‘We’re All Preppers Now’: Preppers, bunkers and bugging out with Dr Tom Doig

Buckle up as we embark on a wild, cross-country road trip from the red Trump-thumping heart of America’s badlands to the remote reaches of Aotearoa: Land of the Long White Cloud to interrogate the growing phenomenon of “prepping”.

In this exclusive interview, Dr Tom Doig regales us with tales of crossing paths with preppers, interviewing them to learn about their practices and motivations, and discovering why this subculture differs so vastly from place to place. As a researcher, Tom’s focus is on interdisciplinary approaches to the accelerating climate crisis, and its associated social, cultural, and psychological effects — including prepping. 

Tom is currently documenting survivalists, doomsday preppers, climate activists and other subcultures of imminent collapse around the world for his forthcoming book, We Are All Preppers Now. His research for the book has taken him across the globe from Aotearoa to Australia and more recently to the (not-so) United States of America. 

We chat about the importance of free, independent press: what writers, journalists and science communicators should keep in mind when communicating urgent stories and translating complex and wicked problems (such as the climate crisis) for a wider audience.

Episode highlights:

• Prepping 101 - what is a prepper? What is the difference between survivalism and prepping? What does this look like in practice?
• Tom shares with us his (exhaustive) list of essential items in a DIY bug-out kit and how (not) to bury a food cache in the forest
• What’s the deal with all the billionaires buying up bunkers? Would you really want to live in a cavity 70-metres below sea level that once housed a nuclear missile? ...and so much more!

Dr Tom Doig is an investigative journalist, academic and author researching and writing about climate disaster, survivalism and prepping. Tom has written two nonfiction books about the unprecedented 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: Hazelwood (2020) and The Coal Face (2015). He also authored a humorous travel memoir, Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure and was the contributing editor of Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa (2020). Tom is the recipient of the 2024 Hilary McPhee Essay Award and in 2023 he won the $25,000 New Zealand Copyright Licensing and NZ Society of Authors Award.

Connect with Tom on Instagram or LinkedIn, visit his academic profile and check out his collaborative project ‘Preppers and Survivalism on the AustLit Database’.

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We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.