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JFK: One Day in America - Who Killed JFK? | MEGA EPISODE | National Geographic
Showing posts with label national geographic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national geographic. Show all posts
Sunday, May 24, 2026
Monday, January 27, 2025
Do Doomsday 'preppers' have a point? Here's what we can learn from them.
In an age of record-breaking hurricanes and global pandemics, preparing for the worst no longer seems so far-fetched. Here are some of the key lessons you can learn from doomsday preppers.
Photograph By Roger Kisby/Redux
By Rosemary Counter
July 25, 2024
Amid Costo’s already stocked shelves of oversized jars of peanut butter and 12-pack macaroni and cheeses, there’s a hardcore new addition that is lighting up social media: The Readywise 150 Serving Emergency Food Bucket. For $100, the bucket includes 80 dinners, 30 breakfasts, and 40 energy drinks with a shelf life of—prepare yourself for this—25 long years.
“In a world where unpredictability has become a constant,” reads the description, “our assortment takes on a vital role in emergency preparedness. Imagine the sudden onset of severe weather, the challenges of unexpected job transitions, or the unsettling thought of food shortages.”
This isn’t hard to imagine, as recent years have given us plenty of examples: the COVID-19 pandemic, obviously, but also Californian wildfires, the Great Texas Freeze, Kentucky floods and mudslides, and hurricanes Beryl, Idalia, and Ian. Extreme weather events are happening more often and with more severity; even the American Government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which used to recommend every American home have a 72-hour self-sufficiency plan, quietly tweaked its minimum to at least 72 hours and its recommendation to a full week.
(Instead of "natural disasters," should we call them "disasters of our own making"?)
Flashlights. Tape. A survival blanket. These are all components of one man's "go bag"—or "bug out bag"—photographed at the Kansas City Survival Expo & Gun Show in Missouri. Survivalists and Doomsday preppers have long been prepared for the worst but as climate change wreaks havoc on our planet, we could all learn from their tips.
Photograph By Roger Kisby/Redux
By Rosemary Counter
July 25, 2024
Amid Costo’s already stocked shelves of oversized jars of peanut butter and 12-pack macaroni and cheeses, there’s a hardcore new addition that is lighting up social media: The Readywise 150 Serving Emergency Food Bucket. For $100, the bucket includes 80 dinners, 30 breakfasts, and 40 energy drinks with a shelf life of—prepare yourself for this—25 long years.
“In a world where unpredictability has become a constant,” reads the description, “our assortment takes on a vital role in emergency preparedness. Imagine the sudden onset of severe weather, the challenges of unexpected job transitions, or the unsettling thought of food shortages.”
This isn’t hard to imagine, as recent years have given us plenty of examples: the COVID-19 pandemic, obviously, but also Californian wildfires, the Great Texas Freeze, Kentucky floods and mudslides, and hurricanes Beryl, Idalia, and Ian. Extreme weather events are happening more often and with more severity; even the American Government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which used to recommend every American home have a 72-hour self-sufficiency plan, quietly tweaked its minimum to at least 72 hours and its recommendation to a full week.
(Instead of "natural disasters," should we call them "disasters of our own making"?)
Saturday, February 04, 2023
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Saturday, December 17, 2016
National Geographic Makes History With Transgender Cover Girl
QUEER VOICES
The stunning issue coincides with a new documentary.
1 day ago | Updated 19 hours ago
Curtis M. Wong Queer Voices Senior Editor, The Huffington Post
In what’s being touted as a first for the magazine, National Geographic will kick off 2017 by featuring a transgender person on its cover.
A stunning photo of 9-year-old Avery Jackson will appear on the subscriber’s edition of the magazine, which can be found below. “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy,” Jackson says in a caption accompanying the cover image, shot by Robin Hammond.
ROBIN HAMMOND/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAvery Jackson, 9, covers the subscriber's edition of National Geographic's "Gender Revolution" issue in January.
