Election fears ignite "preppers" already planning for the cataclysmic unknown

IMLAY CITY, Mich. — Jerry Katich says he’s “locked and loaded.”

His home in a suburb of Flint, Michigan, is equipped with a generator. His cars are packed with first-aid kits, light sources and heat blankets. A collection of three-ring binders has more than 800 pages’ worth of instructions for tasks ranging from how to make bread to skinning a rabbit. And in his basement, he’s installed four freezers and is stockpiling water, canned goods and ready-to-eat meals — enough food, he estimates, to last his family five and a half years.

“I’m ready for anything to transpire, whether it’s an EMP going off,” said Katich, 67, referring to an “electromagnetic pulse” event like a nuclear attack, “or World War III.”

It’s been more than 15 years since his wife, Karen, piqued his interest in prepping — planning for natural disasters and worst-case scenarios with surplus supplies and a knowledge of survival skills — and Katich contends a curiosity among newcomers has been surging.

A private Facebook group that he founded, Michigan Preppers, has nearly 18,000 members, up from about 8,000 since the Covid pandemic. He attributes the growth to a feeling of turmoil during President Joe Biden’s term.

Uncertainty fueled by global wars, months of protests, rising costs and another presidential race — with the specter of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and now a second apparent attempted assassination of Republican nominee Donald Trump — has “preppers” like Katich especially vigilant.

“If Trump isn’t elected, I’m thinking we’re either looking at a military coup or we’re looking at a second civil war,” said the part-time steel company worker. “It won’t happen right away, but it will take time to formulate.”

Provocative rhetoric from political candidates is tapping into fears and anxiety over the future, and in Michigan, a battleground state, the prepper belief in self-reliance is meshing with the region’s history of self-styled militia groups that support individual liberties and are suspicious of government power.

“I don’t recognize this country. I don’t recognize this world,” said Michael Clark, a Trump supporter who lives in a rural community of fewer than 1,000 people near Lake Michigan. “People just want to prepare for their families and have control over their futures.”

Clark, 69, doesn’t consider himself on the extreme end of prepping; his wife has a pressure canner she uses to preserve meats.

At a prepping event in southern Michigan this month known as the Great Lakes Emergency Preparedness Expo, Clark sold dietary supplements and beauty products containing colloidal silver, or tiny silver particles in liquid, which some believe can treat infection and disease but which the Food and Drug Administration does not consider effective.

Wearing a T-shirt reading “Vote 2024,” Clark said he took issue with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris accusing Trump in the presidential debate of fearmongering.

According to Harris: “Donald Trump, the candidate, has said, in this election, there will be a bloodbath if this — and the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”

Trump mentioned “a bloodbath for the country” during a campaign rally in March in regard to the possibility that he’s not re-elected, but he said so while discussing a possible trade war with China over auto manufacturing.

Trump, in turn, has blamed Biden and Harris for inspiring people to attempt to assassinate him, although he has provided no evidence.

“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump said on Fox News a day after an incident at a West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course this month in which an armed suspect was arrested. A Secret Service agent engaged the suspect, who never fired his weapon, officials said.

The Michigan prepper expo in Imlay City, about an hour north of Detroit, is one of dozens held each year across the country, where people can learn about growing seeds, filtering and reusing rainwater, and how to protect themselves from an active shooter.

The number of preppers in the U.S. is estimated to be more than 20 million people, growing considerably since 2017, according to household resiliency data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency analyzed by researchers in 2022. The research considers anyone who can be self-prepared at home for 31 days or more without publicly provided water, power or transportation as a “resilient citizen.”

Drew Miller, the chief executive of Fortitude Ranch, a survival community of about 1,000 people with locations across the country, prepares members for “viral pandemics, marauder threats and long-term collapse conditions.” Prepper interest, he said, “is booming because people are recognizing the world is getting less safe every day.”

It’s not about succumbing to a “sky-is-falling mentality,” Miller, a retired Air Force colonel in Colorado, argues, but having a plan. The company’s app offers users various themes to help them survive a “collapse”; a recent exercise centered on the threat of election violence and a civil war scenario.

Given the unpredictability this year, Miller said, he’s asked employees not to take off from November to January, as he believes the United States’ adversaries could seek to exploit a post-election transition.

On a public Facebook preppers page with more than 39,000 members, users have debated the extent of any violence and looming catastrophe, which in the community’s lingo is referred to as SHTF, or “s--- hits the fan”:

“It will be here before the end of the year.”

“I think that’s the hype every election, but better safe than sorry!”

“There might be localized violence if Trump doesn’t win, but on a grand scale no I’m not worried about it.”

Any such concerns play out quietly in the background of the Great Lakes Emergency Preparedness Expo in Imlay City, located in an agricultural county where Trump defeated Biden by a 2-to-1 margin in 2020. Biden, however, won Michigan in that election by more than 154,000 votes.

Any references to politics at the expo — one exhibitor had an item featuring a picture of Trump after a bullet struck his ear during an assassination attempt in July — were not overt. Families strolled along tables with vendors selling gun cleaner, outdoor supplies, ham radios and vintage-looking oil lamps.

“I’m prepping for Tuesday instead of Doomsday,” said registered nurse Lydia Mobley, 34, riffing off the idea that short-term emergencies can materialize any random day.

It’s exactly that kind of attendee who is interested in prepping, said the expo’s director of operations, Kyle MacNall.

“They’re not all stocking up on ammunition and living in bunkers,” he said.

Some, like Michigan couple Dave and Sonya Boone, both 52, are living off the grid. At the expo, they gave a tour of their solar power-converted cargo trailer, outdoor bathroom setup, and a solar oven for baking cookies, making jerky and heating up other foods.

Today’s interest in prepping is a far cry from when Dave Boone said he started more than 20 years ago, when “we felt shunned. They think you’re weird.”

But now, he said, many who join realize it’s recovering a “lost art” to live how their parents and grandparents did during the Great Depression by canning food and being resourceful.

Sonya Boone said she also took an interest in prepping once she became a mother and was worried about how to care for her child if there was a greater emergency.

Now, the couple makes social media videos to help others with everyday hacks or who want a glimpse into their lives, and they’ve also grown a network of local preppers.

At the expo, Sonya Boone bartered with a friend who stopped by, exchanging her three dozen duck eggs and rosemary for 15 pounds of beef suet and mint.

“If economic times crash,” she explained, “you have to know people who have a surplus of something you don’t.”

The tense political environment is feeding into the fear, Sonya Boone added, but she stays neutral on the topic publicly.

Katich also doesn’t generally allow political posts in his Facebook group unless a member has a question pertaining to survival that might touch on world events.

A former “staunch Democrat”-turned-independent who had worked for General Motors in Saginaw until he sustained a workplace injury in 2004, Katich said he’s hopeful Trump can score a second term in the White House.

And Katich said he’s ready if the former president does — or does not.

“I don’t mind if people don’t want to talk about prepping for the future or don’t want to know about it,” Katich said. “We’ve got a couple family members who think, ‘You’re crazy.’ But hey, don’t come knocking at my door because you didn’t plan.”

“Maybe I’ll give you rice and some beans and water,” he added, “and you take care.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com