 Um so hi everyone and thank you for joining us today for this week's lecture in planning series presentation. Our speaker this week is Anna Maria Bounds, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College City University of New York. My name is Jenna Davis and I'm a PhD student here in the program and I'll be moderating today's session. I just want to start with a few brief technical and logistical announcements and then I'll turn over to introducing today's speaker. Uh so during the talk I'd just like to remind everyone in the audience to please meet their microphones. We'll be recording today's talk so anyone in the audience who does not wish to be recorded should plan on please starting off their video input. And then the chat box should be used only for discussion regarding the session. If you have any technical questions that apply only to you please message me or Stefan Norgaard privately. And then finally being encouraged all of you to type questions into the chat box during the presentation. After the presentation we'll have time for a brief Q&A. We'll start the Q&A around two or two fifteen so that we have time for your questions. And I'll be coordinating the Q&A with attention to diversity and inclusion. If you've already had a chance to pose a question please just allow others to do so before asking another. So with that I'm delighted to turn to introducing today's speaker Dr. Anna Maria Bounds. Dr. Bounds is an assistant professor of sociology at Queen's College City University of New York. She holds a PhD in urban and public policy from the new school. Her new book Bracing for the Apocalypse and Ethnographic Study of New Yorker's Prepper Subculture is a rich ethnography that explores the rise of urban preppers in her city. Her research interests focus on city subcultures, city tourism and public space. She teaches courses on urban sociology and social science research methods. She also has earned an MA in writing from Old Dominion University. Today Dr. Bounds' lecture which is called Bracing for the Apocalypse and Ethnographic Study of New Yorker's Prepper Subculture. We'll discuss her new book. The book explores the rise of urban prepper subculture in New York, shutting light on the distinctive approach of city dwellers in preparing for disaster. With attention to the role of factors such as class, race, gender, and one's expectations of government, it shows that how one imagines doomsday effects, how one prepares for it. Drawing on participant observation, the author explores prepper's views on the central question of whether to bug out or hunker down in the event of disaster and examines the ways in which the prepper economy increases revenue by targeting concerns over developing skills, building networks, securing equipment, and arranging a safe locale. So Dr. Bounds, if you're ready, I'll pass things over to you now. I think you're actually muted Dr. Bounds. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me to share my research today. Today's invitation is particularly meaningful because it was extended by my dissertation chairperson Robert Beauregard. So I feel very honored today. I'm forever appreciative for Bob's influence on my work. So in my talk today, I'll discuss the main themes of my book and draw some important connections between urban prepping and urban planning because, after all, urban preppers are planners. They're ordinary citizens who are planning how to survive in extraordinary circumstances. However, that's really only one layer of our conversation today. I'm also considering the context of our conversation, the impact of time and circumstance on our togetherness today. Lately, I've been thinking about how I began and in my book. My book begins with the decision to take on an ethnographic project of learning how and why some New Yorkers prepare for disaster. Throughout the book, I detail and analyze my journey according to relevant urban sociological theories. However, at the end of the book, there's a shift. In New York, the pandemic has started. New York is about to change. The world is about to change. This afternoon, we'll be talking about that tragic change. As Brecht wrote, in the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing about the dark times. So here we are today. I'm presenting virtually to a group of New Yorkers who have mostly been sheltering in place for the last eight months and possibly the next eight months. One might argue that we're doing just that today, singing about the dark times. However, I'm certain that wouldn't be entirely correct. However, I'm not certain that that is entirely correct. We can see a glimmer of the future. We can see hope, the promise of a new vaccine, the promise of a new presidential administration. And when I think about these possibilities, I'm reminded of the words of Annette, a New York prepper. At the start of my project, she gave me an important directive. She said, make sure that people know we aren't preparing for the end of the world. We're preparing for tomorrow. Tomorrow. So today, we're going to take on her challenge by exploring the world of New York prepping before and during the pandemic. With strategies ranging from moderate to extreme, prepping involves preparing and planning to independently survive disasters in the context of dwindling resources and without government assistance. With dwindling faith and the promise of government aid during disasters, New York preppers have turned to self-protection strategies to ensure their safety. For this subculture, surviving relies on one's own skills and fostering social bonds. As Jason, the leader of the New York city preppers network, which is the city's only public prepping group and the group that I spent, now I guess it's about three years with, as he explained, zombies