‘Preppers’ Quietly Stock Up for the ‘Perfect Storm’
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A crippling ice storm that left Travis Maddox and thousands of other Missouri residents without power in 2007 had an “almost apocalyptic feel to it.”
“No one could move. It just shut the whole region down for two weeks. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought,” said Maddox, a burly man of 43, sporting a long black beard, T-shirt, cargo pants, and baseball cap, while tending his garden.
Those two weeks made Maddox realize that being prepared—“prepping,” as it’s called today—was the key to a life of self-reliance and personal freedom.
As an Eagle Scout, he never forgot the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.
“To me, the ultimate level of prepping is being self-sufficient. You’re still being modern, but you’re in control,” Maddox told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5.
In 2009, Maddox launched his YouTube channel, “The Prepared Homestead,” which now has over 32,000 subscribers.
People, he said, are waking up to the worsening reality of supply chain disruptions and food shortages, and rapid political and social changes that all point toward “a perfect storm” just ahead.
The COVID-19 lockdowns and empty store shelves only served to heighten popular sentiment that the “old normal” is gone, he said.
“When the pandemic struck, we started seeing all this panic buying,” Maddox said. “What’s really increased is the number of people that contact me. These are really personal emails. They’re not crazy extremists. These are single moms, elderly people, disabled people, regular working people. They’re realizing that things are changing. They can just feel things are changing rapidly,” he said.
“The riots [of 2020] were bad. The election was bad. Now what’s happening is the whole world is starting to change.”
Talk of a global political and economic “Great Reset” and vaccine passports have done little to diminish anxiety among the unvaccinated that society is about to turn its back on them. And so they and others prepare—with food, water, alternative power sources, survival gear, and plans to leave the city if possible for the relative safety of rural areas.
Along with “The Prepared Homestead,” a host of other YouTube channels cater to seasoned and beginning preppers, including “Magic Prepper” in North Dakota, “Angry Prepper” in New York City, “Alaska Prepper,” “Ice Age Farmer,” and many others.
Maddox said “The Prepared Homestead” began as a way to share basic gardening tips that grew in scope as political and economic circumstances changed.
Now he produces at least six videos per week, touching upon such controversial topics as forced vaccination, firearms confiscation, and “cultural secession”—living apart from the government and its “woke” culture—while using careful language to avoid the YouTube censors.
“A huge portion of our country is saying you’ve gone too far,” Maddox said. “We’re seeing not just a rapid change in politics and policies and the economy, we’re seeing a rapid change in the heart and soul of America.”
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