60% of American families have no emergency plan or supplies in
place. People in their early 20s are really keen on having a 72
hour kit or having a month's worth of food.
And what we find that is that it's human nature to engage in what we call
conformity. And I think when in doubt, people do what other people do.
The waters can sweep across and flood all low-lying areas, so no sense
in building a shelter if you're going to be under the water permanently.
Over the last five years, as weather related events have increased in both
frequency and strength, the global emergency relief market has become a
$10.5 billion industry. What once seemed like extreme doomsday preparedness
measures are now becoming the norm.
For years, doomsday preppers were written off as conspiracy theorists.
Now, this used to be tied to the Cold War.
but nowadays this is a fresh, booming business.
According to the World Meteorological Organization,
2016-2020 is projected to be the hottest five year period on
record. Emergency relief revenue saw a 21.7%
increase following the 2017 climate disasters.
For a growing number of consumers, emergency preparedness isn't just
logical, it's a necessity.
Here's how emergency preparedness went from a conspiracy theory obsession
to a multibillion dollar industry.
This is Suddenly Obsessed.
According to the United Kingdom's Stern Review, the likelihood of human
extinction over the next hundred years is about 9.5%, which means the
threat of disaster is very real.
In the last three years alone, California saw the number of acres burned in
wildfires increase from roughly 500,000 in 2017 to nearly
1.5 million in 2020.
Hurricanes also reached record strength in 2017, which was the first time
three category four hurricanes made landfall in the United States in a
single year. Brandon Erikkson, vice president of sales at Emergency Food
Supplier Readywise, says the increase in weather-related disasters has put
emergency food kits in high demand.
Sales have grown probably by five or six times overall.
Readywise, formerly Wise Company, started in 2009 as a response to
the 2008 recession and the steady rise in climate disasters that followed.
Revenue of the business grew by 10 times between 2010 and 2011.
The product was really designed to help people in the event of an emergency
have something to really provide an insurance policy in terms of feeding
your family. Readywise produced over 35 million meals in 2020,
and a 120 serving size bucket like this costs $299 and has a
25 year shelf life. Just because Readywise products are selling well
doesn't mean they taste good, so I'm going to try Readywise's potato and
chicken pot pie. So it looks like the pot pie has a good amount of
dehydrated vegetables.
You can definitely tell these aren't fresh vegetables, but if I had to eat
this for a meal, I don't think I would hate it.
While the brand saw a five fold increase in direct purchases of their
products in 2020, some of their biggest clients are government aid groups
and nonprofit organizations.
Following the 2017 hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency requested 2,000,000 meals from Readywise.
Traditionally, Readywise has seen most of their direct consumer demand come
from coastal areas heavily affected by storms.
But this year, things were different.
If you hope to find hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, shelf stable food,
you might be out of luck right now.
In 2020 we've seen it feels like everybody's buying.
We're shipping it everywhere.
And in some cases, the shipping requests come from underground.
Every day we have people that spend tens of thousands of dollars
on emergency food for their bunker or their second home.
The increase in powerful storms like Sandy and Harvey are not only
impacting how people live, but where they live.
Over the last five years, the U.S.
has witnessed some of the costliest storms on record.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused an estimated $125
billion dollars in damages, temporarily displacing some 30,000 people.
As migration patterns pushed more Americans inland, those who want to take
it one step further have a solution: underground bunkers.
We pick locations based on their
safety, so we have a model, and that is high and dry.
So we want to be very high altitude or as high as we can get.
We also like to be far away from all large bodies of water.
This is South Dakota.
It's mean elevation is about 2,200 feet, and underground are
Vivos bunkers.
Vivos has become, over the 12 years, it's become an institution.
And I would say that it started as...
it was almost urban legend.
Robert Vicino first had the idea for Vivos bunkers in the '80s.
Two decades later, he began buying large, vacant underground spaces,
some former military bunkers.
He then built out shelter spaces for the middle class.
Prices vary for Vivos's dozen or so locations, but the company had a
$7,000 bunk bed option prior to covid-19, and a fully-outfitted,
family-sized bunker at the South Dakota location runs about
$145,000.
And Vicino says sales are up 400% in 2020.
After covid-19 hit the United States, some of his clients even started
living underground full time.
