A bunker in Kansas

Disaster ‘prepping’ was once an American pastime. Today, it’s mainstream again.

Prepping was seen as a fringe hobby for survivalists and reality TV. Then came the pandemic.

High-end apocalypse shelters like this one, located in a former nuclear missile vault in Kansas, are increasingly popular among the wealthy. Personalized disaster prep has grown into a multimillion-dollar business, fueled by an endless stream of new and revamped threats. The “prepper” movement in the U.S., born out of historical crises, is becoming increasingly mainstream during the coronavirus pandemic.

Photograph by Chet Strange, The New York Times/Redux

There’s a reason “preppers,” people who plan for the worst-case scenario, like to talk about the zombie apocalypse. The idea of an army of walking dead swarming the country pervades their thoughts because, says Roman Zrazhevskiy, “If you prepare as if a zombie apocalypse is going to happen, you have all the bases covered.” That means: an escape route, medical supplies, a few weeks’ worth of food.

Zrazhevskiy has been thinking about this for decades. He was born in Russia a few months after the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. At the dinner table, his family often talked about the disaster and what went wrong. Then, after they relocated to New York, Zrazhevskiy stood on the waterfront outside his Brooklyn high school

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