Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 1986 1 ExcerptĬhapter 1: The Dread Merchants: Selling Safe Space 1 The Dread Merchants: Selling Safe Space Most of all, he reveals, it’s in our minds.
With scenes that are “fascinating, amusing, crazy, chilling, and surreally topical” (Douglas Preston, author of Lost City of the Monkey God), Garrett shows that the bunker is all around us: in malls, airports, gated communities, the vehicles we drive. He has returned with “a big-thinking, deep-diving, page-turning study of fear, privilege, and apocalypse” (Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland) from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings our times into new and sharper focus. Garrett traveled across four continents to meet those who are constructing panic rooms, building underground backyard survival chambers, stockpiling supplies, preparing go bags, hiding inflatable rafts, rigging mobile “bugout” vehicles, and burrowing deep into the earth. Left with a sense of foreboding fueled by disease outbreaks, increasing government dysfunctionality, eroding critical infrastructure, nuclear brinksmanship, and an accelerating climate crisis, people all over the world are responding predictably-by hunkering down. Bradley Garrett, who began writing this book years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, argues that prepping is a rational response to global, social, and political systems that are failing to produce credible narratives of continued stability. “A kind of apocalyptic Super Size Me” ( The Guardian) that is both “page turning and thoughtful” ( Financial Times) about “prepper” communities around the world that are building fortresses against an array of threats.Ĭurrently, 3.7 million Americans call themselves preppers.
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