• ‘Prepping’ – preparing for a catastrophic event – emerged from Cold War fears of nuclear holocaust and has always been associated with right-wing conspiracists
• But perpetual crisis has sparked many ‘average’ Americans to actively prepare for catastrophe, sparking a huge boom in the survival business
• Preppers now include tech executives and suburban ‘guardian moms’ as products such as $160k ‘Apocalypse’ trucks and luxury bunkers flood the market 

When venture capitalist John Ramey popped open his trunk in front of a fellow Silicon Valley executive, he revealed an embarrassing secret: he was a bonafide ‘prepper’.

It was 2010 and more than a decade before Collins dictionary would declare ‘permacrisis,’ defined as ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events,’ as the ‘word of the year.’

Inside Ramey’s car was his ‘Get Home Bag,’ packed with a first aid kit, radio, map, compass, and calorie-dense food rations.

It was everything he’d need in the early hours of a disaster – natural or otherwise – that shook humanity to its core.

At first, there was snickering.

How could a rational guy, like John, align with the stereotype of a right-wing, gun-toting conspiracist preparing for the apocalypse, friends asked. After all, Ramey was once an adviser to the White House and Pentagon during the Obama administration

Well, who’s laughing now?

As the world lurches from international financial meltdown to a deadly global pandemic to rampant inflation and war in Europe, Ramey has plenty of company.

In 2020, more than 20 million Americans, nearly 7 percent of all U.S. households, were actively planning for an emergency, according to the latest analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data.

Plus, those stockpiling canned goods in the cupboards, caching ammunition and hoarding toilet paper now come in all stripes – from suburban ‘guardian moms’ to multi-millionaire tech gurus.

And while the chances of a meteor strike wiping out mankind or a world war plunging the planet into nuclear winter is still fairly unlikely, there is one thing for certain: ‘preppers’ are willing to pay good money for all manner of products to safeguard their futures.

WHERE TO GO WHEN ‘ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE’

There’s maybe nowhere better to wait out Armageddon than the self-proclaimed largest survival community on Earth in the Black Hills area of South Dakota.

Here, 575 hardened concrete bunkers cover 18 square miles of grassland, ‘strategically and centrally located in one of the safest areas of North America’.

It’s high and dry at an altitude of 3,800 feet above sea level and 100-plus miles away from the nearest ‘known’ military targets.

Originally built in 1942 as an army ammunition depot known as Fort Igloo, California-based firm Vivos began repurposing the site in 2017 to accommodate up to 10,000 people wanting to protect their families ‘when all hell breaks loose,’ according to their website.

The shelters, which cost between $35,000 to $45,000, plus an annual ground rent of more than $1,000, are fortified to withstand a 500,000-pound blast and have air purifiers designed to ‘eliminate all pathogens and radioactive particles’.

Shelters range in size. Most are about 26 feet in width and up to 80 feet in length. That’s enough room for over a year’s worth of supplies, according to the company.

Vivos Executive Director Dante Vicino told DailyMail.com its members are not ‘preppers’ but ‘well-educated, average people with a keen awareness of the current global events’.

Fair enough. But there is no doubt that many in the community adhere to the popular image of ‘Doomsday Preppers’, burnished by the hit 2012 National Geographic reality TV show of the same name.

Cast members on the show included Braxton Southwick, a 40-year-old father-of-six who was convinced a weaponized smallpox terrorist attack was imminent and had made preparations to flee with his family to a cabin redoubt 90 minutes from their home in Salt Lake City.

But that’s the old guard, many of the new preppers are a different breed.

$2M ‘MEGA YACHT’ BUNKERS AND ‘IMPENETRABLE’ TRUCKS

John Ramey is coy about his own prepping practices, but he says his website, The Prepared, is pitched at ‘rational preppers’, which he defines as anyone who can be self-sufficient for at least two weeks.

He started the site in 2018, and by the end of the COVID pandemic he had quadrupled its staff from three to 12.