The “Gender Revolution” issue, which hits newsstands nationwide on Dec. 27, examines the “cultural, social, biological and personal” aspects of gender identity, according to a press release. Features include “Dangerous Lives of Girls,” which follows the lives of young women in Sierra Leone, and “Rethinking Gender,” which examines how science can help “navigate the shifting landscape of gender identity.”
National Geographic’s Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg told NBC Out that the magazine’s staff was inspired by gender’s omnipresence in the national conversation in creating the issue.
“We wanted to look at how traditional gender roles play out all over the world, but also look into gender as a spectrum,” Goldberg said. “There’s lots of coverage on celebrities, but there wasn’t an understanding on real people and the issues we face every day in classrooms or workplaces in regards to gender.”
The issue comes just ahead of the release of a two-hour documentary, “Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric,” which will cover “everything you wanted to know about gender but were afraid to ask,” according to Couric. That documentary will debut on National Geographic on Feb. 6.
Given the challenges facing the LGBTQ community in the years ahead, the timing of this issue couldn’t feel more appropriate. Bravo, NatGeo!
The “Gender Revolution” issue, which hits newsstands nationwide on Dec. 27, examines the “cultural, social, biological and personal” aspects of gender identity, according to a press release. Features include “Dangerous Lives of Girls,” which follows the lives of young women in Sierra Leone, and “Rethinking Gender,” which examines how science can help “navigate the shifting landscape of gender identity.”
National Geographic’s Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg told NBC Out that the magazine’s staff was inspired by gender’s omnipresence in the national conversation in creating the issue.
“We wanted to look at how traditional gender roles play out all over the world, but also look into gender as a spectrum,” Goldberg said. “There’s lots of coverage on celebrities, but there wasn’t an understanding on real people and the issues we face every day in classrooms or workplaces in regards to gender.”
The issue comes just ahead of the release of a two-hour documentary, “Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric,” which will cover “everything you wanted to know about gender but were afraid to ask,” according to Couric. That documentary will debut on National Geographic on Feb. 6.
Given the challenges facing the LGBTQ community in the years ahead, the timing of this issue couldn’t feel more appropriate. Bravo, NatGeo!
Thursday, December 24, 2015
A 'most powerful woman' – National Geographic's major hat tip to the Virgin Mary
Mary. Credit: Wendell via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) filter added.
Washington D.C., Dec 23, 2015 / 06:02 pm (CNA).- Our Lady. Blessed Mother. Virgin Mary. Queen of Peace. Theotokos. Handmaid of the Lord. Mother Mary.
These are just some of the titles used to describe the young woman to whom an angel appeared some 2,000 years ago with the message that she would conceive and bear the Savior of the World.
Mary has very few recorded words in the New Testament, but her worldwide devotion spans across time, cultures and even religions.
In a Nov. 8 feature for National Geographic, “How the Virgin Mary Became the World’s Most Powerful Woman,” Maureen Orth explores the worldwide phenomenon of devotion to the Mother of God in anticipation of the Dec. 13 National Geographic Channel special, “The Cult of Mary.”
In her piece, Orth spoke with Marian scholars and experts and even followed pilgrims to Marian apparition sites to learn more about this “most powerful woman.”
“We see the relationship of Mary with us isn’t just any relationship – it’s sacred,” María Enriqueta García, who did her sacred theology dissertation at the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton, told Orth.
The idea of Mary as an intercessor before God comes from scripture at the Wedding Feast of Cana, when Jesus performs his first miracle after his mother’s prompting of, “They have no wine” followed by her instruction to the servers to, “Do whatever he tells you.”
“Since then no other woman has been as exalted as Mary,” Orth said. “As a universal symbol of maternal love, as well as of suffering and sacrifice, Mary is often the touchstone of our longing for meaning, a more accessible link to the supernatural than formal church teachings. Her mantle offers both security and protection.”
For her story, Orth accompanied pilgrims around the world to Marian apparition sites including Lourdes, Kibeho, Mexico City, and even Medjugorje – where apparitions are said to still be occurring and the Vatican has not yet ruled on its authenticity.
