Paper short abstract:

Preparing oneself for a future crisis is at the core of prepper culture. This calls for material preparations as well as development of skills, but is also predicated on imaginaries of the future – often based on past and current events, serving as ‘portents’ of things to come.

Paper long abstract:

The interest in prepping – i.e., the practice of preparing oneself and one’s household for a future crisis – has grown in Sweden and other western countries in recent years. As a cultural phenomenon, prepping exists at the intersection of sub-cultural community, hobby activity and civil defense – often focusing on the development of skills and material ‘prepps’. In short, prepping can be understood as consumption for the future within an unsustainable society, where preparations in the here-and-now are ways of managing and investing material resources as well as emotions for an uncertain future. Numerous blogs, podcast and social media forums have popped up, dedicated to how individuals can take steps towards becoming more prepared while also setting a stage for shared cultural imaginaries of the future. It is a question of being prepared when – not if – disaster strikes. Because of this, a substantial portion of prepping practices consists of gathering, sharing and interpreting signs of things to come – be they the looming environmental disaster, traced in wildfires and flash floods, or the threat of social repression in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent societal restrictions. Drawing on digital ethnography and interviews with Swedish preppers, this paper will examine how past and contemporary events are used as portents for predicting future needs for preparation within prepper culture, highlighting the aspiration to handle uncertainty as well as the emotionally ambivalent orientations emerging from anticipating catastrophic futures.