aren't real. Neither aliens. This isn't about science fiction stuff. Preparedness is about preparing for real things. Real things like we've already been through, like 9-11, insanity. New Yorkers need to be educated about prepping skills. So my book's about trying to understand that perspective. After three years of research, which involved joining the NYCPN, completing in-depth interviews with both group members and independent preppers, my findings suggest that Jason might be right. Another senior prepper also explained why learning to prep and becoming self-reliant is so important in the city. He argued there's no calvary coming. The world's grown too fast, where there are simply not enough resources. Manpower, military, everything. You could go to a town and there may be 50,000 people. That's not Manhattan. In New York, there's 8 million. Where do you put 8 million people in a disaster? So you have to fend for yourself. And to fend for yourself, you've got to learn these things. So prepping actually might be thought of, actually I'm just thinking, we're well past 8 million now. And so in thinking about prepping, in thinking about prepping, we should consider it a foundation of community resilience, which is to find the capacity to anticipate risk, limit impact, bounce back rapidly, through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change, which is the mission of prepping to a team. So when we think about the elements of prepping, and I'll go over all of these in more detail when we talk specifically about New York, but when we think about the philosophy of preparedness, I want you to understand that it hinges on self-reliance in all areas of life, not just all areas of life, which are really kind of which are three action areas. The first one is protecting your family. That's what we think of when we normally think about prepping. But it also involves homesteading, being as independent as you possibly can be. Homesteading in terms of canning, learning how to make your own clothes, learning how to engage in do-it-yourself projects that allow you to produce objects rather than consume things. There's also an important element of preparedness that focuses on sustainability. If you're going to survive, you can only survive as long as the world survives. So sustainability is crucial in thinking about respect for environment and thinking about reducing one's carbon footprint. We're thinking about recycling, upcycling, thinking about how you can be as self-reliant as possible in all areas of your life. So drawing from my current research, drawing from my book and also my current research on preppers during the pandemic, I'd like to explore four questions. First, who are urban preppers? Why are they prepping for disaster? And how are they prepping for disaster? That's really the huge chunk of this, which is about my book. The next one focuses, the next question focuses on my current research, which is how are preppers surviving this pandemic? While urban preppers have trained and practiced practice together, practice for doubt, wow, urban preppers have trained and practiced survival skills together. The experience of actually living through and surviving a pandemic in New York has given these preppers the opportunity to test their metal. And so we're going to take a look at how they're doing today. So when we think about disaster and when we think about preppers, how are we exactly defining disaster? In this project, I define disaster according to how preppers view it, according to how they define it. So it's defined broadly to reflect the wide range of scenarios that preppers are concerned about, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, pandemics or epidemics, technological failure, and government or economic collapse. So with our first question, our first question is, who are urban preppers? Well, when we take a look at this slide, here's the image that most people think of when hearing the word prepper. The idea of the prepper stereotype. In National Geographic's hit television series, Doomsday Preppers, America was first really introduced to the prepper stereotype. A camouflage wearing and gun toting, white male, fixated on protecting himself and his loved ones against mysterious and very dangerous unknown. The success of this series actually led to a genre where we see different shows like, where we were exposed to different shows like Prepper Hailbillies, which is where this image comes from. Apocalypse Preppers, Doomsday Castles, and so on. In this particular series, and through television and film, we were exposed to the novel ways that preppers escaped disaster, which encouraged us to tap into what is something in America that's very powerful, the collective belief and the power of the fierce white male hero, full of bravado and might. The person, the hero that's going to save us. That prepper, this prepper stereotype has a starring role in America's popular imagination. However, reality often conflicts with imagination. My research indicates that this media stereotype of the American prepper disappears in the context of thinking about New York. New York preppers are not exclusively white males who exhibit traits of hypermasculinity. Instead, like their city, New York preppers reflect diversity. Preppers are African-American. Preppers are Puerto Rican. They're Asian. Preppers are Mexican. Many preppers are also women. These are the people left out of the white male prepper hero narrative. For example, the NYCPN is a group of urban preppers that studies and practices preparedness strategies together. Now, when we take a look at their current membership profile, we see two interesting things. We see that roughly this group of preppers has about 500 members, and the majority of those are people of