Doomsday Preppers Go Into Overdrive After Russia Shelled a Nuclear Plant in Ukraine
Until recently, Reddit’s r/Survival subreddit has maintained a longstanding dictate: “Keep all posts on the topic of Wilderness Survival,” the large forum’s Rule #2 reads.
“r/survival defines Wilderness Survival as the philosophies, knowledge, techniques, and actions applied in a Wilderness environment, in a short-term survival scenario, which serve to increase the likelihood of survival of the individual or group. This means no posts about urban survival, EDC, bug out, prepping, get home bags, teotwawki [the end of the world as we know it], zombies, collapse, etc.”
But earlier this week, moderators announced a change. “We are temporarily easing rule 2,” a moderator’s recent post reads.
As Russia wages a devastating attack on Ukraine, the internet’s survivalist circles have shifted into high gear. Some, like r/Survival, say they’re extending resources to Ukrainian readers. Others, often with doomsday merchandise to sell, are peddling visions of nuclear apocalypse to a more American audience.
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Americans are not the main characters of the war in Ukraine. But increased fears of Russian nuclear aggression have led many to run worst-case scenarios. Nukemap, a simulator that allows viewers to model the blast radius of a nuclear strike, has seen a surge in traffic since Feb. 23. The site’s founder told the Atlantic that the simulator is currently logging approximately 150,000 daily visitors, up from the 10,000 to 20,000 on a normal, non-crisis day. At times, the traffic has overwhelmed the site and forced it offline.
In some survivalist circles, those nuclear fears were cause to revisit doomsday prep plans—even if an attack was unlikely. Requests for nuclear fallout gear have proliferated across discussion boards like Reddit’s “survival” and “preppers” communities, including from users in countries like Australia. (“I would imagine that Australia is low on the list of Putin’s nuke agenda,” one Redditor assured another. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”)
Survivalist communities are not necessarily full of doomsday fantasizers. Plenty, like r/Survival, usually focus on emergency preparedness, rural lifehacks, or radical gardening. But other sites have spent years warning of imminent catastrophe, from Y2K to nuclear meltdown—while conveniently selling disaster readiness gear.
Mike Adams, founder of the conspiracy site “Natural News,” has been hawking survival products since 1999, when he warned of a grim (and ultimately, unrealized) technological meltdown that would take place on New Year’s Day, 2000. Today Natural News (and its sister sites like Survival News) are flush with explainers on how Americans can survive Russian-related fallout. One of Adams’ recent articles on Survival News on “how to survive a cyber attack TAKEDOWN of America” currently runs alongside an ad for “proven protection from radiation damage.” The ad links to Adams’ store, which sells a combination of emergency gear and dubious supplements like essential oils.
Adams, notably, does not blame Russian aggression for such a potential attack, but the U.S. “deep state,” which he claims will knock out the country’s power grid “all to be blamed on Russia.”
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Conspiracy megalith Infowars is running its own version of the fearmongering flash sale. On Friday, the site’s homepage was running an article warning of “collapse.” Next to the article was an ad for Infowars-branded supplements like “Survival Shield” (“50% off”).
Other, now-infamous prepper tweets have consoled Americans that, actually, nuclear fallout might not be so bad, provided one has the right gear.
“Nuclear war is bad,” reads one viral tweet, by a U.S.-based survivalist blogger. “Very bad. Don't get me wrong. But based on my research so far, it's more survivable than you think. The key to survival is realistic optimism and a positive mental attitude. In the meantime, here's how anyone can start food prep.”
The tweet linked to a blog post about maintaining an emergency pantry, which followed another blog for American readers titled “How to Prepare for a Russian Invasion of Ukraine.”
On r/Survival, where moderators eased the “no apocalypse” rule, the top two pinned threads are a list of Ukrainian aid charities and a compendium of border-crossing information for Ukrainian refugees.
But a grim global mood also has some unlikely targets envisioning themselves in the eye of a crisis. Alex Wellerstein, the founder of Nukemap, told the Atlantic that most Americans using his site were modeling how a nuclear strike would affect them.
“Americans by far nuke themselves most of the time,” he said. “They prefer experiential nuking. I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s narcissistic, but our main mode of using Nukemap is to look and see what will happen to us.”
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