Investors now include early executives at Facebook and Twitter, as well as Aaron Batalion, the co-founder of Living Social, who saw the contents of Ramey’s trunk on that fateful day in 2010.

After his ‘outing,’ Ramey revealed that other venture capitalists came to him in private and whispered, ‘Hey, we’re living in California, how do we get ready for the big earthquake? Or how do I buy a gun so that I can defend myself within California’s kind of weird gun laws.’

Ramey claimed hospitals and even police departments called him to ask what their procedures should be and what supplies to buy for when disaster strikes.

‘That is how low the bar is,’ he said. ‘They had to call a guy with a blog to ask how they protect their nurses because they didn’t have good, reliable information to go to.’

It quickly became apparent to Ramey that many others in his liberal circle of friends and associates came to the same realization that he had during his work as an innovation adviser to The Obama White House.

‘One of the final nails in the coffin for me was when I got into those rooms,’ he says of his time in the federal government. ‘I saw how ineffective it was, which makes you go ‘oh s***’, not only do we have problems, but we are impotent in our ability to handle them.’

Ramey claims he witnessed nuclear codes being run on floppy disks.

‘That leads you to a mindset of, ‘I am my own first responder. I am responsible for myself and my family before anyone else’s.’

The Prepared features reviews of all-terrain Jeeps, ammunition inventories and firestarter kits, as well as beginner’s guides to packing your own ‘bug out bag,’ a portable kit that holds everything one would need to stay alive for 72 hours, if not longer.

A ‘bug out bag’ can be packed with everything from individually wrapped, nutrient packed, emergency food rations ($6.00 for a coconut-flavored, 9-bar, 3,600-calorie pack) to hygiene wipes, for when nature calls.

How will the world end? 10 most likely triggers of the APOCALYPSE – READ MORE 

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, one the world’s leading pioneers of artificial intelligence, became a frontman for the San Francisco Bay Area ‘prepper’ movement after he said in a 2016 interview that he had amassed ‘guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to’.

That admission made some people understandably nervous when the remarks resurfaced again this year, amid concerns that super-intelligent machines may one day decide to turn on their masters.

‘It was like a fun hobby…,’ Altman reassured a journalist in April. ‘[But] none of this is going to help you if [artificial general intelligence] goes wrong,’

Oh, good.

Regardless, other California techies are on the trend. Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit, revealed in 2017 that ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is code within the tech community for having ‘apocalypse insurance’.

‘Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in,’ he told The New Yorker.

Vivos, the firm managing bunkers in South Dakota, has also built a survival facility in Indiana, offering to house doomsday survivors for the price of $35,000 per person.

And there’s another compound near Jena, Germany, called Vivos Europa One, where private shelters cost up to $2.2 million a pop. The original dwellings were carved out of solid bedrock by the Soviets during the Cold War.

Vivos says the ‘fit and finish’ of these bunkers are ‘comparable to a mega yacht’. Typical amenities are said to feature ‘pools, theaters, gyms, a kitchen, bar, bedrooms and deluxe bathrooms’.

The underground complex includes over 227,904 square feet of secured, blast proof living areas; and, an additional 43,906 square feet of above-ground office, apartments, warehouse buildings, and its own train depot.

The company told DailyMail.com that sales have been up 300 percent since the pandemic, with a 2,000 percent spike in inquiries year on year.

And for those with the means to splurge on an underground just-in-case mansion there are other products too.

Earlier this month, Apocalypse Manufacturing, a Florida-based firm that specializes in futuristic vehicles, unveiled its $160,000 4×4 Super Truck.

Sitting on 40-inch tires and 22-inch rims, the doomsday vehicle comes in at 6.9 feet-tall, 8.1 feet-wide and 20 feet-long. Its front suspension also allows for a whopping 15,000lbs of raw towing capacity – that’s nearly as much power as a single-axis semi-truck. 

And the vehicle’s design supposedly makes it ‘impenetrable to external forces,’ thanks to a steel front ‘grumper’ (grill/bumper combo) and slate-piled rear steel bumper.

