A lockdown-stricken and war-fearing generation of young Americans “realizing how fragile our systems are” reported the highest percentages of “doomsday prepping” ahead of 2024.
Though percentages have cooled some from the prior year’s survey, data collected by Finder.com continued to show Millennials and Gen Z-ers leading the way over older generations in making some kind of emergency preparedness purchase. According to their data, out of the 29% of Americans overall planning for future disasters, 39% and 40% of the younger generations were taking those measures respectively.
Speaking with Fox News Digital, Millennial YouTuber Brekke Wagoner of the Sustainable Prepping channel said, "I think for the first time, a lot of Millennials and Gen Zers are realizing how fragile our systems are."
"We've grown up in a time in which technology has meant we've had grocery stores that were always stocked and you can get anything from Amazon in 24 hours," she continued. "Then all of a sudden the pandemic and some uncertainties in our national and international politics has made us rethink how all of these systems are not as stable as we assumed."
Results from Finder.com found during 2020 58% of Millennials and 59% of Gen Z-ers had begun to make purchases to prepare after the fact. The same was true of 45% of all Americans.
"In my work, I see younger people worried about a repeat of a COVID-type event and the types of disruption it can bring to daily life," said Southern Illinois University anthropology professor Chad Huddleston, though he drew a distinction between their purchases and what is widely considered "prepping."
"I would not categorize this behavior as 'prepping' or 'doomsday prepping.' The vast majority of people buying some extra toilet paper and canned goods while shopping are not preppers. Preppers take on those activities as part of their identity based in adaptive behaviors," he contended to Fox News Digital. "For the most part, this is not that and, in my work, I have not seen younger people decrying the end of society or any kind of 'civil war.'"
The majority of Americans making preparedness purchases were said to have been obtaining food and water, on average $146 worth, while the next most common purchase was toilet paper followed by medical supplies, survival kits, and squirreling away money.
Addressing the concerns motivating the purchases, CEO of Fortitude Collapse Preparedness and Fortitude Ranch Drew Miller told the outlet, "I guess a lot of it is driven by the concern over [a] possible civil war next year if the election goes badly, as many people think it will."
"Our people have known for a long time that when there's an electric grid failure or a real pandemic...that people won't go to work, there won't be food, and they'll starve if you don't have preparations," added Miller.
In addition to growing sentiments driving the desire to be prepared, Patrick McCall, president of the McCall Risk Group firm, spoke to the market's response and the growing number of consumer options.
"The number of sites I think that were selling these [emergency preparedness] things or the number of places that were offering this type of stuff on the Internet was very scarce [in 2017]. Obviously, then we got into COVID, which created its own dilemmas and own kind of prepping in a different bit of craziness, as I would call it," he expressed to Fox News Digital.
"I think a lot of these people are belonging to these social media groups where, you know, they may be scrolling one day, somebody that they're either following or somebody that's related to somebody that they're following said something about a disaster coming up, or they reference this election that's coming up or some stuff that's going on overseas," continued McCall. "And they seem to say, well, this person went out and bought this. It's kind of a jumping on the bandwagon-type deal."
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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