Bradley L. Garrett

Prepping for the Collapse of Civilization

Bunker

Jeremy Anderberg

Hot dang I loved this book. 

Each chapter finds Garrett exploring a different aspect of end times “prepping”: Communities build out of fields of Cold War bunkers, an underground ultra-luxury “geoscraper” constructed inside an abandoned missile silo featuring million-dollar apartment, government bunker-building for continuity of government (which has accelerated in recent years), the PrepperCon conference for all things survival, companies that build tube-like corrugated bunkers for your backyard, and more. 

Throughout, Garrett tackles the philosophical underpinnings of prepping culture. Are these people crazy? Are they on to something? What lies underneath this belief in a coming apocalypse? 

"Bunker" is truly one of my favorite reads of the year so far. It’s partly a niche cultural tour (which I always love), partly an easy-reading philosophical exploration, and a little bit of a revealing, beautifully written memoir about what happens when you spend too much time living with the end of the world always in mind.

Bradley Garrett

“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. Currently, 3.7 million Americans call themselves preppers. Millions more prep without knowing it. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Most of all, he reveals, it’s in our minds.

Bunker Prepping for the Collapse of Civilization

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