color. The groups also split in an interesting fashion, according to gender. It's roughly split between men and women. When we think about New York preppers, we also break away from the image of preppers as isolated and paranoid people. Many of the people that I've interviewed in my research are engaged community members. They're community leaders. They participate in a variety of activities involving professional organizations and community service groups. Many of the preppers are also middle-class parents. They have jobs like first responders or school teachers or office administrators, even security guards. They're people who are concerned about protecting their children. However, the New York prepper or the New York prepping world also includes America's extremely wealthy whites, millionaires and billionaires. For those widely, prepping really doesn't have very much to do with surviving, independently surviving disaster and difficult conditions. Instead, their disaster preparedness involves escaping to a private highway, or retreating to his luxurious safe room. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about preppers today because wealthy preppers did exactly what they promised to do in response to a crisis. They left the city. So we have, as we all know, dramatic shifts are decreased in our population of both wealthy preppers and just regular wealthy people who have left the city. So when we think about, so when reflecting on the white male stereotype, in Shira, an African-American female prepper, actually a group leader explained, commented on the idea of the white male prepper narrative. Here's what she said. I think about it all the time. She explained that cowboy idea doesn't apply to everyone in prepping. Preppers aren't necessarily those white guys in the backwoods or the guys wearing tactical gear. This isn't about being an individual, the lone wolf. This involves mothers and children. This is about the city. That white male narrative, that's not who we are, and that's not what we're about. So what are preppers about? So what are New York preppers about? Why do they practice prepping? So my research in studying New York preppers has revealed to me that analyzing this phenomenon only according to national context and the romantic idea that preparedness is closely linked to the American sense of individualism, to the spirit and power of American go-to, those ideas are horribly misguided. Instead, I argue that urban preparedness is not really about the national. It's about the local. It's about where the work happens. It's about the city. It's about place. It's about self. It's about tribe. And it's about connection. Urban prepping is about adapting to the changing nature of the city. It's about the beauty and the tragedy of the city. By stepping outside of the identity of a typical city dweller, urban preppers break free from their way of knowing the world and expand their respective self-identities by learning new roles in their ways of engaging life in New York City. As one prepper explained, we're about getting you comfortable in the discomfort, pushing you past your normal way of life. Now, for some New York preppers, though, the trial of urban life has informed their perspective, their interest in prepping because they discovered early on that survival in the city depends on self-reliance. Life experiences such as growing up poor in an endangered neighborhood or growing up in an immigrant family with little social support and few economic resources dramatically influence their perspective. Al, as Al, a Bronx prepper recounts his childhood, poor family, single mom, growing up in a rough neighborhood, I learned about prepping early by watching your back being mindful of your environment. I learned how to live life on the defense. Neighborhood had gangs, drug dealers. My mom was an alcoholic, so I had to go down to the corner to buy beer and cigarettes when I was 10. People on the street, they know you. My mom was tough. She was in a gang. She knew how to fight. She would always teach me, watch your back. That was her instinct. We started prepping. My cousin and me, around 10. We would make plans in case something was going down. What we were going to do, weapons, stars, knives, not money or food. We were kids. We were thinking about finding off people. We even had a meeting spot. We had no real name for it. We would always just say, we got to prepare. The Doomsday prepper show gave it an A, and that Al's wife, her interest in prepping is rooting in her mother's immigrant tradition of stockpiling food and basic supplies to protect the family during moments of, during times of financial insecurity. She explains, for me, it's about prepping for life, being smart. My mom started me on this. My mom always made sure that the cabinets were full. She caught sales on everything, like beanies. There were seven of us. She was always saving and always stocking. She started me on this. It's about being responsible. So, most important, direct experience with disaster in the city has also fueled interest in prepping. So, as one prepping consultant explains, living in New York is like living on the X, where global city characterized by tremendous wealth, tremendous inequality, and also increasing risk, which makes New York a ripe context for prepping. So, when we think about New York's disasters and disruptions, from the time period of my study roughly, the start of the 21st century from 2001 to 2020, when we think about the things that have happened in New York, our threats that have happened in New York, we really think about three things. We think about the terrorist attack. We think about the World Trade Center attack. We think about Hurricane Sandy, and now we think about the COVID pandemic. However, during this time