Funny article in the Times today, made me laugh
This crisis brings out the Mad Max in us
As extreme preppers reach for axes and crossbows, many fancy their chances in the apocalypse
Why is it so much easier to get people to stockpile than to simply wash their hands? The advice has, after all, been clear for quite some time. If we wash our hands and avoid large gatherings we can hold the coronavirus at bay. Stockpiling, which leads to shortages, will make things worse. Yet people still stroll in and out of bathrooms without touching the soap.
In supermarkets, on the other hand, a steely-eyed survival instinct has kicked in. From New York to Bicester, aisles have been cleared of loo roll and hand sanitiser. There is footage of US shoppers running with empty trolleys towards recently restocked shelves. Last week in Sydney the police were called after a brawl over a pack of loo paper. “There is no need for it. It isn’t the Thunderdome, it isn’t Mad Max,” a policeman said. I imagine the tone was rather weary.
Yet for some, it clearly is Mad Max. The membership of a Facebook group called “Coronavirus UK Preppers S.H.T.F [Shit Hits The Fan] raw survival” has soared in the past month. A UK “preppers” store, which sells crossbows, axes and knives along with ration packs and military-spec masks has reported sales 20 times higher than usual. Americans, inevitably, have been buying guns. In the richer pockets of Silicon Valley people are preparing to check in to luxury survival bunkers.
As the global death toll ticks up, the instinct of some is apparently to battle for resources, knife between the teeth, and then build a fortress to hunker down in. It’s to hit the weaker shoppers over the head and make off with all the loo roll. It’s to steal a diesel-gulping “war rig” and head off into the desert as the best hope of survival. Odd when at present the best hope of survival continues to be washing your hands while singing Happy Birthday.
But perhaps our reaction isn’t too surprising. In the dark corners of the collective imagination, apocalypse has always had a strange appeal. We are, in fact, oddly drawn to it. Armageddon-style survival thrillers are bestselling books, reliable blockbusters at the movies and popular computer games. Britain is still obsessed with its two world wars, eight decades on from the second.
Remainers who spent much of last year warning of the dangers of a no-deal Brexit — the privations, the state of emergency — were surprised to see the relish this scenario inspired in some quarters. “It will be good for us!” Brexiteers said, stowing tinned beef into a shopping bag. “We survived a war!”
Partly, this stems from a perverse desire for the universe to teach us a brutal lesson now and then. A longing for the shot of adrenaline as our puny human certainties are swept away. For disaster on a spectacular scale, and then for the disaster to get worse. This applies of course mainly to the smug, comfortable West. Your cosy job, your pension, your Ocado delivery, your commute — they cannot, after all, protect you. You can rely on nothing. You are thrown back, bracingly, on your own resources. You will have to hunt and gather, as nature intended. Only the fittest loo-roll brawler will survive.
That leads, of course, to another fundamental of the Armageddon fantasy. That if it came to it, you’d have the right instincts for survival. Not for you the role of authority figure who stubbornly underestimates the danger until three seconds before it actually kills them. Nor would you be the prissy city-dweller in the unsuitable shoes who might have lived had they not wandered off to find a dock leaf; no, nor the one whose unshakable faith that the authorities will come to the rescue almost kills the whole rag-tag gang. You’d be the one who was right.
This belief that survival is easy is so deeply embedded that survivalists themselves spend time trying to debunk it. “A lot of people think they are going to live in the woods and live off rabbits and fish,” one prepper recently told The Economist. “If they do go and live off that diet for three weeks, they are going to be very ill indeed.”
Then there is the odd relish that comes with the thought of upturning the usual hierarchies. Perhaps you (the one who was right) will move further up the chain. Perhaps also, you’ll get to make some changes. The disaster, however random, has exposed something deeply wrong in the social order. Now you can remake it.
After just a couple of months of coronavirus, some politicians and pundits already have this glint in their eye. For some, the crisis has revealed the dangers in trendy urban life, with its unsanitary sharing economy. Others predict it will draw Britain back to a better, more stoical age. Globalisation, for some, is the disease-spreading cause of the calamity, while for others it is the research-sharing solution. Xi Jinping has seen the virus as a reason to step up surveillance in China. For Bernie Sanders, it justifies free healthcare. For Donald Trump, it is a reason for stricter borders.
Now is the time to resist all this. Don’t panic, don’t stockpile, don’t watch 28 Days Later. Seek out books and films about social reserve and coughing politely into handkerchiefs. Emma, perhaps. Anything by Jane Austen. Those are the survival thrillers our times require.
Martha Gill is a Times leader writer