So, while the Super Truck is not exactly practical for a quick trip to the grocery store, it would come in handy for mowing down zombies.  

But high-priced bunkers and extravagant end-of-the-world toys are only within reach for the privileged few. The ‘prepper’ products truly driving an explosion of the doomsday market are those that are affordable to the well-prepared masses.

$3 BILLION EMERGENCY FOOD INDUSTRY

Lisa Bedford, 53, claims that she was one of the first, ‘guardian moms.’

She lives near Houston, Texas and got into prepping during the financial crisis of 2008. Her husband’s construction business almost disappeared overnight, when their two children were aged six and nine-years-old.

Bedford began researching ‘survival topics’ and soon found herself ‘in the realm of the doomers’.

‘Think about the baby formula shortage [during Covid]. You start to see how things hit you personally,’ she explained. ‘It’s the mama bear in us… It made a lot of us realize that maybe our life is not quite as secure as we thought.’

She says prepping is ’empowerment’ for women. But for her, the idea of buying an extravagant bunker or a super truck is neither affordable nor relevant to her life.

Bedford started a blog in June 2009 that offers ‘basic prepping’ advice, including articles on ‘unusual items for stocking up’ that range from vacuum-sealed Cheetos, to pantyhose that can be used as tourniquet, to a paracord for rappelling, just in case you’re dropped in the middle of the jungle.

‘Guardian moms’ focus on preparing themselves to be self-sufficient for weeks or even months should ‘S*** Hit The Fan’, or SHTF, as it is known in the trade.

Today, the emergency food industry produces around $500 million in annual sales, but this is projected to grow by $2.8 billion by 2026, according to one recent report. The worldwide market analysis looked at ready-to-eat meals, non-perishable pasteurized milk, infant food, dried food, and others.

Some of the early players in the industry were My Patriot Supply and Augason Farms. The latter was founded in Utah to serve the Mormon community, encouraged by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to prepare for the end of times. But as the market becomes more diverse, the culture has shifted within the industry itself.

Augason Farms, which began as a powdered milk operation in the family garage in the 1970s, brought in Moir Donelson, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Business School, as CEO to guide the company’s growth in 2021.

In less than a decade, the consumers of survival food have gone from around 95 percent men to more than 50 percent women, according to survivalist food company ReadyWise.

Even My Patriot Supply, traditionally associated with a right-leaning base that sells fire starter kits, gas masks and water filtration pumps alongside freeze-dried kibble, has seen its customer base transformed.

My Patriot Supply’s Vice President of Sales Joe Rieck says by the end of 2020 the firm had seen around a 400 percent spike in sales. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a further 100 percent spike, he claims. And there is a product to suit most survivalist needs.

Sixty-four emergency water pouches can be purchased for less than $30. 60 servings of ‘100 percent Colombian’ coffee with a 30-year shelf life will run you $8.45.

If that’s not enough, there are more comprehensive offerings. A one-year supply of 41 different meal pouches – ranging from buttermilk pancake mix, to freeze dried beef, to the ingredients for survivalist pizza – cost nearly $3,000 and purports to provide 4,340 servings of 2,200 calories to one person.

For those planning not just to survive, but to potentially start a new society altogether, there are vegetable seeds for sale and air filtration systems starting at 5 payments of $26 a month.

For her part, Bedford has several months’ worth of stored food, which include grocery bought cans of soup, chicken, fruit and vegetables. She also has a rain collection system with Berkey water filters that can cost anywhere up to $500.

Their home is fitted out with a security system because ‘you can have a whole stash of guns and ammo, but it’s only really yours as long as you can keep it secure’ in the event of a disaster, Bedford said.

These folks have truly thought of everything.

The day after DailyMail.com’s interview with the Obama administration adviser-turned-prepper John Ramey, he politely postponed a follow-up call.

He was ‘out in the woods,’ he said, ‘helping some techie-types get their off-grid homestead started.’

It appears that even as ‘doomers’ prepare for the darkest days, the future of the business of ‘prepping’ may never have been brighter.