Should you prepare for Trump?
Juli Gittinger had a bag containing iodine pills and a machete. “It’s great for walking through the bush,” she explained to me recently. Gittinger imagined a future in which she might have to flee her home with a backpack and make her way through rural Georgia to safety. She has enough water at home to last her 30 days and enough food to last her 100 days.
Gittinger, a professor of religious studies at Georgia College, is a doomsday prepper, but unlike the stereotype the term often conjures up—a right-wing conspirator trapped in a bunker—Gittinger is a doomsday prepper. liberal. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, she began preparing. Her prep supplies include Plan B emergency contraceptive pills, which she purchased before Trump's second inauguration in case the Trump administration introduced new restrictions on reproductive health care.
Gittinger is representative of a minority of anti-Trump doomsday preppers who are preparing for whatever disaster the next four years may bring. They stocked up on Reddit forums and Facebook groups to freeze-dry food, and said others should do the same.
Michael Mills, a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, said it was difficult to get accurate figures on preparations, but there were probably millions of preparers of all political stripes in the United States. Mills said the proportion of liberals is small, about 15%. Like their conservative counterparts, liberal doomsday preppers worry about the stability of the economy and power grid, but unlike conservatives they also worry about catastrophes caused by climate change and the potential for Trump to undermine U.S. security through foreign policy chaos. possibility. Mills expressed doubts about the huge increase in the number of liberal preppers, but moderators of several liberal preppers forums told me they have seen a surge in interest and activity since Trump was re-elected last November. Several doomsday preppers I interviewed mentioned getting vaccinated in case a new administration changes the rules on vaccine coverage, or renewing their passports in case they feel they have to leave the country.
In addition to being a doomsday prepper himself, Gittinger has studied the doomsday prepper community and written about them in an academic book, The end of America. Starting in 2018, Gittinger surveyed hundreds of liberal doomsday preppers (and some conservatives) on Facebook. When she asked what had prepared them, 31 of the more than 300 respondents cited Trump's election and 35 cited “political anxiety.” The disasters they fear will range from politically driven (economic and social collapse, attacks by foreign powers) to completely random disasters: epidemics, natural disasters. “The country is so divided that anything could spark riots like we’ve never seen before,” one interviewee told her.
Many Americans are preparing for some form of Trump’s second term, even if they don’t call it that. Some providers of Plan B and abortion pills said they noticed an increase in orders immediately after the election. The election has many people rushing to buy electronics, cars and other goods ahead of Trump's promised tariffs. Spending on vehicles, auto parts and appliances increased in November, washington post reported. In addition to stocking up on food and water because of the tariffs, Gittinger recently purchased a new cell phone, and Zoe Higgins, another liberal doomsday prepper, purchased a new car.
Genevra Hsu, a moderator of the Left-wing Preppers subreddit, grew up learning survival skills from her father, but she started prepping in earnest after moving to rural Virginia around 2013. Some of her friends started gardening and she would give them some advice. She now has six months' worth of meals on hand – which she pressure-cans, dehydrates and freezes herself. She was at high risk for COVID-19 complications, so when the pandemic started, stores provided an “animal comfort knowing there was enough stuff on the shelves and I didn't have to go anywhere,” she told me. Recently, she began dehydrating and freezing powdered eggs in preparation for a bird flu pandemic. On the subreddit, doomsday preppers discussed stocking up on fluoride toothpaste, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary, opposed adding fluoride to tap water. They buy birth control and medical textbooks on treating vaccine-preventable diseases.
The line between preparedness and emergency preparedness is blurry. In fact, some liberal doomsday preppers I interviewed seemed more worried about natural disasters like hurricanes than hurricanes. The Handmaid's Tale– Genre dystopia. KC Davis, author How to look after your home when you are drowningMoved to Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and began to worry about flooding and power outages. She now keeps cans of water, headlamps, thermal blankets, life jackets, rechargeable lights and 30 days' worth of emergency food on a metal rack in her garage. She also has a generator, which comes on as we speak.
In New Orleans, Higgins had a month's supply of freeze-dried pasta, beef stroganoff, chicken alfredo and other foods. She purchased flashlights, headlamps, waterproof matches, fire starters, water purification tablets, camping stoves and propane tanks, as well as what she calls an “escape binder,” which contains 400 pages of emergency checklists and instructions. Some doomsday preppers admit that the gear they accumulate is less about preparing for a specific, Trump-related emergency than the result of prepping becoming a hobby, with increasingly sophisticated gadgets to deal with Scenes that are getting weirder and weirder. Gittinger's preparations included a Faraday bag—a backpack that blocks electromagnetic signals, in which Gittinger kept a backup cell phone and computer—in case of an extreme solar flare.
Liberal doomsday preppers told me over and over that they differ from their conservative counterparts because they are less conspiracy-minded and more concerned with helping their communities rather than just their immediate families. (Gittinger herself didn’t need a Plan B, but she bought it for other young women who might.) But according to Gittinger, like their right-wing counterparts, liberal doomsday preppers do tend to own guns: In Of the 198 people who answered her question, 121 owned firearms. Survey questions about weapons said they owned firearms. Exactly who they would use them against is less clear. “I think a lot of this is a reaction to the general uncertainty,” Hsu told me.
Another major thing liberal and conservative doomsday preppers have in common is a distrust of government, the feeling that institutions won't help you if the worst happens. For liberal doomsday preppers, this feeling has become even more pronounced since Trump took office. The rise of Trump, the fall of Trump Roe v. Wadeand Republican victories in the states left liberals feeling they were in trouble. “My general feeling, especially in Texas, is that there's not a lot of community safety nets in place during emergencies,” Davis said. “It feels like it’s every man for himself.”
Her views fit with what pollster Christine Soltis Anderson calls “a rise in distrust of institutions across party lines.” Republicans and Democrats now have similar levels of distrust in Congress and big business. Americans on both the left and the right feel unsupported; preppers are just doing something about it. “I think one thing that preppers of all political persuasions have in common is a lack of confidence in political progress as a whole and a skepticism about political leadership,” Mills told me. Conservative doomsday preppers were once worried about Barack Obama, liberals were most worried about climate catastrophe, but they both worry about the government not having your back.
Some of the conversations I've had with liberal doomsday preppers have been good reminders to buy bottled water and flashlights in the event of a natural disaster, but some of them come off as paranoid. Many of their worst-case scenarios seem unlikely. How likely is it that a U.S. citizen will actually be banned from international travel? What are the chances that Republicans will not just ban Plan B, but ban Plan B? family planning82% of women of childbearing age use this product?
Then again, we live in an outrageous age in which a reality TV host can become president for a second time after a failed coup. That president picked another television host to take charge of the nation's defense. His pick for health secretary urged parents to ignore CDC guidelines on childhood vaccinations. Twelve states have outright bans on abortion. There was indeed a global pandemic that shut down much of the world for years. There's a feeling that anything can happen, so you'd better be prepared.
Gittinger noted that she had N95 masks on hand when the coronavirus pandemic broke out. Who is too paranoid now?