Doomsday Preppers Get Ready for the Apocalypse

I'm not sure exactly when the Prepper movement started,

but I do know that it's gaining.

This is a group of people that are very devoted

to being hyper prepared.

They are being prepared for doomsday scenarios

or extinction events.

Goes from Boston, Connecticut, Long Island.

Most people are not prepared for disasters.

A lot of people like to think they are,

and there's so much to prepping.

It's not just having food, it's having a mindset.

You have to realize that

people are not gonna come take care of you.

You really have to be able to take care of yourself.

After the apocalypse,

most of the people you love are gone,

most of your friends are gone,

everything you love to eat are gone.

It's like the beginning of mankind all over again.

Okay, YouTubers, this is The Angry Prepper.

Today's video is episode one in the bug out series.

I got into prepping years ago,

and there was a book I read called One Second After.

And in this book, an EMP goes off, electromagnetic pulse,

which sends the United States back into the Dark Ages.

At the end of the book,

there's a mentioning by Newt Gingrich

on how this is a possibility.

Terrorists are aware of it.

It was pretty much a green light for me to start prepping.

You crank this for as long as you can.

People that are Preppers are everyone and anyone.

You could be from any walk of life.

Jason's a fireman,

you have one woman who she's an attorney.

I work for a high tech company,

my wife's a university professor.

People think that this group is hard up

tin foil wearing conspiracy the, no.

[Scott] Watch a documentary on Katrina,

look at something about Sandy, look at the years afterward,

look at Puerto Rico right now.

[Jason] No power, no electricity.

[Scott] I was there for 9/11.

[Jason] The crime is out of control.

[Scott] The system will be overwhelmed.

The US is one of the top five countries in the world

in terms of the number and severity of disaster events.

It's because of our location on the globe.

We have a lot of coastal regions

and we have a large population,

so we're vulnerable to earthquakes and volcanoes.

We have wildfires, we have storm surge, hurricanes,

cyclone-like events, flooding, landslides, mudslides.

We have it all.

So, we are definitely at risk.

There have been studies looking at how prepared

the US population is,

and less than 50% has even the bare minimal requirements.

People don't wanna think about it.

The water just came in last night.

There's people, and they're just waiting to get help.

It's horrible to be in that situation

when you can't do anything and you're just waiting.

Some people think having a flashlight

and a can of beans is it.

It isn't,

it constitutes a good light show and a bad night of gas.

You prep enough, you're gonna make it through that disaster.

The roundabout number to start with is 30 days,

and then move onto 60 days, then 90,

then keep going a month at a time.

I'm still at a year and a half.

After next week when I go on my Prepper blitz,

which is just canned goods at a supermarket,

I'll be at a year and eight, nine months.

We're in what's called the Sixth Extinction period.

Right now, we are on schedule to lose

at least half of the species on earth

by the end of the century.

We've had five major extinctions in the past.

One that many people are familiar with

is the Permian Extinction.

That happened when we lost all the non-avian dinosaurs.

That was about 60 million years ago.

It's called the Push Pulse Theory of Extinction.

So, there are presses on the ecosystem,

and it could be climate change,

it could be rising sea levels,

it could be any number of things,

but then there's an extinction pulse like Tambora,

which was a huge volcano in the 1800s,

and that lead to the year without a summer.

So, some horrible mass event like a super volcano

could be the pulse that really decimates

a large part of the population.

A doomsday scenario would be like a pandemic,

and whatever disease that is taking hold of the country.

Once a certain number of people become infected,

quarantine starts.

Once quarantine starts,

you're gonna start seeing the breakdown

in people coming to work.

Once the law enforcement stop going to work,

that's when the breakdown begins.

Now you're talking about a free for all,

every man for themselves kinda deal.

Unfortunately, the government is getting a lot of pressure

to respond to different types of disaster events,

and FEMA is getting stretched, really stretched.

And now they've said be prepared

to be on your own for 72 hours,

and if you're a healthcare facility,

you should be prepared for 96.

That's a lot of hours to be on your own without any help.

[waves crashing]

Look at all the disaster movies that come out

and people flock to see 'em

because we're obsessed with destruction.

I actually like watching those movies.

I like watching them

'cause I'm always curious to see how we get out of it,

and we always do in those movies, right?

It's part of human nature.

That part of us likes the chaos

and how we would fare with the chaos.

Aren't you a little bit curious to watch the world burn?

The psychology of it is just wanting to live,

just wanting your family to live.

That's what drives me.

I don't want them to suffer from starvation,

dehydration, medical.

I want us to be able to thrive during that disaster.

So, we've just come down into the Lelani Estates area

and happened across this incredible scene,

lava creeping down the road.

[Jason] I think the world has always been this dangerous.

It's just there's more news media to report

different things that are going on.

I have already evacuated everything.

I just came down to say goodbye to my neighborhood

one last time.

Definitely the speed with which news can travel

I think is increasing the anxiety level.

Some people are what we call catastrophists;

everything is gonna be bad.

But I don't think all Preppers are like that.

I think they genuinely want to control

whatever they can control.

These are people who feel things are getting scary.

I think I can understand where it's coming from.

Would I do it myself?

No.

First of all, I live in a New York City apartment.

I couldn't possibly prepare for that,

but I think it's kinda futile.

The antisocialness that is developing in us

is gonna be the danger for us.

We need to be social, we need to communicate, we...

People need one another to survive.

[singing in foreign language]

Inherently, we are very resilient.

We are the dominant species.

We didn't do it just by luck.

We've been preparing

for probably as long as we've been humans.

[classical music]