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Are you prepared (for the end)? • Minnesota Reformer [1]
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Date: 2025-07-09
As if to prove the difficulty of preparing for the unforeseen, the organizer of a recent prepper convention wasn’t ready for a heat wave that socked his gathering.
Troy McKinley, the organizer of the 3rd Annual Minnesota Prepper Expo, wore a t-shirt that read, “Noah was a conspiracy theorist … then it rained” — in reference to the famous boat builder.
He acknowledged the heat probably kept people away from the Morrison County Fairgrounds on a recent blistering 90 degree Saturday that had driven most Minnesotans indoors.
McKinley hoped for 1,000 attendees at the prepper fair, but there were less than 100 in attendance on the convention’s second day.
Still, a handful had pitched tents for the three-day event, and all signs point to a continued robust obsession with preparing for the American end: People shell out money to share in stories about the apocalypse. The causes are as diverse as their creators: cordiceps (“The Last of Us”); artificial intelligence (“The Terminator”); nuclear holocaust; solar storms; or, a global pandemic.
The end’s hold on humanity — and, it seems, Americans in particular — comprises art and entertainment, as well as the theological and political, with some Christians reading events in modern Israel as precursors to the “rapture,” while others once strained to see the anti-Christ in Barack Obama.
McKinley might have given the impression of a religious man, but as the self-described agnostic reflected on his upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness, he said, “I had questions that they couldn’t answer.”
These days, McKinley, who once watched panicked oil workers loot a grocery store during a North Dakota snowstorm, has found community among preppers — like-minded people who make preparations for disaster scenarios.
Preppers, sometimes called “doomsday preppers,” tend to conjure images of underground bunkers and zombie apocalypses. The expo leaned into this idea, its logo featuring silhouettes of zombies and bullet holes.
But most people gathered at the event — many hesitant to label themselves as preppers — were most concerned with technological or electric grid interruption or collapse, civil unrest or another pandemic, with memories of COVID-19’s run on toilet paper and cleaning supplies.
Jake Sparrow, who was selling his up-cycled clothing at the event, said he loved “The Walking Dead” but didn’t find it realistic.
Sparrow said his primary concern is EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, that can result from natural events like solar storms or manmade nuclear detonation. EMPs cause voltage surges that can damage electronic equipment. Though widespread technological collapse due to nuclear detonation is unlikely, solar storms, though rare, do pose a concern for communications infrastructure. It was a common subject of conversation at the convention, with frequent references to the so-called Carrington Event, when a solar storm in 1859 caused telegraph systems to go haywire.
Sparrow suspects the government might produce an EMP while blaming it on a solar flare.
Rather than stockpiling resources, Sparrow said his focus is on refining skills like gardening, carpentry and bushcraft. He almost never carries a cell phone but does have a collection of weapons.
“I guess I’m not concerned, but I’m almost expecting it,” Sparrow said of an electric grid collapse.
Sparrow’s wife, Amanda joked, “When’s it gonna happen? Let’s just get on with this already.”
Many of the people at the convention, however, were less concerned with the end than with their atrophied survival skills, seeking sustainability in an increasingly technology-dependent world. Most of the presentations given by speakers — ranging from seed-saving to preserving food with salt — would’ve been equally relevant to homesteaders as those preparing for a life-altering catastrophe.
In a seminar about child-rearing in the wilderness, Elli King-Gallager said that the way she is raising her children – in the wilderness, with very limited technology – feels radical at first. “But it’s not radical at all,” she said. “All we’re really doing is living the way people were living 200 years ago. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not that amazing.”
A dozen people sat in a semicircle of folded chairs to hear Mike Bollinger, the executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, speak about preserving seeds.
Bollinger leads the largest nongovernmental seed bank in the U.S. The federal government’s much larger equivalent, known as the National Plant Germplasm System, was in flux earlier this year when the Department of Government Efficiency fired some of its employees (they were later reinstated).
Though Bollinger was unfamiliar with the prepper oeuvre, he drove from Iowa to give a talk at the event after the expo reached out to him.
Demand for seeds went up significantly during COVID-19, the world-rattling event that caused many to think perhaps preppers were right to be concerned about the fragility of society’s systems.
“I think there’s a lot of enthusiasm around gardening and food production, but there’s a huge gap, I think, when it comes to just functional seed-saving skill,” Bollinger said.
A growing industry with long-term roots
Prepping isn’t a new phenomenon. The modern incarnation originated in the 1950s, in part due to Cold War-era anxieties over nuclear warfare. The early manifestation of preppers — known as “retreaters” — stressed individualism and fleeing off-grid for survival purposes.
Global catastrophes like COVID-19 and climate change-related natural disasters are fueling a growing number of modern preppers, including left-leaning survivalists. “Bug out” bags — backpacks filled with emergency survival supplies — are sold by online survival retailers for hundreds of dollars.
By some estimates, there are more than 20 million preppers in the U.S., defined as people who would be able to survive for at least 31 days at home without utilities or outside support. This is compared to a total of 7 million in 2018.
Estimating the number of preppers can be difficult, especially because there’s no universal definition of what it means to be a prepper. Not everyone who makes small-scale disaster preparations — like storing blankets in the car in case of a snowstorm — would consider themselves preppers.
The term tends to raise eyebrows.
Margaret Engstrom, a first-time attendee of the convention, spoke about the stigma associated with the label. Engstrom said she had been interested in prepping for decades but wouldn’t describe herself as “hardcore.”
