Bomb shelters, secret passageways, gun rooms, and flammable moats may sound like the stuff of Hollywood.

But across the country, there are parts of some people's plans to protect themselves against the worst.

That's according to a recent New York Times magazine report that chronicles the rise of the booming panic industry.

Ali Rogan spoke with Coralie Kraft, contributing photo editor for the New York Times magazine.

Coralie, thank you so much for joining us.

What's behind the rise in people wanting to prep for some sort of doomsday scenario?

So the people that I spoke with said that there was a huge surge in business post-pandemic and also, you know, in the lead-up and aftermath of the recent election, I would say that many of the people who are interested in installing these types of hidden gun ranges and panic rooms and things like that in their homes. Many of them said that

they were afraid of things like another pandemic, financial collapse, or, you know, even nuclear

war. And the notion of prepping has been a fascination on the pop culture scene for a number of

years now. How do you describe this kind of mainstreaming of the panic industry

and of preparing in this way? I think that as more and more people are impacted by things like

pandemics by civil unrest and demonstrations and activism in their cities by financial collapse,

as those factors hit a wider and wider population, it makes sense to me that more of us

would be interested in this type of, you know, what can I do in the event of a disaster

scenario or a doomsday scenario? People in the middle class you report on are becoming

more interested in this. These companies are getting more calls from people who don't have

millions of dollars, but they do want to invest in some ways to, as they see it, to protect themselves.

That's completely right. Yeah. So, you know, there are bunkers that are prefab and might cost someone

$20,000 instead of $100,000 or $10 million. One of the people that I spoke with said something

like the bunkers that I'm selling are for people who have $20,000 to spend, not $200,000.

They make $60,000 and drive a Chevy pickup truck.

They don't drive a Ferrari.

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