Pondering the Apocalyptic Lifestyle

For anyone who has never been to an old-fashioned tent revival you have missed the best form of entertainment ever invented. Hands down, it beats any Broadway show, epic movie, or sporting event in both showmanship and energy. Only at a tent revival can you see a middle-aged preacher man dressed in a black suit do back flips like a teenage gymnast, old and very prudish women writhe on the floor and openly swoon at the preacher, and see hard-core grown men cry openly who at any other time see weeping as a weakness and less than masculine. Of course the main event at such outings is the sermon where the preacher will lay out coming events that usually consist of years of near apocalyptic disasters that culminate in the Rapture with Jesus taking his people from Earth.

For that, reason a certain amount Doomsday philosophy-that the human situation is hopeless-has always clung to such people even though the actual extent of that belief was very thin except in rare cases. Over the years though, other non-religious inspired end of the world scenarios have surfaced drawing their own devotees eagerly awaiting the chaos. Some expect a total global economic meltdown, pandemic, societal collapse, nuclear war, or the federal government going tyrannical to name a few.

While the actual numbers of such people digging shelters and gathering supplies and weapons are few their collective mood, aided by certain unnamed media people, does seep out to the greater public leading to a general idea that we are seeing the last days. My problem here is that to a certain extent I agree, powerful people do use their money and influence to the detriment of the general public, elected officials are little better than a group of five-dollar whores standing on a street corner, and the demands of a materialistic society threaten to wreck the planet. I freely admit that at times I find myself questioning the very basic nature of our society and government believing that nothing can be done to save a people mired in banal pursuits and a country hopelessly corrupted. Some do try to fight but any effort at reform is quickly shot down by entrenched elites looking to protect their positions at all costs.

I wonder though, when does this sense of impending disaster and hopelessness become a self-fulfilling prophecy edging us closer to the abyss? And at what point am I neglecting my family by not preparing for the worst?

More and more Americans preparing for social unrest

From the outside, Jerry Erwin's home in the northwestern US state of Oregon is a nondescript house with a manicured front lawn and little to differentiate it from those of his neighbors.

But tucked away out of sight in his backyard are the signs of his preparations for doomsday, a catastrophic societal collapse that Erwin, 45, now believes is likely within his lifetime.

"I've got, under an awning, stacks of firewood, rain catching in barrels, I've got a shed with barbed concertina wire, like the military uses," he told AFP.

He and his wife also have also stockpiled thousands of rounds of ammunition and enough food for about six months.

"Several years ago I worked on paying off the house, replacing all the windows, and just very recently, I'm proud to say, we've replaced all our exterior doors with more energy-efficient ones, with as much built-in security features as I could get," he told AFP.

"Plus I'm going to be adding some more structural improvements to the door frames to make it hopefully virtually impossible to take a battering ram to them."

Erwin and others like him in the United States and elsewhere see political upheaval and natural disasters as clear signs that civilization is doomed.

"We're hitting on all cylinders as far as symptoms that have led other great powers to decline or collapse: resource depletion, damage to the environment, climate change, those are the same things that affected other great societies," he said.

For Erwin, the decline is irreversible and the best approach is to prepare for the inevitable.

His pessimism is shared by a wide range of people, from left-wing environmentalists who believe climate change and capitalist greed will doom human society to Christian fundamentalists who think sin will do the same.

They label themselves "preppers," "doomers," and "survivalists," and take a variety of different approaches to the same question: How best to prepare for the coming apocalypse?

Jim Rawles, who Erwin describes as "the patron saint of survivalism," prefers an isolationist, Christian-influenced approach.

He homeschooled his children, declines to say where he lives, and advises readers of his website survivalblog.com to "relocate to a safe area and live there year-round."

"When planning your retreat house, think: medieval castle," he adds, extolling the benefits of using sandbags to protect any new home.

Rawles, like many on the most conservative end of the survivalist spectrum, is also anti-tax, pro-gun rights, and suspicious of anything that smacks of socialism.

But the survivalist movement also includes left-wing community activists, who are devoted to living off the land and have never fired a weapon, and people like Chris Martenson, who quit a job with a six-figure salary that he felt was "an unnecessary diversion from the real tasks at hand."

He began growing his own food and developed a "Crash Course" that urges people to better prepare for societal instability. He also took over management of his investments and boasts of a 166 percent return on his portfolio.

For Martenson, the wake-up call was the September 11, 2001 attacks, when he felt gripped by uncertainty and totally unprepared.

Erwin had always felt that society would eventually disintegrate, but he and many other US survivalists say the dysfunctional response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina was what spurred them to action.

"I thought, okay, things are not going to get better... maybe this society, our civilization, the American empire, will collapse during my lifetime," Erwin said.

For John Milandred, no single event pushed him to leave his suburban home and set up a farm in Oklahoma.

"We just got fed up of working all the time to pay bills and not accomplishing anything," he said.

A member of the American Preppers Network, Milandred said he and his wife aspired to "grow our own foods and be self sufficient... to live like the pioneers, like our great-grandparents."

It is unclear how many people subscribe to the lifestyle, but there are hundreds of websites devoted to the movement, and Erwin's surburban-self-reliance.com attracts visitors from around the world.

The global financial crisis has increased interest in survivalism "bigtime," Erwin said, but he feels sorry for latecomers to the movement.

"We'll help them if we can," he said. "But a lot of people are climbing on board at the last minute and its going to be hard for them."