In Kibeho, Rwanda she met with Anathalie Mukamazimpaka, one of the young women to whom the Virgin Mary appeared from 1981 to 1983 with the message of repentance and foretold the events of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
“The first time she appeared,” Anathalie said, “I was reciting the rosary, and she called me by my name … She never told me why she chose me. She said she appears to anyone she wants, anytime she wants, anywhere she wants,” Anathalie said. “She only asks us to love her as much as she loves us.”
Mary even helped give a nation their identity, Orth said, in the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe with Mexico.
“Anyone witnessing the outpouring of love and devotion that pilgrims demonstrate for their beloved Madre on the days leading up to the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe … can see that the Virgin Mary is deeply embedded in Mexican hearts and souls,” Orth said as she followed pilgrims to Mexico City where St. Juan Diego’s tilma bearing the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is still intact and on display.
In addition to Christians, Muslims hold the Blessed Mother in high regard, Orth said, noting that her name appears more in the Koran than in the New Testament.
“So the Virgin Mary is not at all strange to Muslims,” Fr. Johann Roten, director of research and special projects at the University of Dayton’s Marian Library, said.
“In fact, wherever there is a connection between Christians and Muslims – or any two groups that know and love her – there is a common value in the covenant mother.”
In Egypt, Orth spoke with Muslims who were drawn to churches because of their devotion to Mary.
“Her story tells us a lot of things,” a young Muslim woman praying outside the Abu Serga church on Easter said. “She is able to face lots of hardships in her life because of her faith, her belief in God.”
This article was originally published on CNA Nov. 10, 2015.
Washington D.C., Dec 23, 2015 / 06:02 pm (CNA).- Our Lady. Blessed Mother. Virgin Mary. Queen of Peace. Theotokos. Handmaid of the Lord. Mother Mary.
These are just some of the titles used to describe the young woman to whom an angel appeared some 2,000 years ago with the message that she would conceive and bear the Savior of the World.
Mary has very few recorded words in the New Testament, but her worldwide devotion spans across time, cultures and even religions.
In a Nov. 8 feature for National Geographic, “How the Virgin Mary Became the World’s Most Powerful Woman,” Maureen Orth explores the worldwide phenomenon of devotion to the Mother of God in anticipation of the Dec. 13 National Geographic Channel special, “The Cult of Mary.”
In her piece, Orth spoke with Marian scholars and experts and even followed pilgrims to Marian apparition sites to learn more about this “most powerful woman.”
“We see the relationship of Mary with us isn’t just any relationship – it’s sacred,” María Enriqueta García, who did her sacred theology dissertation at the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton, told Orth.
The idea of Mary as an intercessor before God comes from scripture at the Wedding Feast of Cana, when Jesus performs his first miracle after his mother’s prompting of, “They have no wine” followed by her instruction to the servers to, “Do whatever he tells you.”
“Since then no other woman has been as exalted as Mary,” Orth said. “As a universal symbol of maternal love, as well as of suffering and sacrifice, Mary is often the touchstone of our longing for meaning, a more accessible link to the supernatural than formal church teachings. Her mantle offers both security and protection.”
For her story, Orth accompanied pilgrims around the world to Marian apparition sites including Lourdes, Kibeho, Mexico City, and even Medjugorje – where apparitions are said to still be occurring and the Vatican has not yet ruled on its authenticity.
In Kibeho, Rwanda she met with Anathalie Mukamazimpaka, one of the young women to whom the Virgin Mary appeared from 1981 to 1983 with the message of repentance and foretold the events of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
“The first time she appeared,” Anathalie said, “I was reciting the rosary, and she called me by my name … She never told me why she chose me. She said she appears to anyone she wants, anytime she wants, anywhere she wants,” Anathalie said. “She only asks us to love her as much as she loves us.”
Mary even helped give a nation their identity, Orth said, in the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe with Mexico.
