Engagements with uncertain futures – Analysing survivalist preparedness

Much like any grand-scale social disturbance, COVID-19 has brought increasing attention to emergency preparedness on global, national, and individual levels. Although independent preparedness is considered to play an important role in disturbance and emergency-related survival, little attention has been paid to the ways in which individuals conduct their preparations or the social aspects of these preparatory activities. This article investigates the ways in which survivalists engage with uncertain futures by preparing. Survivalism is a cultural movement that anticipates and prepares for different kinds and scales of disasters and disturbances. The analysis seeks to clarify for what, how, and why Finnish survivalists prepare for. This study employs an experimental setup that combines two different types of media material; media representations about survivalists made by journalists, and online discussions written by survivalists themselves on a Finnish survivalist web forum page. The data was subjected to qualitative thematic text analysis. The factors that motivate preparedness vary from ordinary and personal inconveniences to general and global disaster scenarios, which co-exist despite their different scales. In practice, the survivalist approach continuously moves between speculative futures and the material present. The survivalist worldview balances between different, seemingly opposite poles: norm-criticality, self-sufficiency, privacy, and collectivism.