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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study of preparedness and survivalism in the United States, this communication aims to question conservative reactions to the ecological crisis and the damages it causes.

Paper long abstract:

For many, a damaged world is not just a wounded, soiled or lost world. It is also a dangerous world for which one must "prepare". In the United States, preparedness - as an individual and collective strategy to prepare for and educate against disaster - is attracting a growing number of individuals who are worried about the world to come.

These groups are radically conservative, or even close to ultra-right factions, and are developing unique techniques and discourses on the world to come and its dangers.

If preppers have been anticipating for decades the possibility of a nuclear attack, an immigration "invasion", a new civil war or a pandemic, they now integrate the ecological crisis as a major factor of social and political destabilization which should be anticipated.

By focusing on the affects circulating within this universe - and in particular anger, resentment, and hatred - this presentation intends to document little-known reactions to loss, and to complexify our understanding of ecological sensitivity and of the alternative political projects that it may fuel, including reactionary ones.