“Anyone witnessing the outpouring of love and devotion that pilgrims demonstrate for their beloved Madre on the days leading up to the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe … can see that the Virgin Mary is deeply embedded in Mexican hearts and souls,” Orth said as she followed pilgrims to Mexico City where St. Juan Diego’s tilma bearing the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is still intact and on display.
In addition to Christians, Muslims hold the Blessed Mother in high regard, Orth said, noting that her name appears more in the Koran than in the New Testament.
“So the Virgin Mary is not at all strange to Muslims,” Fr. Johann Roten, director of research and special projects at the University of Dayton’s Marian Library, said.
“In fact, wherever there is a connection between Christians and Muslims – or any two groups that know and love her – there is a common value in the covenant mother.”
In Egypt, Orth spoke with Muslims who were drawn to churches because of their devotion to Mary.
“Her story tells us a lot of things,” a young Muslim woman praying outside the Abu Serga church on Easter said. “She is able to face lots of hardships in her life because of her faith, her belief in God.”
This article was originally published on CNA Nov. 10, 2015.
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Saturday, January 26, 2013
National Geographic:- The Desert Seas
Notice: I don't believe in the Theory of Evolution, so I do not agree with the so-called experts when they speak of millions of years ago or 10 thousand years ago. The Earth is about 6 thousand years old.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2012
For 'preppers,' every day could be doomsday
Chuck Raasch @craasch USA TODAY
Scott Hunt shows how to build a fire in a small BioLIte stove which he is using to charge a cellular phone,. The stove converts heat from the fire into usable electricity.(Photo: By Tim Loehrke, USA TODAY)
Scott Hunt shows how to build a fire in a small BioLIte stove which he is using to charge a cellular phone,. The stove converts heat from the fire into usable electricity.(Photo: By Tim Loehrke, USA TODAY)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The burgeoning "prepper" movement prepares for the end of civilization
Prepping has achieved cohesion and community in the Internet age
Some observers suggest energies could be better spent working for peace
5:50AM EST November 13. 2012 - Braxton Southwick is convinced a weaponized smallpox terrorist attack, or something similarly horrible, is inevitable.
He's read Revelations. He watches news about nuclear saber rattling, financial meltdowns, mega-storms rendering populations helpless for days. He is 40, and his research has led him to believe a biological attack "will happen in my lifetime."
Terrorists, he says, "would like to get a nuclear weapon, but I'm sure they'd take a pint of smallpox."
So Southwick and his wife, Kara, also 40, and their six children, ages 13-21, have stored 700 pounds of flour, 600 pounds of sugar, 800 pounds of wheat, water, gas, diesel fuel, chemical suits, coal, charcoal, 14 guns and eight chickens. They're ready to haul it in trucks and trailers to a cabin redoubt 90 minutes from their home in the West Jordan suburb of Salt Lake City if calamity hits.
They are part of a burgeoning "prepper" movement that believes preparing for the end of civilization is more rational than ridiculing those who do. Once viewed largely as a practice by survivalists on the fringe, prepping has achieved cohesion and community in the Internet age through best-selling writers, bloggers, risk assessors, conspiracy theorists and companies that cater to preppers' needs.
The number of preppers is unknown, but a poll done for National Geographic Channel in September indicated that 28% of Americans knew one. Preppers meet-up networks are proliferating on social networks. Doomsday Preppers is the network's most-watched series, and the Southwicks are featured in the series premiere Tuesday night.
Getting ready for the end is not new, of course, or strictly American. Recall how people across the USA dug fallout shelters during the Cold War. Doomsday prophets have been around as long as civilization. The federal government was the ultimate prepper during the Cold War.
One of that era's icons remains — a massive underground bunker designed to protect all 535 members of Congress and their aides against nuclear war. Dug into the Allegheny Mountains at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., it once had 75,000 gallons of water, a power system, medical and food services, 30-ton blast doors, art of the last days of Pompeii and a mural of Washington scenery that was capable of changing leaves on the trees, depending on the season.
