with supermarket staples: granola bars and dried fruit. Her go-bag is packed lightly with a change of clothes, some toiletries, flashlights and a water filter. She swaps things in and out every six months or so. 

“My prepping is very home-based because the likelihood of us being displaced — while it is not impossible, most scenarios are going to be shelter-in-place where you stay at home,” she said. 

Wagoner has seen her YouTube channel grow steadily since it began, though it’s still smaller than others. Views and comments tend to increase whenever there is an external event, she said, be it bad weather or rising political tensions.

“When people are reminded that our security isn’t as robust as we think it is,” she said, “that creates a surge.” 

That’s also the case for Eric Christianson, CEO of survival food company Nutrient Survival. His company has benefited from the recent increase in preppers and said that it has experienced “massive growth” since it started in July of 2020. 

When Christianson tracks spikes in sales, they happen most often alongside big news events, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the assassination attempts on Donald Trump.

“I mean, those headlines, they definitely get people thinking about it a little bit more,” he said. 

And one way some people have been finding solace in uncertain times is through retail therapy. As Adams explains, “if buying some extra goods makes you feel a little bit safer, for a lot of people, that’s going to be a smart way to spend their money.”