Dan Goss is a doomsday prepper. No, he doesn’t live in a bunker. No, he doesn’t dream of World War 3 happening.
He did, however, spend a lot of time as a child wondering what he’d bring if he were stranded on a deserted island: a high-carbon steel knife, a ferro rod fire starter and a cast-iron pot.
That time was well spent, the father-of-two from Liverpool told Metro, when he did become stranded on a deserted island. Well, his house during the coronavirus pandemic.
Suddenly, the thought of the world ending didn’t seem like such a distant idea.
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‘The pandemic was a bit of a trial run,’ he said. ‘I know a lot of preppers, especially in America, who were real mad that they didn’t get the apocalypse they were hoping for.
‘It was kind of annoying for them to finally have it come around and all you gotta do is care for your neighbours. I wanted to become a Toyota truck-driving warlord in the mountains.’
Preppers are people wary that a disaster could happen at any moment, so they go to great lengths to prepare for its arrival.
They are different to the survivalists, who focus on staying alive during a full societal breakdown.
What doomsday scenarios are preppers most afraid of?
There are many, many, many ways the world could be turned upside down. One government report said, among other ways, that nukes, solar flares, tree-destroying bacteria and another pandemic pose a threat to life.
Tension has been running high in recent months, amid World War 3 fears and the dizzying rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
But Dan, 33, isn’t fussed. ‘I’m not invested in why there’s no water coming out of the pipe, I’m more concerned with the mechanism of, there’s no water coming from the pipes,’ the Start Prepping blogger said.
It’s why Dan isn’t the bearded man in head-to-toe camo surrounded by guns and dehydrated lentils most would expect a preparedness expert to be.
Instead, his ‘cheat code’ is less about burying astronaut meals in your garden and more about planning in a way that you don’t need to worry about what problem it is.
There are two calamities people can face – the kind you need to stay put, and the kind you need to get out of the house. Your pantry might be stocked but your attic probably won’t withstand a Tomahawk missile.
‘For certain disasters, you do need to have a certain degree of specialist preparedness that you wouldn’t otherwise need for something else,’ Dan said. ‘But a lot of them, the basics get you by: Food, water and shelter.
‘Even if The Last of Us happens, zombies and a blackout are the same. You don’t have any electricity.
‘A lot of the time, you only need three days or three weeks’ worth of essentials, enough to get by without being able to go to the shops.’
Zombies are the least of Dan’s worries, though, as it’s the little things that can make society vulnerable to disaster.
‘The Hollywood-style thing, where everything’s fine when you get up in the morning, and by lunchtime, civilisation is gone because an asteroid hit, could happen,’ he said.
‘But I don’t think that’s how it’s going to go – it’ll be death by a thousand cuts.’
By this, Dan points to a theory by the journalist Robert Evans, that society can slowly ‘crumble’. A pandemic makes healthcare workers exhausted, wars drive up food prices and climate change leaves people homeless.
These smaller ‘crumbles’ can make ‘Big Ones’ more likely, creating a feedback loop.
Data on how many people in the UK are preppers is sparse. The Reddit forum, r/UKPreppers, has seen its membership balloon from just 300 users in 2020 to more than 9,800 today.
Almost 20 million Americans identified as preppers in 2022, with about four in 10 believing humanity is ‘living in the end times’.
US bunker communities have waiting lists, while tech billionaires are kitting theirs with climate-controlled bowling alleys and wellness spas.
Dan doesn’t blame Americans for being more on edge than Britons.
‘It’s the American frontier mentality of, “I’m a rugged outdoorsman with a fence around my ranch, everybody outside are bandits who are gonna eat me and kill my family”,’ he said.
‘That view doesn’t work in the UK. There are 68million of us on this island, we’re going to have to work together, rather than live on a prairie.’
Instead, Dan pictures a very-British-Armageddon as people camping in tents in their neighbour’s garden or off a motorway.
He understands that the prepper mindset, whether British or American, comes from deepening jitters about the future.
‘You don’t want to wind up like Muldoon in Jurassic Park, where you’re so busy looking at the velociraptor in front of you that you don’t notice there’s one right beside you,’ he adds.
Why do people become doomsday preppers?
Dr Sarita Robinson, otherwise known as Dr Survival, is a psychologist at Lancaster University who has spent decades researching people’s reactions to disasters.
She’s also spent time prepping, mainly small changes to her daily life, like buying a fire extinguisher and a mini generator.
‘Doomsday prepping is quite good in some ways because it shows a lot of cognitive flexibility,’ she tells Metro.
‘During the pandemic, the people who were better at coping were actually people who watched horror movies because they were able to see the bad things that could happen and have that flexibility of thought to do it.
‘Preppers see beyond the normal, they can see worst-case scenario… Sometimes we think of them as being a bit odd and weird – maybe they’re the people that have got the foresight for things that could go wrong.’
A study conducted by Dr Robinson and her team found that preparedness behaviours can help bolster people’s mental health during a disaster.
The desire to prep for the future may stem from being exposed to or experiencing trauma in the past, Dr Robinson said.
‘They’ve already had a bit of insight into a world where things can go wrong,’ she adds. ‘So prepping can be really psychologically protective.’
Yet, Dan worries that as the pandemic slips out of society’s mind, people are becoming less likely to believe that disruption could happen.
But Dr Robinson also said that what stops more people from prepping is simple: money.
‘You could go to B&Q and buy a fire extinguisher for £20, but you don’t, as you could use that £20 down the pub,’ she said.
Dan’s bank account isn’t exactly doomsday-proof either. But he admits he’d rather have double-glazed windows than a Faraday box, a lockbox which can block electromagnetic fields.
As much as the end could come at any time, doomsday prepping isn’t just a shopping list of canned peaches and biometric locks.
What we know and our relationships in life are just as important, Dan said.
He’s ‘broke’, he admits, but he’s learning how to forage and writing guides to prepare for a future with his family – and to help others do the same.
‘A lot of what you can do to prep is stuff that makes your everyday lives better,’ Dan said, thinking of his back-garden allotment.
‘Yes, this might save my life, but in the meantime, it’s nice to enjoy some blackberry jam in the Autumn.’
What you need to keep by your bed to survive Armageggon
Dan suggests people have about three days of essentials at home, enough that you can survive without a trip to Tesco’s.
Here are some of his tips and things to have by your bedside:
- Keep all documents, like passports and birth certificates, in an easily accessible place, preferably inside a waterproof bag stored in a fireproof safe
- A hard drive big enough to store backups of your digital information
- A small water filter and a large water bottle
- Battery lanterns or candles
- A first aid kit
- A ‘go bag’, a tough backpack with a waist belt and shoulder straps
- Weather-resistant clothing, including walking shoes
- Medications, such as antibiotics
- A compass and a map
- Long-life, calorie-dense food
- A tent
- A means of making a fire, such as the ‘humble and noble corner-shop disposable lighter’.
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