Cover Story: Preppers Ready Themselves for When the Shit Hits the Fan
Preparing for Doomsday is as venerably American as cherry pie. Mormonism, America's most successful homegrown religion, even has hoarding food as one of its tenets.
Some prep for a biblical Armageddon, while others do so for secular reasons. Maybe they just want to get out of the rat race and off the grid, Henry Thoreau-style. Many others do so because they either hate or fear the government, especially the current one headed by Barack Hussein Obama. Still others believe that the economy is teetering on the brink of a meltdown that will make the Great Depression look like a minor downturn.
One way or another, the preppers believe, the shit will hit the fan, and when it does, they hope to be the ants who survive. On the other hand, we will be the grasshoppers who will perish.
And so they are hoarding rice and canning produce, raising rabbits and goats, stocking up on guns and ammo, and fashioning their own hand-built shipping container houses as never before.
In this week's feature, "When the Sh*t Hits the Fan," Brittanie Shey and John Nova Lomax examine prepping's full spectrum, from left-leaning environmentalists in the West Texas desert to nostalgic haters of President Obama in the Nashville suburbs. They explore prepping's growing acceptance in mainstream America, such as the NatGeo channel series Doomsday Preppers and how the movement has even reached the shelves of Big Box retail.
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