- [Voiceover] Disease, solar flares,
earthquakes, famine, climate change,
murderous dictators.
We live in a world that is a constant state of change.
But should we live our lives in fear?
Can we quell that fear with
a certain amount of preparedness?
There is a group of individuals who would answer yes.
You might call them survivalists,
preppers, back woods types.
We've all heard of doomsday preppers,
the people we see on TV hiding out in a bunker
out in the desert somewhere,
storing food by the tons and convinced that the end
is right around the corner.
But in reality, most of them live ordinary, everyday,
productive lives
with normal jobs and a family.
But how much is too much?
Where do we cross the line from prepared to paranoid?
- When you do tell people,
the first thing that they will say to you
is well, I know where I'm going if trouble ever starts
and you just have to look at them and say, like, no.
- We sat down with a prepper
who would only agree to being on camera
if we disguised his face and voice.
Why are you concerned about anonymity?
- The whole point of doing this is that
when something happens, when it goes down,
you're ready for it.
Most people are not.
People who know you
know that you're ready for it,
they think you're gonna help them.
That's the last thing I'm gonna wanna do.
If you had a bunker with, you know,
supplies for a hundred people
and you can tell everybody to come
and people with families do have
enough for their families, obvioiusly,
and they're thinking about that,
but that's what makes it difficult to talk about.
- [Voiceover] The world of prepping is a complicated one.
A lot of people with a serious interest
in emergency preparedness
might shudder at the sensationalized portrayal
of preppers we're so used to seeing in the media.
Christopher Ni-er-jus, by all accounts,
has the kind of skills and knowledge
you'd expect from a prepper.
He's been practicing outdoor survival skills
for decades
and has written many books on the subject.
Unlike our anonymous prepper, however,
Christopher practices what he calls
a minimalist approach to survivalism.
But even he would distance himself
from the survivalist label.
- Every time there was somebody talking about survival
it wasn't about national issues,
it wasn't about inflation,
it wasn't about medical problems,
it wasn't about economic problems,
it wasn't about lack of food,
it was about some nut who is gonna shoot
you for his beans.
And so I quickly distanced myself
from the word survivalist.
But I do teach outdoor survival skills
and basically,
the skills that I teach really fall more into the category
of self reliance,
I mean if you're in the woods and you can take care
of yourself,
this is what Native Americans did.
They weren't surviving, this was every day life.
My survival can't possibly just be me.
Even in a tribal society,
the intelligent ones realize that
their well being and their survival
depended on their relationship with
all the people that can do things that they cannot do well.
- If you go back 50 or 60 years ago,
it's not unusual for families to be heavily prepared.
I think it's a side effect of
the culture that we're living in
that you need to even think about it.
If you go all the way back to
when people mostly lived on farms
or they grew their own food,
preparedness was number one on their list
of priorities all the time.
- Just for daily preparedness,
they had to provide for themselves.
- Yes, they had to make it through the winter
when your crops weren't coming
so you would think ahead about all those things.
But now we just
- Have everything handed to us.
- Yeah, you just assume that
you're gonna be able to go to 7-11
and grab whatever you need,
and if you're stranded somewhere
and you need to get food.
The other thing people think is,
you're gonna be able to, oh, look on your cell phone
and figure out how to kill and skin a rabbit.
You're not gonna have that cell phone.
The very first thing I have right here
when I open this up,
is a leatherman, which is the first thing you should have.
- [Voiceover] Every prepper has what they call
a bug out bag,
an easily accessed collection of survival essentials
for when shit hits the fan.
- I have two firearms in this bag.
There's a Glock 23, which is a smaller
version of a .40 caliber Glock.
The ammo for that's very heavy,
so I only carry 20 rounds,
but that is only for
if another human was trying to attack me.
- [Voiceover] Yeah that's not for hunting,
that's protection.
- Or a bear.
You know when you're all by yourself and you get lonely,
it's good to have friends.
- [Voiceover] Are these retro?
- You never know.
Whatever that means to you,
the end is near,
I always like people to put things, again, in context.
The Japanese had their end is near
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
where they were just incinerated, that was the end.
The Cherokee had their end is near
with the Trail of Tears where a third of the nation died,
I know a variety of people.
Some of them believe that the answer is firearms,
lots and lots of firearms
and lots of ammo
and being able to reload.
They have their point.
I know other people who
it's an obsession to the point
that they're not living life fully now.
- The joke I always make is
I invest a lot in prepping supplies,
but I invest an equal amount in the stock market
because maybe this works.
(interviewer laughs)
- I find that
when you cater to the sensationalist,
it might be good for advertisers to advertise your show,
but for the actual viewer to get something practical,
it's all but just not there.
Is it really likely?
Maybe.
And it'd totally change your way of life instantly
if it happens.
But should we put all of our eggs into one basket?
- [Voiceover] The old saying
hope for the best, prepare for the worst
feels especially poignant here.
But there's another saying,
ignorance is bliss.
Where do you land?
(whoosh)
(creak)