Doom and doomers — Should we be prepping for the end of the world?

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What would you do if the world as we know it came to some sort of catastrophic end? Well, you’d be forgiven for not being prepared for it – but doomsday preppers across the globe think they are. To discuss the phenomenon of people bracing for armageddon, and the theories around why they do this, Jacob Jarvis is joined by the co-authors of Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States, Robert E. Kirsch and Emily Ray. Buy Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund the Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to https://indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Jacob Jarvis.. Audio editor: Simon Williams and Sara Farolfi. Managing editor: Jacob Jarvis. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's quite a lot of ads on our podcasts these days.
0:02.4	We need them to pay for our team.
0:04.0	But if you find them a little distracting, annoying maybe, there's a simple solution.
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0:09.4	That means no ads and uninterrupted listening.
0:12.2	Follow the link in the show notes to find out more.
0:28.6	Hello and welcome to The Bunker. I'm Jacob Jarvis. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,
0:34.1	or so the saying goes, and while many of us were probably told this by our parents at some point when we were growing up,
0:38.2	you will be forgiven if you haven't started preparing for as extreme a scenario as the end of the world. But a growing number of people are. To discuss the doomsday
0:44.6	prepper phenomenon and whether it's actually becoming increasingly smart to prep for the end of days,
0:50.1	I'm joined by the authors of Be Prepared Doomsday Prepping in the United States.
0:55.0	Robert Kirsch is an assistant professor at Arizona State University.
0:58.4	Robert, thanks to joining me today.
1:00.0	It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
1:02.0	And Emily Ray is an associate professor at Sonoma State University.
1:05.7	Emily, thank you so much for being here.
1:07.7	Thanks for having us.
1:08.5	We're excited for the conversation.
1:10.6	So, Emily, when was it that you
1:12.5	first became interested in prepping? And I suppose that on a sort of, you know, a personal interest at first,
1:18.7	but then from an academics perspective, when did you decide to start looking into it? Sure. It's a bit of
1:23.9	a slippery slope, as these stories often are. So I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Montana complex.
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