After its cover was blown by a story in The Washington Post in 1992, the bunker was abandoned by the government as an emergency destination.
Almost 10 years later, the chaos of 9/11 prompted further calls for doomsday contingencies to protect the nation's leaders and sustain the government.
You can tour this slice of underground history today. After the Southwicks visited the bunker recently, they said they felt even more strongly about the need to prepare. Their family reflects a new preparedness instinct that has been growing since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After that shock, the government urged people to store food, buy duct tape and roll water barrels into their basements.
Some went further.
Shelter builders saw a flurry of business right after 9/11, again after the financial meltdown in 2008, and in 2010, when predictions of a Dec. 21 end of the world — derived from interpretations of a Mayan calendar — hit popular culture.
Skeptics question movement
John Hoopes, a University of Kansas anthropologist and archaeologist, has spent much time debunking the Mayan end-of-the-world predictions, arguing they are "contemporary hype ... invented by our culture and promoted by the mass media." He blames, in part, a junk-science hangover from the psychedelic drug culture of the 1960s.
Although it is prudent to prepare for storms or power outages, Hoopes says, going underground based on predictions from a long-vanished culture is simply irrational. As for the prepper movement, he urges perspective. There have always been storms and earthquakes and threats from the unknown, he says — they just weren't tweeted in real time.
Kenneth Rose, a University of California-Chico professor and author of One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, says the prepper movement raises "neighbor vs. neighbor" scenarios and "troubling class issues."
"Will the well-to-do only be able to afford these types of activities?" he asks.
"Frankly, I think people should put their energy into making a more peaceful world, rather than contemplating saving their own skins," Rose says, adding that there is "no threat now that compares with the threat of nuclear annihilation" during the Cold War.
BRACING FOR THE END
Nine out of 10 Americans expect a world disaster to occur in the next quarter century, yet 56% say they aren’t prepared, according to a survey conducted for National Geographic Channel. The percentage in the survey of 1,040 adults who predicted the following catastrophes:
Significant hurricane: 58%
Major earthquake: 53%
Terrorist attack: 51%
Financial collapse: 49%
Widespread blackout: 33%
Pandemic: 25%
Nuclear fallout: 13%
Source: Kelton Research for National Geographic Channel
The premiere of the second season of National Geographic Channel’s seriesDoomsday Preppers airs at 9 and 10 pm ET on Tuesday.
Preppers don't buy that. Jay Blevins, a former deputy sheriff and SWAT officer in Berryville, Va., says social unrest from a financial meltdown could be devastating. He has formed a prepper network of family and friends, people with varying skills such as knifemaking. They'd help one another in such a calamity. He says his Christian faith drives him to help others prepare, and although he is not certain the end is near, he thinks getting prepared is an act of personal responsibility.
"We watch and pray," he says of his family's view toward doomsday scenarios.
Some preppers have considered ramping up efforts since President Obama's re-election last week, convinced it means the economy will soon collapse in a cascade of debt. Some are convinced Iran or another enemy is developing an electromagnetic pulse weapon that would wipe out the power, communication and transportation grids, rendering useless any device with a microchip.
Like the Southwicks — he a mechanic and former professional bike racer, she an employee of a financial company — some preppers live normal lives on the surface. Underneath, they are prepared to live in a world apart.
The Southwicks are part of a seven-family neighborhood group that vacations together and makes doomsday plans together. The neighbors know they can camp out at the cabin, Braxton says.
Others featured on Doomsday Preppers are more out there — literally. Robert and Debbie Earl, retired Florida chicken farmers, worry about the seas rising. So they are building a home constructed of old tires and sand-filled bottles near Alpine, Texas. Robert Earl describes himself as "Mad Max meets Rube Goldberg with a little bit of Al Gore thrown in."