period, New York has experienced a whole host of other disasters or threats of disasters. For example, September 11th was just one terrorist attack. We actually even had two in the year 2017, the Port Authority Terminal Subway attack, and then the West Side Highway attack. We also had in terms of natural disasters. We also had tornadoes and an earthquake. We had Hurricane Irene, all sorts of things. Before COVID, we had the threat of an epidemic with Zika, Ebola, and also swine flu. We also had technological failure, and the most memorable one is in 2003, the North Eastern Black Out. Then we've also had government or economic instability, meaning in 2007, starting with the subprime mortgage crisis, which moved us into the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. We've had a lot of things on our plate. Many events that have influenced some New Yorkers to think that living in the city requires both street smarts and survival smarts. So when we think about urban prepping, it's also closely connected to urban citizenship, which is defined as the city dwellers set of rights and responsibilities, involving safety, political engagement, tolerance, recognition, and freedom, all of the important elements that we value in city life. Urban prepping emphasizes the right to safety and the right to recognition. For people of color who recognize that their communities have been underserved in previous disasters, prepping represents agency, and it represents a demand for recognition to address inequalities and the distribution of resources. In this regard, urban prepping makes an important break with what we view as traditional prepping. It makes a break with misperceptions. We have about prepper's motivation, but it's not about prepping. It's a break with misperceptions. We have about prepper's motivations to prepare against disaster and the rationale behind their lack of trust in government. So as depicted in the media and the mass media, a stereotypical prepper's drive to stockpile and prepare for disaster is spurred by conspiracy theories. Things like the fear of the sudden loss of Second Amendment rights, the stereotypical prepper, well, let's compare that first against the opposite. Conversely, after observing media coverage of poor communities and communities of color receiving little emergency support, urban preppers may believe that they should prep for disaster because they can't rely on government assistance. So those are two different cases. In the first case, the stereotypical prepper thinks, hmm, I need to prepare because the government's coming for me. And the second case and the urban prepper case and urban prepper thinks, I've got to prepare because the government isn't coming for me. How do New York preppers plan for disaster? How is it different than rural and suburban preppers? Prepping involves two main strategies. Mugging out which involves leaving for safe haven. It could be a safe house, it could be a luxury, if you're a wealthy urban prepper, it could be a luxury hideaway, or it just could be staying at a family and friends during the period of disaster. A home of a family friend or even a family member. Mugging out involves bushcraft, which is another word for wilderness survival skills. Understanding how to make a fire, understanding how to build a shelter, understanding how to filter water, those kinds of skills. It also involves first aid. Preppers often just don't receive certification in basic first aid. Many preppers actually go on to receive a certification in wilderness emergency medicine, wilderness emergency first aid, which is very challenging. Now, so when we take a look at, so when we think about bug outs, the most important element of a bug out is your bag. What do you bring in your go bag? And we'll talk more about that in a few moments, but in terms of symbolic interactionism, the theory that I use to take a look at the world of prepping, a bug out bag is very symbolic. It's very, you're showing the prepping world your skills and your ability. It's how you represent, it's how you establish your legitimacy, your legitimacy, your credibility as a prepper. Now, preppers all, if preppers do not feel that leaving the city is an option, they bug in. And that refers to sheltering in place. And when sheltering in place involves staying, usually staying within your home. It involves the development and the creation or reliance on a prepping client closet, which is a designated area in someone's home and which they store important provisions, such as food, water, medicine. In the case of the pandemic, hand sanitizer, math, extra math, gloves, have math suits for more advanced preppers. All of those things that you think that you need to survive in your apartment. And it's interesting when you think about it because even though we're not all preppers with, you know, sheltering in place during the pandemic, we all sort of have a sense of designating a prepper of going out and buying items to help us survive during the pandemic. And in this case, preppers also receive certification in first aid. And what we see is an interesting shift between my book and how preppers are faring in the pandemic is that in the book, there's a lot of focus on outdoor excursions. The idea of taking a look at how preppers craft their social world through trying to survive the elements with as few items as possible. And what gets them through is their bug outback. Now, with bugging in, the symbolic item, the item that is the tool that becomes very significant is the prepper closet. And we'll talk more about that in a few moments. But when we think about these main survival strategies, here's where I think urban planning and urban prepping really intersect. There's a lot of issues related to urban planning that deal with both bugging