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For almost as long as movies have been made, New York City has been a target for apocalyptic

disaster. It's been attacked by every imaginable foe. Giant spiders and robots, zombies, aliens,

and ice age, meteor strikes, and debris falling from the moon. There was even a movie for

children about a giant bagel that crashed into Times Square. After the terrorist attacks

of 9-11 and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Superstorm Sandy

here in New York, some of those disaster scenarios didn't sound far-fetched anymore, and the New

York Prepper movement was born.

A Prepper is the name for someone who is actively preparing for the next disaster that might

hit. Early in life, Margaret Ling, a 25-year-old graduate student at Columbia University, saw

a tragedy that would lead her into the Prepper movement.

I was downtown at my sister's office when the first bombing took place in World Trade

Center back in the 80s. She was only three or four years old. That made me wonder, wow,

it sounds like a movie, things that I usually see on a big screen can actually happen in

real life. That bombing in the 80s, that attempt, you were a little kid. I was young, yes.

But I saw all these people running out of the building and the horror in their faces

and it should have been the first wake-up call for most people in the city.

Things about how disaster could cripple the city are as varied as its residents. Jason

Charles, a fireman in the Bronx, started prepping because he was concerned that a massive

volcanic eruption in Yellowstone National Park, over 2,000 miles away in Wyoming, could

produce a cloud of ash blocking the sun for a prolonged period of time and threatened

...