A vulnerable world
A veritable industry has sprung up around the prepper movement. James Rawles, author of the non-fiction book How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It and a pair of best-selling novels on survival, says 130,000 people regularly read his survivalblog.com, where he and numerous contributors provide tips on how to prepare. The former Army intelligence officer has 40 advertisers selling everything from seeds to silver, and 30 more advertisers on a waiting list.
"It's a growing recognition we live in a very fragile, very interdependent society, with long chains of supply and an increasing dependence on the power grid," says Rawles, who won't say where he lives. "That dependence increases every passing year, and the vulnerability of the infrastructure to technological destruction increases by the year."
He says Superstorm Sandy's devastating impact on the populous Northeast ought to make the need for prepping obvious.
"If anybody had any doubts, if anybody was teasing their neighbors before Sandy" for storing food or preparing a "bugout bag" of essentials, he says, "they are not doing that anymore."
The day after Obama was re-elected, Rowles posted, "Several readers have written to ask me if I plan to stock up on more ammunition and magazines, now that the gun grabbers have further cemented their hold on Washington, D.C. My answer: No. I already have lots of ammunition and magazines."
The business of prepping
Scott Hunt, who co-founded a South Carolina company called Practical Preppers, says phone calls from potential customers increased the day after Election Day. "I am not going to make that correlation," Hunt says, "but you can."
Twenty months ago, Hunt, an engineer, and Dave Kobler, a military veteran, started Practical Preppers to advise people how to stockpile and defend their homes.
Business for Hardened Structures, an engineering firm based in Virginia Beach, is up roughly 40% since 2005, co-owner Brian Camden says. Some of his clients buy gold and silver and other precious metals as a hedge against a possible collapse of the currency, and they want to be able to protect it and their families, he says. So his company designs ways to build underground bunkers, strengthen walls and improve security systems on homes.
Camden says he thinks a grid-destroying electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare is the most likely threat but "after interviewing clients for 20 years, the one thing I do know is no one knows for sure what will happen."
"The rise of al-Qaeda, Islamic terrorism, political divisions here in the U.S., the rich getting richer, the separation of the economic classes," he says, describing what drives customers to him. "At the end of the day, it is asset protection. Most people identify their family as their most important asset. This is a family insurance policy."
The Southwicks sure see it that way. Braxton says his Christian faith turned him into an evangelist, urging people to prepare.
Braxton wrote a book, A Letter to My Friends, that includes the basics he preaches: Have emergency food and water in your home, have a "bugout bag" for every person that includes water, food, clothes, a thumb drive of your financial and other vital information, and other essentials.
Kara Southwick portrays herself as "more of a realist" and is not convinced that the threats are as dire as her husband portrays them. But, she says, "We prepare for everything."
Braxton and Kara Southwick from Utah offer a tour of a declassified bunker. They will star in the upcoming National Geographic Channel show 'Doomsday Preppers,' featuring Americans stockpiling for the end of the world. NGC conducted an online survey with 1,040 people to find out how they would spend their final days. Here are some of the results. By Tim Loehrke, USA TODAY
Terrorists, he says, "would like to get a nuclear weapon, but I'm sure they'd take a pint of smallpox."
So Southwick and his wife, Kara, also 40, and their six children, ages 13-21, have stored 700 pounds of flour, 600 pounds of sugar, 800 pounds of wheat, water, gas, diesel fuel, chemical suits, coal, charcoal, 14 guns and eight chickens. They're ready to haul it in trucks and trailers to a cabin redoubt 90 minutes from their home in the West Jordan suburb of Salt Lake City if calamity hits.
They are part of a burgeoning "prepper" movement that believes preparing for the end of civilization is more rational than ridiculing those who do. Once viewed largely as a practice by survivalists on the fringe, prepping has achieved cohesion and community in the Internet age through best-selling writers, bloggers, risk assessors, conspiracy theorists and companies that cater to preppers' needs.