out and bugging in. Like, for example, and leaving the city, what's one of the things that you need to consider when planning to leave the city? Well, you need to think about traffic congestion. You need to think about the limited exit routes out of the city. And here's a representation of that. And this is primarily bridges. You also need to think about, so what most preppers do is, and this is where this is really, they don't plan. And then when I'm saying preppers, I'm thinking about middle class preppers, wealthy preppers already have things in place. They've already made agreements for the helicopter ride out of the city. They've already made plans for the helicopter, the private jet, whatever the case may be, to bring them to their strategic relocation. Middle class preppers are worried about traffic. So what idea did they come up with in the event they need to leave the city? They believe that their best option is walking outside of the city. And here I have some possible paths that people could take to leave the city. So this definitely, so when we think about the idea of bugging out, it's not just traffic congestion. It's also trying to think about the role of public transportation. What kind of the size of population? Here's where it gets really tricky. So preppers think about the idea of in the event of a disaster and they need to leave the city that they'll walk on foot. Now, right away, urban planning comes into play because we need to think about population size. We need to think about density because Manhattan on the weekend has a residential population of a little over one million. On a work day and a non-pandemic setting, the population in Manhattan soars to about three million. Also play an important role in bug out. Preppers use parks to meet up in the city rather than meeting at home. The idea that not just big parks, neighborhood parks. Here's an interesting example. Families understand that children and teens may not, given all their activities, may not necessarily be at home in the event a disaster strikes. In other words, the family may not be together. So what some family preppers do is they practice on meeting up in a neighborhood park where the children play or where they used to play if they're older and they leave and they practice walking outside the city from those parks. Parks are also considered a resource for food and fuel. Architecture of New York's buildings is particularly significant for preppers. And in creating their bug out plans, preppers also often look for buildings that you can cut through to save time on their journey. They also think about types of buildings and locations. Buildings that might be safe to hold up in a while. Warehouses that store provisions. Buildings that have rooftop gardens are vertical indoor gardens. Locations of houses of worship and hospitals. When you take a look at a prepper map and I regret that due to confidentiality reasons, I can't show any of these. You'll see a map that shows a very different geography of the city and where let's say you'll have places identified according to code so you really don't understand the map. But when you see it, you see a map of locations of, let's say for example, houses of worship. So let's say if someone lives deep within a particular borough and they're trying to make their way out, they have these identified as possible places of refuge on their way outside of the city. Now when we think about sheltering in place, urban design again comes into play. When we think about the suitability of apartments for sheltering in place, New York City apartments, our New York apartments of course are quite small and preppers need to be very creative in how they store their items. We could also think about the construction of posh safe rooms. We can think about right now how people are reconfiguring their apartments to make their apartments more suitable for long-term sheltering in place. That could be major or minor construction or it could be something as simple as a design, a rearranging the furniture in the apartment to improve workflows and to create things like stations for work and study in place. A primary concern that everyone has, the primary concern that everyone has right now not just preppers about buildings is trying to think about what's a healthy building, right? What are air filtration systems? What are, how much is it cost to put in place a healthy air filtration system? Now when we think about New York sheltering in place, I have here two posts. One is actually is an apartment and you see two people. It's very crammed. They have their items and the caption is for those of you who can't read it. Well there's a last of it which means we just ate 30 years worth of food in two weeks. And then the next one is a picture of me in the Wall Street Journal and I'm showing this because I think that this speaks to the creativity that preppers have. The idea that you just don't necessarily have a big space to place your provisions that you need to think creatively. And in this example you see here an antique trunk that has various dry goods that I don't use as things that I normally wouldn't store in my kitchen. In other words long-term provisions, things that would be things that would be helpful. I haven't included any photos of of again of prepper cloth that I've seen due to confidentiality reasons. We've got about 15 minutes left. So when we think about so here's it here's so in my book when I think about how preppers train for disaster, how they develop their survival skills. It's fascinating because we start out with the idea that these are isolated individuals who focus on networks only involving their family and the people that they're going to leave with which is really quite different because preppers are actually very strong