“I don’t think of myself as a nut job. I think of myself as alternative and prepared,” Engstrom said.
As the number of preppers has grown, so has the survival tools market. A 2023 report from Zion Market Research projected that the industry would grow to $2.46 billion by 2030. Prepper conventions and expos like McKinley’s have been popping up around the country. PrepperShowsUSA, a website dedicated to advertising these events, lists several events per month across the country.
McKinley is in the process of organizing his first prepper expo in Colorado, to take place in October.
What will save us? Community.
In one of the fairground’s large, open air buildings, a colorful “Poultry and Rabbits” sign hung over the entrance. Vendors stood among tables lined with damascus steel knives, 3D printed gun holsters, apocalypse books and herbal remedies.
Francis Majeski sat making cordage, a string made of natural fibers as a large fan next to him hummed. On his table, with bone needles and lyre lucets used for braiding, was a copy of “Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West,” which is about the western explorer who was the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada, and is said to have drawn the map of the American West on a beaver skin.
Majeski didn’t identify strongly with the term “prepper.”
“[I’m] not so much a survivalist as I practice the second-greatest commandment, love your neighbor as yourself,” Majeski said.
In contrast to the typical image of the hyper-individualist, solitary prepper — consider the Nick Offerman character in “The Last of Us” — Majeski said community, not individualism, would be the ultimate key to survival in a disaster scenario. That’s why he makes an effort to reach out to others.
“I get to know my neighbor across the street, even though his son ran their car into my garage,” Majeski joked.
Majeski described himself as a Christian who voted for President Donald Trump but disagrees with many of his policies. He also rejected some of the ideas that seem to permeate prepper culture.
Though Majeski plans to be more independent should anything happen — he now makes his own boot laces — he said there are limits.
“We like to, in our arrogance, believe that we are going to be ready for everything. You’re not,” Majeski said.
Still, mainstream prepper culture often emphasizes rugged individualism, touting guns and masculine portrayals harkening back to the ideals of westward expansion. In her book “American Apocalyptic,” Georgia College & State University professor and “liberal prepper” Juli Gittinger writes about the role that the American frontier myth still plays among many preppers.
“Echoes of the frontier motif have been used repeatedly throughout the American political landscape, from Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’ to Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ — an imagined reality where rugged individualism and self-reliance can overcome any obstacle (notably, non-white people who interfere with the divine providence of American destiny)…The frontier myth cultivates a particular brand of masculinity that intersects with the discourse on firearm ownership, survivalist/prepper cultures, ‘traditional’ (read: heteronormative) models of the family, and white superiority,” Gittinger writes in “American Apocalyptic.”
While these sentiments were not entirely absent from those at the convention, they also weren’t dominating the conversation.
McKinley said that his goal with the expo is to foster community between preppers: “I hope that they’re connecting with each other, meeting other like-minded people, and learning to work together on things instead of going after each other,” he said.
He reached out to many of the speakers and vendors personally. Amanda and Jake Sparrow got an invite after running into McKinley at a farmers market in Little Falls.
The schedule of speakers included a note about inclusivity at the event: “Hate speech, bullying, or degrading comments referring to topics such as political affiliation, race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender or identity will NOT be tolerated.”
McKinley’s experience with disaster response is almost pedestrian: He was in North Dakota when high winds during a winter storm knocked down the power lines. The oil wildcatters who had recently moved to the area to open an oil field were not ready for it.
“These young guys, they’ve never seen anything like that before, and they panicked. They broke the windows out of the two main grocery stores. They cleared the shelves off of bottled water and canned goods and stuff like that,” McKinley said.
Since then, McKinley has been ensuring he has extra groceries and generators. His primary concerns when it comes to disasters are solar flares, electromagnetic eruptions from the sun, and pole reversals, which is when Earth’s magnetic north and south poles flip, which happens an average of every 300,000 years.
McKinley was clear to say that he’s “not a gun collector,” though he does own guns.
“My weapons all have a purpose, you know, and so I don’t have a lot of them,” McKinley said.
Vance Boelter, suspected assassin, described as a prepper
Prepping caught national headlines at the end of June, when a court filing described suspected assassin Vance Boelter and his wife as preppers. Boelter is accused of killing Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, as well as shooting Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
Boelter owned dozens of guns and had made a “bailout plan” for his family that included going to Jenny Boelter’s mother’s house in Wisconsin. The morning of the assassination, Boelter texted his family, writing that he “went to war last night” and that “there’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy and I don’t want you guys around.”
The affidavit didn’t include many details about Boelter’s prepping, and Boelter didn’t feature in conversations at the convention.
Boelter’s roommate, David Carlson, told the Star Tribune that the prepper label fit Boelter but he was uncertain how involved in prepping Boelter actually was.
“He always thought there would be civil war or the government would fall,” Carlson said. “I knew he had some firearms or food, maybe. I only thought he had like five or 10 guns. I was shocked to find out he had so many.”
As the second day of the expo wound down, attendance thinned and vendors began packing up. A few speakers and attendees gathered around a campfire as the sun set over rows of trailers. The expo would go on for one more day.
The following Wednesday, the Morrison County Fair was starting.
Some of the game operators were already up and running in the hopes of drumming up business from the expo.
A few stragglers tried their luck at a toy gun game, the targets swapped out with pictures of zombies, and it was easy to conclude that they were probably not ready for the end.
[END]
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