British Preppers Are Stocked Up, Well Prepared, and ‘Detached From the Chaos’

Darren, a prepper and producer of "The Funky Prepper" channel on YouTube, who also teaches courses on a wide range of survival skills such as sub zero fire lighting, making water filters and more. (Courtesy The Funky Prepper)

Members of the British prepping community, inspired by the USA survivalist movement, said that more than ever, people are willing to explore extreme survival in their country.

At one time considered a small subculture that raised eyebrows for its perceived apocalyptic thinking, preppers told The Epoch Times how they and others are proactively preparing for emergencies, as more wake up to the reality of potential food and fuel shortages.

A wider mistrust in government due to COVID-19 lockdowns and more recently anxieties about potential nuclear fallout from the Ukraine/Russia conflict has only contributed to the increased interest.

Entirely Self-Sufficient

It was the start of the Arab Spring over a decade ago that got one prepper called Darren thinking. What if the events which saw uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world, could happen here?

“It showed me how quickly things could change. Then when we had the London riots in 2011. I started to read up on how the world was structured and I went down a big rabbit hole. I thought I'd better start preparing for an uncertain future,” Darren told The Epoch Times.

Based in mid-Wales, the Youtuber and survival enthusiast is known to his viewers only as Darren (he doesn’t want to give his full name) has a channel, “The Funky Prepper” that has 60,000 subscribers. Like some others in the UK prepper community, Darren said they have often been labeled as conspiratorial and mocked in the media.

Darren said he knows there is “bad stuff coming” soon but is planned for the worse. The way around those bad things is that people need to do everything they need to do to become entirely self-sufficient without any need for governments or money, he said.

"If you told someone in 2018 that you were putting preparation in place for a pandemic they would think you are a crackpot." (Courtesy Bradley Garrett)

American social and cultural geographer at University College Dublin in Ireland Dr. Bradley Garret researched the growing global movement of prepping for his book “Bunker: What it Takes to Survive the Apocalypse.”

“If you told someone in 2018 that you were putting preparation in place for a pandemic they would think you are a crackpot. If you told someone in 2020 that Europe would be in the midst of a new war, they would think you were a crackpot. So prepping is always a thought experiment, they are always trying to think about the expected and the unexpected, that’s what they are preparing for,” he told The Epoch Times.

Psychological Benefit

“I think there is a sense in prepper knowledge that we have lost a lot. It feels like too much of our lives is in the hand of the government or corporations, There’s something liberating about changing that agency. It counters that sense of alienation that we feel we are surrounded by things we don’t understand and we can’t control and prepping gives us a way of reskilling, learning those things again, and that gives people control over their own lives,” said Garret.

Garret explored different government and individual-level responses to catastrophe and existential threats. For example, Switzerland has enough nuclear fallout shelters to accommodate its entire population, should they ever be needed. But for those that want to buy their own bunker, companies exist that can provide nuclear blast-proof thick plate steel boxes, for the right price. On more of a grounded scale, people are seeking country spaces, land, and stability in, for example, off-grid communities, away from large cities.

He said that there’s a material element and also a psychological element to prepping. “It’s interesting because it’s not about the future event. People think about prepping about preparing for something down the road but I think that there is a psychological benefit that is gained from taking control of the infrastructures of everyday life,” said Garret.

Wayne Stevens, a prepper and producer of the Sgt Fruitcake Youtube channel, said he can lockdown his home if he needs to for six months. (Courtesy Wayne Stevens)

“People think you are some Doomsday fundamentalist, thinking you question if they had put a man on the moon and wear a tinfoil hat around the table. People are not laughing so much now,” Wayne Stevens told The Epoch Times.

Stevens aka Sgt Fruitcake runs his Prepping Youtube channel that has over 21,000 subscribers and is also a Force Radio Drive-Time Host.

A committed family man and Christian, Stevens said: “If you run out of fuel, if you cant fill up that tank, you are not providing for your family so you have to make the choice. That’s why I do what I do so I don’t live in fear. I live in a middle of a field up in the hills, in Northern Ireland, surrounded by 360 acres of shooting land, where I can produce food and patrol and keep safe and lock this place down. I can lock this place down for six months,” said Stevens.

Stevens has food, skills, but also medical supplies. He also knows first aid, has generators, solar panels, inverters for power and fuel, oil and heating oil, and much more. To him, prepping means more than survival. He doesn’t want to survive, he wants to thrive.

“My kids don’t live in fear, because we are detached from the chaos,” said Stevens.

‘The USA Has the Suppliers’

Josh Pringle, who runs the Sgt Prepper shop in County Durham, northern England, said that since the war broke out between Ukraine and Russia, demand has tripled. A survivalist himself, he said that being a prepper was a mindset.

Pringle said that due to such anxieties, he has had a lot of people with posher accents contact them who say they are prepping for things like power cuts.

“A lot are aware of what is going on with the world and skeptical of their own tyrannical governments,” he said. However, being one of only a small handful of specialist stores in the UK has its challenges.

“The USA has the suppliers, we don’t. We only have three-four different suppliers for freeze-dried food in the UK. And even then our supplier had tin shortages, can you believe. They can’t supply our demand and it’s the same for all the other prepping shops,” he said.

"You have to be as sharp as the blade you are working with." Will Lord is a renowned expert and instructor in ancient survival skills like flint knapping and fire-lighting. (Courtesy Will Lord)

Survivalist and bushcraft expert Will Lord teaches prehistoric skills from a disused flint quarry in Euston, Suffolk, on the east coast of England.

He said in order to survive, you have to look back further in time and learn to spot plants and their seeds like the ancients did.

“You’ve got to watch everything, the way rain dries on wood. ... Prepping is ok but it can only take you so far. Gas masks and ration packs only have a limited time supporting your way of life,” he said.

Lord has 65,000 subscribers on YouTube, where he also teaches people how to make tools from stone.

“The fundamentals are, are berries in these trees going to kill me? Are you pleased when you see something like Alexander growing out of a bush? You have to be as sharp as the blade you are working with,” said Lord.