networkers and when they have and when they train together the idea of finding your role in the community the idea of making your contribution is key. As one prepper explained to be part of a prepping group to learn from one another it's not just about learning from one another. You need to earn your place. And the first way that preppers do that is through establishing trustworthiness and trustworthiness is basically a series of a series of steps that range as you know every from everything from attending meetings regularly to being on time to showing a particular to developing a broad skill set as well as a specialization and keeping your work. You know we're on time. You do what you're supposed to in the group. You're courteous. You're a participant. All these sorts of things that we identify as kind of good citizenship skills. So that was particularly surprising for me. So what I'd like to talk about now in the last few minutes and I think I have about 10 minutes left. Okay so when I kind of want to switch gears and I want to leave the book for a moment because since we're all groups of New Yorkers you know hunkered down in the pandemic together I want us to think about my early findings on how preppers are responding to the to the pandemic. And I'm thinking about it in two ways. The first way is I'm thinking about how the experience of actually enduring a disaster has influenced their philosophy of self-reliance. For example how are they viewing how has the reality of the pandemic impacted their understanding of their expectation of government. And I'm also interested in trying to take a look at how their survival skills have served them. And I've found out some I think particularly fascinating details which map directly with the book scene. So for a moment we'll go over these in as much detail as we can in this short time period. So for urban preppers the federal government's failure to enact a clear response to the pandemic did exactly what we could expect it would do. It reaffirmed their core belief that government wasn't going to help them. So when we take a look at that so what do we mean by government not coming to help. Well we're all familiar with the narrative about we're all familiar unfortunately with the lack of transparency the lack of coordination and the lack of interest in developing a pandemic a response to the pandemic at the federal level. We know there were critical missteps such as the failure to identify the virus early confusion about what good practices what good healthy what were good practices in terms of wearing the wearing of masks wear a mask don't wear a mask there was changes about that about social distancing and also the government's inability to provide protective equipment not just to ordinary citizens but to health care workers. And so then we see as we already know by March 20th we're the epicenter of the pandemic and we're not able to we're unable to rely on the federal government the federal government has already passed off its responsibilities to the state. So it's your Cuomo and we have Cuomo and in de Blasio trying to design to develop a coordinated and sometimes not very coordinated plan for the state of New York. We have Governor Cuomo giving televised updates to help boost our not to just help boost our morale but to provide some transparency to show that the state government was hard at work trying to help the pandemic. Now you may not know this and this is just a sidebar but one of the interesting things about the pandemic and one of the interesting things about Cuomo's daily press briefings is that he won an Emmy I believe it was last week he won an Emmy they argued that the daily press press releases meaning the academy argued that the daily press press briefings were actually a show and that he created characters there was a plot and there was all sorts of dramatic tension but he just didn't create daily briefings. He also created and I apologize I don't have a picture of it I suggest that you go online I also made a poster which I ordered which is this interesting outline of our journey through basically the first wave of the pandemic. So for urban preppers as I've already said their perception was reaffirmed and going to offer a couple of quotations. One prepper argued that federal government's ability to manage the COVID pandemic resulted in a game of whack-a-mole where problems related to the virus and confusion kept popping up how perfect is that whack-a-mole. Another long-term prepper's direct experience another quotation was from one of the speakers one of the one of the season preppers that I referred to at the beginning as David Marlin he said look his response was look I said a long time ago that there was no cavalry coming the pandemic proved that I was right in my thinking the president exaggerating claims while people were dying governor Cuomo and de Blasio squabbling and holding things up while people were dying stop having faith in these people we have to take care of ourselves so how do they go about taking care of themselves well we've discovered that the pandemic has been a really important lesson in endurance for urban preppers how much time do I have left to think I have about four minutes and it feels like four am I over yeah you you have about four minutes left but it's very okay all right so I'll just thank you so I'll just jump to some of the important highlights so preppers discovered that prepper closets were meaningful they were meaningful well here's what here's let me back up and say here's the interesting thing an interesting discovery urban preppers were prepared to prevent the spread of the to prevent the spread of the virus much earlier than other New Yorkers because they had prepper closets that were filled for vital supplies not just food