They love it. They love being off the grid.
They love being away so far away from society.
Doomsday bunkers like these were once seen as a taboo investment of the
rich and famous. But during uncertain times, everyday people are going to
extreme measures for a sense of security.
I do think that the people who have tipped via covid and all the other
pandemics we've had in the country, I think that that definitely is going
to lead to an increase in buying behavior in a large majority of the
population. According to Dr.
Chapman, when the brain senses danger, there's an immediate impulse to
engage in group behavior, which explains the nationwide, manic rush to buy
toilet paper at the start of the covid-19 pandemic.
Nobody prepares for a 30% surge in a single category, but that's what they
saw in things like toilet paper.
And what we find that is that it's human nature to engage in what we call
conformity. And I think when in doubt, people do what other people do.
So if you see people at a supermarket, at a target or whatever it may be,
and you find that the bottled water is gone, what you find is, gee,
psychologically, perhaps I need that.
Why is everyone else doing that?
Am I not in the know?
Am I missing something?
So innately, it triggers anxiety in other people, and when in doubt you're
going to conform to what you see, right?
But still, no one really knows when these events are coming, and that
concerns Dr. Chapman.
So anxiety in normal limits is very helpful.
But when it's chronic, in the case of maybe doomsday preparation, I'm
engaging in emotional behaviors to try to prepare for something that may
or may not occur, and therefore that can be pathological at times.
But given reports about global leaders like Bill Gates owning bunkers and
creating underground seed vaults, it's no wonder so many people are trying
to get ahead of an impending global catastrophe.
In the United States, disaster relief funding is distributed from the
Department of Homeland Security via FEMA, which has a $14.5 billion budget
for 2020. But according to IbISWorld, that funding will only grow
marginally over the next 5 years, meaning if climate disasters worsen,
private donors and consumers will have to foot more of the bill for
disaster relief.
We launched JUDY in January 2020, and we are prepared over 10,000
households across every state in America.
It's been huge.
Simon Huck is well-versed in the art of business.
So when he and his business partner had the idea to create a
highly-curated emergency kit, he was determined to see it through.
We knew that based on what we were seeing and the interest that we had
from people who had been in emergencies, that there was a desire for
emergency preparedness.
It just wasn't packaged in the right way.
Huck is the head of an acclaimed entertainment PR group and has close ties
with Hollywood's elite.
But even his circle wasn't immune to emergency preparedness needs.
The genesis for JUDY involved having so many different friends and family
who had been in emergency situations and whether it was a wildfire or a
flood, storm surge, household fire.
And the common denominator in all of these stories was a fundamental lack
of preparedness. JUDY's biggest competition when entering the emergency
relief market with the American Red Cross.
The American Red Cross was chartered by the government in 1905, and it's
the largest government aid organization in the U.S., with revenue reaching
a reported $2.9 billion in 2019.
But their first aid kits are largely designed for medical needs, and
sometimes disasters call for more.
That's where JUDY comes in.
Emergency preparedness isn't sexy.
So we knew when designing it not only from a branding perspective, but
also a marketing perspective, we needed to appeal to people that didn't
want to have those tough conversations.
The JUDY kids range from $45 to $250 and come in for sizes.
The safety kit is filled with basics like gloves, sanitizer, and N95
masks. And the most robust kit, The Safe, comes with six neatly packed
boxes to cover most emergency needs.
And this is one of the most important things in an emergency kit.
It's a hand crank radio.
Hand crank radio is essential for emergencies.
And we have a biohazard bag in the event that you need it.
We also have a dry cloth.
If you're wet, if you're in a hurricane situation, if you're in a flood
situation, this is critically important.
Huck has already sold over 30,000 kits after launching in 2020.
JUDY Kits even made it on to one of the most coveted holiday shopping
lists: Oprah's favorite things.
With climate disasters like hurricanes, floods and fires looming, it's hard
to know what's extreme and what's practical in terms of being prepared.
I think that many people who have a tendency toward anxiety will certainly
use buying behaviors as a precautionary sort of action.
My personal opinion is that, yes, I think companies do take advantage of
that. If 2020 is any measure of what's ahead, doomsday
prepping isn't some fringe experiment for the paranoid or the ultra
wealthy, it's becoming a necessity.