BY ALAN FEUER
TULSA, Oklahoma – Disasters happen. It is a fact as certain as income taxes. And when a solar flare erupts or a flu pandemic hits, there is only one question that will matter: Are you, or are you not, prepared?
One could have found an answer – actually, many answers – here recently at the third annual National Preppers and Survivalists Expo. A trade show catering to those with an apocalyptic bent, the two-day exposition was an opportunity for vendors of calamity swag to meet their clientele.
“We tried to gear our event this year to the ordinary person who wants to be ready for any situation,” said Ray McCreary, who organized the conference for the trade show company Expo Inc.
Ever since Isaiah, someone somewhere has been talking about the imminent demise of civilized society. Still, one could argue that today’s connected world of globalized supply chains and multinational banks is especially susceptible to a catastrophic failure. Just last month, a study financed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration found that, because of financial inequality and environmental problems, the industrial world could suffer “a precipitous collapse “within decades.
Alvin Jackson, a jazz musician from New Orleans, wants to be ready. Mr. Jackson, 66, was at the exposition checking out the Ark 290: a month’s supply of freeze-dried food.
“People think that preppers, and I use that term with caution, are guys in beards who live in bunkers and bury ammunition in their yards,” said Mr. Jackson, who had come to the conference with his wife, Marlane. “But I went through Katrina, and I’m not crazy. I know from experience that things go south, and it can happen just like that.”
Mr. Jackson’s cautions inspired by a hurricane notwithstanding, it would be easy to assume that a prepper convention would be peopled with right-wing zealots with a taste for guns and gold, or what survivalists like to call “the bullet-and-bullion set.” But while there was one man standing at a booth handing out business cards for Operation American Spring, a movement to impeach President Obama, there was also a countervailing element of organic gardeners, homeopathic healers and publishers selling books on the commercial uses of hemp.
The exposition seemed to be less about politics than consumer economics and was, if anything, an exercise in modern-day capitalism.
Apparently, there are endless ways to commodify catastrophe. There were tactical knives ($135), mass casualty bags ($ 250), solar-powered generators ($ 4,299), automated defibrillators ($695), gravity-fed water filters ($150) and vacuum-sealed packs of alligator jerky ($15).
Amy Alton, a co-founder of the survival-medicine company Doom and Bloom, feels that fear-mongering is less effective at persuading people to prepare than building a community.
Ms. Alton, a former Army nurse, is a purveyor of medical kits like the Stomp Supreme Trauma Survival Bag ($649) and the author, with her husband, Dr. Joseph Alton, of “The Survival Medicine Handbook.” Her latest project is a survival board game, which she is financing through Kickstarter donations and envisions as a way to introduce the subject of prepping to children.
“Being prepared is only possible if families and communities take part in it,” she said. “The idea of the lone survivalists living underground in a bunker with his guns – it’s absolutely crazy.”
The way Ms. Alton sees it, living in a tight-knit community where you know and trust your neighbors is the surest way to survive a disaster.
“We have to get back to a time when someone had the cow and someone made the quilt and everyone worked together,” she said. “That’s how America was founded.”
Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, April 12, 2014
TULSA, Oklahoma – Disasters happen. It is a fact as certain as income taxes. And when a solar flare erupts or a flu pandemic hits, there is only one question that will matter: Are you, or are you not, prepared?
One could have found an answer – actually, many answers – here recently at the third annual National Preppers and Survivalists Expo. A trade show catering to those with an apocalyptic bent, the two-day exposition was an opportunity for vendors of calamity swag to meet their clientele.
“We tried to gear our event this year to the ordinary person who wants to be ready for any situation,” said Ray McCreary, who organized the conference for the trade show company Expo Inc.
Ever since Isaiah, someone somewhere has been talking about the imminent demise of civilized society. Still, one could argue that today’s connected world of globalized supply chains and multinational banks is especially susceptible to a catastrophic failure. Just last month, a study financed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration found that, because of financial inequality and environmental problems, the industrial world could suffer “a precipitous collapse “within decades.
Alvin Jackson, a jazz musician from New Orleans, wants to be ready. Mr. Jackson, 66, was at the exposition checking out the Ark 290: a month’s supply of freeze-dried food.
“People think that preppers, and I use that term with caution, are guys in beards who live in bunkers and bury ammunition in their yards,” said Mr. Jackson, who had come to the conference with his wife, Marlane. “But I went through Katrina, and I’m not crazy. I know from experience that things go south, and it can happen just like that.”
Mr. Jackson’s cautions inspired by a hurricane notwithstanding, it would be easy to assume that a prepper convention would be peopled with right-wing zealots with a taste for guns and gold, or what survivalists like to call “the bullet-and-bullion set.” But while there was one man standing at a booth handing out business cards for Operation American Spring, a movement to impeach President Obama, there was also a countervailing element of organic gardeners, homeopathic healers and publishers selling books on the commercial uses of hemp.
The exposition seemed to be less about politics than consumer economics and was, if anything, an exercise in modern-day capitalism.
Apparently, there are endless ways to commodify catastrophe. There were tactical knives ($135), mass casualty bags ($ 250), solar-powered generators ($ 4,299), automated defibrillators ($695), gravity-fed water filters ($150) and vacuum-sealed packs of alligator jerky ($15).
Amy Alton, a co-founder of the survival-medicine company Doom and Bloom, feels that fear-mongering is less effective at persuading people to prepare than building a community.
Ms. Alton, a former Army nurse, is a purveyor of medical kits like the Stomp Supreme Trauma Survival Bag ($649) and the author, with her husband, Dr. Joseph Alton, of “The Survival Medicine Handbook.” Her latest project is a survival board game, which she is financing through Kickstarter donations and envisions as a way to introduce the subject of prepping to children.
“Being prepared is only possible if families and communities take part in it,” she said. “The idea of the lone survivalists living underground in a bunker with his guns – it’s absolutely crazy.”
The way Ms. Alton sees it, living in a tight-knit community where you know and trust your neighbors is the surest way to survive a disaster.
“We have to get back to a time when someone had the cow and someone made the quilt and everyone worked together,” she said. “That’s how America was founded.”
Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, April 12, 2014
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