and other provisions but protective equipment for the pandemic all preppers interviewed were ready for the pandemic by the end of January so what did they do they moved into rather than uh that since they were ready for the pandemic they moved into their role as networkers and started trying to engaging in resilience the building activities to help their neighbors they taught neighbors how to prepare how to prep they taught neighbors how to not just how to survive but they also helped with securing supplies for our individuals non preppers they also delivered food and medication to senior citizens they networked together to help people who didn't have jobs to ensure that families had food all sorts of fascinating things that you really wouldn't expect that if you were conforming to you know these notions that we have of preppers in popular culture you wouldn't think necessarily they would be doing that you you don't think that they would be out trying to help keep their community instead you know that they would be hiding in a bunker somewhere we see the prepping closet becoming key to uh expect to represent a key symbol for your merit as a prepper so it's skipping to the end we see that there's one thing the preppers didn't expect preppers didn't end there and so in many ways some of the survival skills that they gained particularly those was bugging out weren't helpful at all preppers didn't anticipate that the pandemic was going to be such a slow gradual process what they did and basically they didn't expect that they were going to have technology thought they thought they would be trying to survive in their apartment without technology so just like everyone else you know they didn't expect you to have to become school teachers you know to have to do double duty as a teacher and work at your job actually triple duty and then be a parent they weren't expecting that just like the rest of us and i'm gonna end on two comments the first one deals with give me just a moment one moment where i look at well basically it's a beautiful quotation from a long time prepper and his argument is that for him the prepper the experience of being in the pandemic was painful because it was gradual he said that what started to what he started to struggle with was the everydayness of it he said that's where the madness was the everydayness of it and we see during the pandemic or i saw during my research during the pandemic that prepper meetings virtual meetings shift from talking about survival skills in terms of prepping strategies that they're already aware of to survival skills involving mental health which is very significant so i'm going to end with this quotation and it's from lachelle a long time prepper prepper from brooklyn and she's talking about either the idea of suddenly everyone wanting to know a prepper everyone trying to adopt prepping practices and unfortunately you know people realize people realizing that they now also have a loss of faith in government this was her reflection we're vindicated not that we wanted to be we want to help people that's what this is about you can't survive without being a community so i'll end on that note thank you very much for your time today and i look forward to your question well thank you dr bounce that was a very um engaging and certainly timely presentation um i like that you woven sort of the voices of a lot of the preppers that you spoke with throughout your research um so i think we'll sort of move on to the the q and a portion of the presentation now um so i see a few questions in the chat box but um uh other participants in the audience can feel free to add in um your questions throughout this portion of the presentation um so i'm looking and it looks like our first question is from stephen who has a two-part question um his first question is uh given your very convincing framing of prepping sensibility in the current american moment why do you think there is or might be stigma toward prepper subculture in the activity of prepping in new york let's see that's it well that that's interesting there's certainly is still a stigma and the idea and again to rely on a quotation from a prepper he said you know in the beginning you know he said for years some of you know my neighbors you know didn't talk to me they knew i was his prepper they thought i was crazy but then all of a sudden you know they're reaching out to me at the start of the pandemic i think that um there is still a stigma associated but i would argue that it is it's um on the decline i for example and i'm you know uh and this is anecdotal evidence that i discovered this week but i couldn't help but laugh um there's something that's very that's very popular american culture um during the holiday season it's called um oprah's favorite things her christmas gift list her holiday gift list and for the years 1920 this year in the year before she's included basically a go bag on that kit this is something that people don't talk about but certainly people are buying it if it's on this list if prepping gears and rei if it's in um casco all sorts of different places it's something that people are doing but they're still but they're not necessarily talking about it thank you um and then the second part of his question was uh what are the political affiliations of new york city preppers you engaged and how do these differ across race and class that's that that that's a terrific question um with many of the interesting thing about the nycpn um is that they had a rule about not discussing politics so it didn't matter if you were conservative it didn't matter if you were liberal you were there to learn preparedness skills um the leader of the group would make the argument it doesn't matter if you're concerned about the trump the trump apocalypse um