The number of preppers is unknown, but a poll done for National Geographic Channel in September indicated that 28% of Americans knew one. Preppers meet-up networks are proliferating on social networks. Doomsday Preppers is the network's most-watched series, and the Southwicks are featured in the series premiere Tuesday night.
Getting ready for the end is not new, of course, or strictly American. Recall how people across the USA dug fallout shelters during the Cold War. Doomsday prophets have been around as long as civilization. The federal government was the ultimate prepper during the Cold War.
One of that era's icons remains — a massive underground bunker designed to protect all 535 members of Congress and their aides against nuclear war. Dug into the Allegheny Mountains at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., it once had 75,000 gallons of water, a power system, medical and food services, 30-ton blast doors, art of the last days of Pompeii and a mural of Washington scenery that was capable of changing leaves on the trees, depending on the season.
After its cover was blown by a story in The Washington Post in 1992, the bunker was abandoned by the government as an emergency destination.
Almost 10 years later, the chaos of 9/11 prompted further calls for doomsday contingencies to protect the nation's leaders and sustain the government.
You can tour this slice of underground history today. After the Southwicks visited the bunker recently, they said they felt even more strongly about the need to prepare. Their family reflects a new preparedness instinct that has been growing since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After that shock, the government urged people to store food, buy duct tape and roll water barrels into their basements.
Some went further.
Shelter builders saw a flurry of business right after 9/11, again after the financial meltdown in 2008, and in 2010, when predictions of a Dec. 21 end of the world — derived from interpretations of a Mayan calendar — hit popular culture.
Skeptics question movement
John Hoopes, a University of Kansas anthropologist and archaeologist, has spent much time debunking the Mayan end-of-the-world predictions, arguing they are "contemporary hype ... invented by our culture and promoted by the mass media." He blames, in part, a junk-science hangover from the psychedelic drug culture of the 1960s.
Although it is prudent to prepare for storms or power outages, Hoopes says, going underground based on predictions from a long-vanished culture is simply irrational. As for the prepper movement, he urges perspective. There have always been storms and earthquakes and threats from the unknown, he says — they just weren't tweeted in real time.
Kenneth Rose, a University of California-Chico professor and author of One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, says the prepper movement raises "neighbor vs. neighbor" scenarios and "troubling class issues."
"Will the well-to-do only be able to afford these types of activities?" he asks.
"Frankly, I think people should put their energy into making a more peaceful world, rather than contemplating saving their own skins," Rose says, adding that there is "no threat now that compares with the threat of nuclear annihilation" during the Cold War.
BRACING FOR THE END
Nine out of 10 Americans expect a world disaster to occur in the next quarter century, yet 56% say they aren’t prepared, according to a survey conducted for National Geographic Channel. The percentage in the survey of 1,040 adults who predicted the following catastrophes:
Significant hurricane: 58%
Major earthquake: 53%
Terrorist attack: 51%
Financial collapse: 49%
Widespread blackout: 33%
Pandemic: 25%
Nuclear fallout: 13%
Source: Kelton Research for National Geographic Channel
The premiere of the second season of National Geographic Channel’s seriesDoomsday Preppers airs at 9 and 10 pm ET on Tuesday.
Preppers don't buy that. Jay Blevins, a former deputy sheriff and SWAT officer in Berryville, Va., says social unrest from a financial meltdown could be devastating. He has formed a prepper network of family and friends, people with varying skills such as knifemaking. They'd help one another in such a calamity. He says his Christian faith drives him to help others prepare, and although he is not certain the end is near, he thinks getting prepared is an act of personal responsibility.
"We watch and pray," he says of his family's view toward doomsday scenarios.
Some preppers have considered ramping up efforts since President Obama's re-election last week, convinced it means the economy will soon collapse in a cascade of debt. Some are convinced Iran or another enemy is developing an electromagnetic pulse weapon that would wipe out the power, communication and transportation grids, rendering useless any device with a microchip.
Like the Southwicks — he a mechanic and former professional bike racer, she an employee of a financial company — some preppers live normal lives on the surface. Underneath, they are prepared to live in a world apart.
