Coping With Doomsday

Doomsday prepping has gone mainstream. What was once a fringe fixation tucked away on conspiracy forums has morphed into a booming industry, with everyday people stockpiling, strategising, and spending (a lot) in the name of “being prepared.”

This week, Alice Griffin and Jannah Anderson sit with the existential threats uniquely shaping our generation, the preppers taking that fear to its furthest extreme, the brands that saw an opportunity to sell safety, and ultimately ask whether a state of hypervigilance actually soothes our anxiety or just feeds it. After all, what’s worse: the apocalypse (and the world’s least satisfying “I told you so”), or realising you spent your life waiting for it?

Prepper Used To Be A Dirty Word. But These 'Ordinary' People Think It's Just Sensible Now by Alexandra Koster, SBS Australia

What Doomsday Preppers And Survivalists Can Teach The Rest Of Us, by Anna Levy and Rebecca Cushway, ABC

The ‘Panic Industry’ Boom by Coralie Kraft, The New York Times

The cognitive avoidance theory of worry, Sibrava, N. and Borkovec, T in APA PsycInfo

Blast From The Past

Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans And Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During The COVID-19 Pandemic, by Scrivner, Johnson, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Clasen, ScienceDaily

‘All Of His Guns Will Do Nothing For Him’: Lefty Preppers Are Taking A Different Approach To Doomsday by Aaron Gell, The Guardian

OpenAI Model Hacks Startup After Going Rogue During Testing, ABC

No Worries? Australian Attitudes To National Security, Risk And Resilience, Prof Rory Medcalf AM FAIIA and Tim Wilford, Australian National University

Kennedy, Rockefeller, and Civil Defense by Naomi Kroll Hassebroek, NPS