the zombie apocalypse whatever the case is we don't talk politics here um so there isn't you know so you so it was an interesting experience both in terms of also dealing with independent preppers you had people who weren't and i think this is the important difference about new york preppers you had people interested in prepping not really because of politics they were interested in prepping based on the changing nature of life in the city based on what they experienced which is fundamentally different than than um you know motivations in terms of in terms of politics our next question comes from joe who asked um i've read theories that a big appeal of the qanon conspiracy is it's gamified nature that people are playing the game of a conspiracy by uncovering uncovering clues etc have you found that this is a case with preppers too that they view social collapse and prepping as part serious part role playing game um i'm certain that there are some some preppers out there that do that but my in my research i didn't encounter those those um the experience that i had was um actually quite tough they were very serious about preparedness you know you have to understand some of these people were first responders who you know had the direct experience of seeing you know of realizing you know what if something really bad happens you know the government's going to be overwhelmed they're going to be overwhelmed they're going to be too slow they're going to be mismanaged so there was a certain sense of of of authenticity um about their experiences but are there people like that you know uh you know probably but you know the kind of excursions and experiences i had when you're in the middle of the woods and you're only in and it's an advanced training exercise and you're only permitted to have a bug out bag that's this big and you're required to find your own water source for three days there's no joking around about that it's real uh our next question is from dr bow regard who said uh anna how do you how do you preppers think about post event time does exile slash isolation last forever that's an interesting question i just um um actually just uh filmed a component uh just a filmed an interview for the history channel which really takes that last week which really takes um up this question preppers um are of of of two minds about this well out their perception when i say there an interesting perception perception by one of the more senior preppers was you really can't prepare for anything everything and there's some things like a nuclear blast that you know you're probably not going to survive so it's an unreasonable expectation if one has access to a bunker the idea of going in the bunker and staying there forever for me personally and it's horrifying you know because one of the elements of that that people aren't thinking about with bunkers and we can trace this all the way back to follow out shelter programs so you know that were that were launched by the kennedy administration you know in 1961 the idea is that people always think about going down into the bunker they don't think about the aftermath what life is going to be like when you come out it might not be a life that you would want to live i mean think about it and this is you know a section where you know my answer is very informal but you know take a look at um how americans have fared with shell shell turning in place alcohol consumption in this country has increased by half domestic violence is also increased there's so just the idea of of sheltering in place when you can really go out go outside you know if you protect yourself has caused a tremendous amount of prepper a tremendous amount of of pressure for individuals thank you our next question is actually one question that i had which was um in your research how did preppers grapple with stigma surrounding prepping activities being for example considered reactionary well you know that they were concerned about stigma they were concerned about things like um being known as a prepper at work and having people confuse the idea of being a prepper with them with you know being a member of a survivalist fringe group that's worried about that has a specific religious philosophy you know a cult you know that is preparing for the end of day they were concerned about that they were concerned about being viewed as a hoarder so they were quite um um um uh quite secretive when i say secretive and the plans you know that they made in not disclosing their um identity um as preppers and i would argue that you know again you know they told me that the pandemic has certainly changed that but you know that certainly is an issue for example being outed at that one individual was very concerned um about being outed as a prepper at work because he felt that it would have negative percussion uh would have negative consequences repercussions so you have individuals sometimes not using their real name um for example when i did my analysis um a lot of new york preppers um as as part of the the prepping network don't disclose where they live only that they live in new york so there's secret you know so so there's um various ways that that um uh they don't disclose their interest in prepping got it thank you uh well i'm not seeing any other questions in the chat box right now um but i'd like to open up the floor to anyone else who might be interested in asking a live question uh while we have doctor bounds on the line um well in that case i guess we'll wrap things up to now um but doctor bounds on behalf of the urban planning program and g sap uh thank you so much for taking the time to present today we really appreciate it thank you so much for meeting with me it's been a real pleasure happy holidays everyone please be safe you as well thank you thanks