Survivalism: To Do or To Die

Martha Felts

Professor Oliver

PHIL 1030

07 December 2023

Survivalism: To Do or To Die

Kurt Anderson, the author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, discusses survivalism in chapter 36 “Anything Goes Unless It Picks My Pocket or Break My Leg.” Survivalists (also known as preppers) are people who are convinced there is going to be a complete breakdown of the U.S. economy and the government. They believe that with enough preparation and supplies, they would be capable of surviving in rural, off-the-grid, isolation. Most survivalists are typically right-wing and anti-government. Kurt Anderson believes that survivalists are essentially living in a full-time fantasy game and that they are highly invested in the rationality of their scenarios because they obsess over every riot, war, and epidemic.


Throughout this chapter, Kurt Anderson mocks survivalists and labels them as “wacky and sad.” He admits that their lifestyle and “fantasyland” don't “pick his pocket or break his leg” and they have the right to live in a bunker with a decade's worth of twenty-serving cans of teriyaki rice and beef. Still, he also has the right to disapprove of this lifestyle and any other lifestyle of the belief that he wants. Although Mr. Anderson believes that survivalists have a right to live any way they want he disagrees that we should not simply leave them alone and let them be because “there are consequences in the real world” and “delusional ideas and magical thinking flood from the private sphere into the public and they affect everyone.”

While reading this chapter I began to question Kurt Anderson’s opinion and logic surrounding survivalism. I began asking myself are survivalists as loony as Kurt Anderson makes them seem? In my opinion, everyone should essentially be preparing for some sort of natural or social disaster. I think the most recent epidemic with the Coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) showed us that we should at least have an extra pack of toilet paper and water bottles stocked away for emergency shutdowns. Here is a link to an article written by J Oliver Conroy which discusses the ridicule that preppers faced before the pandemic and how the Coronavirus may have proved that more people need to be preparing for the worst. He writes that the coronavirus caused many Non-preppers to have been “caught in a rain shower without an umbrella.” and that he has “ come to respect the preppers’ ethos of survival and preparedness.” https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/apr/30/preppers-survivalists-disasters-lessons

I also began to question if Kurt Anderson is right and that we need to stand up to people (like survivalists) who are not living in a “socially acceptable” way because their actions might affect us either physically or financially. Here is the answer that I came up with: while survivalists are not ghastly affecting our pockets and legs some delusional ideas do. According to Mr. Anderson as alternative medicine is being mainstreamed millions of people are being cheated and getting sick. While this does not affect our legs or our pockets initially it will result in our pockets being picked when these people are admitted to an actual hospital with actual doctors who are being paid through insurance and the government. While I do not agree with Mr. Anderson’s idea that survivalists need to be dealt with I think that if we applied this philosophy to other groups such as Anti Vaxxers then America would not have to worry about another pandemic.




Attached here is an interesting and in-depth documentary by National Geographic that dives into the lives of 3 doomsday preppers and discloses the practices and beliefs of many survivalists. https://youtu.be/FHMW37ixwFI?si=wgR5sD0VY9X3Mrxi