The Southwicks are part of a seven-family neighborhood group that vacations together and makes doomsday plans together. The neighbors know they can camp out at the cabin, Braxton says.
Others featured on Doomsday Preppers are more out there — literally. Robert and Debbie Earl, retired Florida chicken farmers, worry about the seas rising. So they are building a home constructed of old tires and sand-filled bottles near Alpine, Texas. Robert Earl describes himself as "Mad Max meets Rube Goldberg with a little bit of Al Gore thrown in."
A vulnerable world
A veritable industry has sprung up around the prepper movement. James Rawles, author of the non-fiction book How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It and a pair of best-selling novels on survival, says 130,000 people regularly read his survivalblog.com, where he and numerous contributors provide tips on how to prepare. The former Army intelligence officer has 40 advertisers selling everything from seeds to silver, and 30 more advertisers on a waiting list.
"It's a growing recognition we live in a very fragile, very interdependent society, with long chains of supply and an increasing dependence on the power grid," says Rawles, who won't say where he lives. "That dependence increases every passing year, and the vulnerability of the infrastructure to technological destruction increases by the year."
He says Superstorm Sandy's devastating impact on the populous Northeast ought to make the need for prepping obvious.
"If anybody had any doubts, if anybody was teasing their neighbors before Sandy" for storing food or preparing a "bugout bag" of essentials, he says, "they are not doing that anymore."
The day after Obama was re-elected, Rowles posted, "Several readers have written to ask me if I plan to stock up on more ammunition and magazines, now that the gun grabbers have further cemented their hold on Washington, D.C. My answer: No. I already have lots of ammunition and magazines."
The business of prepping
Scott Hunt, who co-founded a South Carolina company called Practical Preppers, says phone calls from potential customers increased the day after Election Day. "I am not going to make that correlation," Hunt says, "but you can."
Twenty months ago, Hunt, an engineer, and Dave Kobler, a military veteran, started Practical Preppers to advise people how to stockpile and defend their homes.
Business for Hardened Structures, an engineering firm based in Virginia Beach, is up roughly 40% since 2005, co-owner Brian Camden says. Some of his clients buy gold and silver and other precious metals as a hedge against a possible collapse of the currency, and they want to be able to protect it and their families, he says. So his company designs ways to build underground bunkers, strengthen walls and improve security systems on homes.
Camden says he thinks a grid-destroying electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare is the most likely threat but "after interviewing clients for 20 years, the one thing I do know is no one knows for sure what will happen."
"The rise of al-Qaeda, Islamic terrorism, political divisions here in the U.S., the rich getting richer, the separation of the economic classes," he says, describing what drives customers to him. "At the end of the day, it is asset protection. Most people identify their family as their most important asset. This is a family insurance policy."
The Southwicks sure see it that way. Braxton says his Christian faith turned him into an evangelist, urging people to prepare.
Braxton wrote a book, A Letter to My Friends, that includes the basics he preaches: Have emergency food and water in your home, have a "bugout bag" for every person that includes water, food, clothes, a thumb drive of your financial and other vital information, and other essentials.
Kara Southwick portrays herself as "more of a realist" and is not convinced that the threats are as dire as her husband portrays them. But, she says, "We prepare for everything."
Braxton and Kara Southwick from Utah offer a tour of a declassified bunker. They will star in the upcoming National Geographic Channel show 'Doomsday Preppers,' featuring Americans stockpiling for the end of the world. NGC conducted an online survey with 1,040 people to find out how they would spend their final days. Here are some of the results. By Tim Loehrke, USA TODAY
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
National Geographic TV : Shows : Doomsday Preppers
About the Show
Doomsday Preppers explores the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it. Unique in their beliefs, motivations, and strategies, preppers will go to whatever lengths they can to make sure they are prepared for any of life’s uncertainties. And with our expert’s assessment, they will find out their chances of survival if their worst fears become a reality.
Source: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/
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