These days, if you have a bunch of Tucson preppers in a room with a doctor teaching them about survival medicine, you’d think one word would definitely come up: Ebola.
But for members of the Southern Arizona Preppers Meet-Up group, the newly arrived hemorrhagic fever is just the latest nightmare scenario they’ve entertained. Earthquakes, financial collapse, hurricanes, martial law, riots and, yes, epidemics are already features on the mental landscape that many preppers inhabit.
The arrival of a new disaster scenario doesn’t necessarily upset the preparations they already have underway.
I attended a meeting of the group Oct. 9 at Martha Cooper Branch Library, where Dr. John Taylor started a series of discussions about medicine amateurs can learn in a post-disaster setting. Ebola didn’t even come up. Amid talk about epi-pens, hemostats and tourniquets, Taylor also told interesting tales of his adventures, in the Army and as a civilian, including a memorable one about shooting a man in Guyana.
The mere existence of such a group once might have been considered an oxymoron. It used to be that disaster-survival tips and plans were whispered among quiet cadres of paranoid survivalists. Now, though, the TV show Doomsday Preppers is on the National Geographic Channel, long-term stores of food are sold at Sam’s Club and Costco, and some people freely share their ideas and plans in public groups.
Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency — the subject of some of America’s most fevered conspiracy theories — recommends that each household have at least 72 hours worth of supplies in case of disaster.
“You don’t have to be a Bible-thumping, camo-clad nutcase,” Todd Smith told me.
He’s the co-organizer of the group that meets at least monthly to discuss practical aspects of preparing for disasters. While the group steers away from politics, it’s clear that Barack Obama‘s presence in the White House accentuates some people’s fears.
Characters such as Luke King and Jennifer Purcell illustrate the conversion of survivalism into prepperism. King is a leader of the Meet-Up group and spent Friday afternoon showing me around his homes west of the Tucson Mountains. I say “homes” because he and his wife Peggy have moved from a one-acre site to a four-acre site, in part for better access to water in case of disaster.
“I’m so worried about water that I moved to a place where I could get a well,” Luke, 69, told me.
At his old place, King showed me his previous method for storing water and gasoline — the same basic idea for both. He filled different-colored, 55-gallon barrels with gasoline or water, put them in what is essentially a tall, raised bed, and filled the area with soil. Only the gasoline valves stuck out. He also stored 1,200 gallons of municipal water in 275-gallon tanks and collected rainwater in other tanks.
King’s top-priority concern is not Ebola — it’s an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, attack. Such an attack could come in the form of a nuclear bomb detonated in the atmosphere above the United States, with an aim of destroying the electrical infrastructure. An EMP could also result from a solar flare.
Imagining the scenario that has become his life’s work, King said: “In future times, there ain’t gonna be a lot of places where you can get stuff. Ain’t gonna be no hardware store. They’ll get looted.”
King’s old place might as well be a hardware store, but without the neat aisles and high prices. The seemingly random stacks of steel, the rusted drawers full of old bolts and nuts, the unrecognizable tools and parts hanging from hooks and sitting in stacks bring the word “hoarder” to mind. But if it applies, it’s hoarding with a purpose.
“If you’ve got enough junk, you’ll be surprised what you can do with it,” King said.
He’s even devised a hand crank for a DC motor that could potentially charge batteries in a worst-case scenario.
Then he showed me the trailer where he really gets down to work. He makes his own ammunition — shotgun shells, .38 Special bullets, you name it, for the variety of firearms he owns and keeps in a safe. In the same trailer he and Peggy have stocked food that would last the two of them for years. Four or five family members could survive perhaps four years on it, he estimated.
The surplus, 6½-gallon buckets that previously held swimming-pool tabs now contain packages of dried potatoes, pasta, dried vegetables, corn meal, corn masa. Then there are roll-out tubs that have, literally, a ton of rice and a ton of beans each. King hits sales at Food City and elsewhere to collect the basic foodstuffs.
After we left his new house, the one with the well, King called me to say he forgot one thing: He also owns an acre near the road to Sasabe that would be his ultimate “bug-out” retreat. It would be a fortified community of preppers, if the disaster is so bad that he and Peggy have to leave their west-side home.
So while King happily shares his knowledge of preparations for disaster in public groups, he also has a toe in the old world of survivalism.
That’s not so much the case with Purcell, 40, who considers herself “a preparedness evangelist.”
“I tell people just to be prudent,” the northwest-side resident told me. “I’m not one of those bunker types and all that. I think it’s prudent to have your bases covered.”
She puts a little money each month toward food, water and medical supplies to be stored in case of disaster.
“Survivalists don’t last long in our group,” Purcell said. “Preppers are about community, whereas survivalists are lone-wolf types.”
Indeed, there are American subcultures where prepping is the community norm. Mormon families are taught to have supplies to last a year in case of disaster. Some non-Mormon preppers turn to LDS teachings and businesses for their knowledge and supplies.
“People say we’re a bunch of doom sayers, and we’re really not,” Todd Smith said. “Most of us would really love nothing to happen.”
“What if nothing happens?” he said, repeating the question many outsiders ask preppers. “I eat the food. I drink the water.”
