Let’s start with the fact that the media seldom gets anyone right. “The word ‘prepper’,” reports the New York Times, “usually brings to mind a bearded white man in head-to-toe Realtree camo, anticipating the next civil war while hunkered in a bunker, surrounded by automatic weapons, pallets of Dude Wipes and dehydrated meals.”[1] The nationwide popularity of National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers did a real number on the thirty percent of Americans who are involved to some extent with survivalism. Popular opinion pegs them as either white supremacist rednecks holed up with their shotguns in Idaho, or Silicon Valley billionaires who have built underground silos with air filtration systems and hydroponic farms in New Zealand.

     Sure, that’s some of us. But most preppers I’ve gotten to know in the Pacific Northwest, the favorite back country for many expecting the coming collapse of America, are more-or-less normal people who have stacked their garages with canned goods and jugs of water, first aid kits, and hand-cranked radios. That’s called bugging-in. A large backpack stuffed with a flashlight, a change of clothes, a wad of cash, and Grandma’s antique gold and silver jewelry to barter when cash doesn’t work anymore, is bugging-out. What are the innies and outies preparing for? Earthquakes. Fires. An asteroid or two. Forty percent of Americans believe we are already living in the End Times.[2] When you go deep into Redoubt territory, you meet preppers on guard against invading aliens, either from across the border or in the depths of outer space. But in central Washington State, where I relocated to research a novel about two young gay men fleeing LA only to find themselves recruited by preppers, I met a family worried about securing a supply of insulin for their diabetic kids when, as they put it, “push comes to shove”; old student radicals convinced a Fascist America was just around the corner; and Cold War remnants terrified by the thousands of nuclear missiles still targeted at us. None of these people are crazy. It is easy to dismiss doomerism as paranoia, but history is replete with people who should have fled, but didn’t: Jews in Nazi Europe once, Arctic villagers on thawing permafrost now, victims of famines and epidemics always. Survivalism can be a rational response to genuine threats if you read the news and want something of human civilization to resurface. 

     It may be hard to imagine gay people enlisting in the survivalist ranks. For every stereotype trafficked in Doomsday Preppers, there’s a Jack in Will & Grace who’s too much of a hot mess to survive the afternoon, much less the End Times. Look at what America says about us. Gay folk crowd together in cities, seldom store enough nutrition in the fridge to make it through a week, and rarely procreate with any eye toward the human future. Some survivalists think we’re one threat they’re ditching by withdrawing to the hinterlands. A burden on society rather than a pillar of it, we are surplus people, useless to the regeneration of the species after the onslaught of tidal waves, earthquakes, and hemispheric conflagrations. We are the antithesis of what should be preserved, just more mouths to feed in a post-apocalyptic world. Who will need interior decorators, choreographers, or hair burners then? When survivors are eking out a bare existence in caves?

     My acquaintance Steve moved to Portland from Montana, so it wasn’t hard for him to return and start retrofitting the small cabin he’d inherited for the post-apocalyptic long haul. It also served as a nice, if far-flung, getaway for Steve and the guys he dated. Some gladly helped him with the bugging-out prep, while others, less glad, thought it was just a weird quirk in a dude they otherwise liked. One of those men, Darrin, was taken aback when he first walked in. One bed wasn’t out of the ordinary, but it was hardly wide enough for two people. Stranger still to Darrin’s mind was that amid the ballistic nylon, the packets of dehydrated food and the solar battery-chargers, was the absence of anything remotely queer: no novels by Edmund White, no poster from Brokeback Mountain, no old disco CDs or colorful winter mufflers hanging in the closet. Oh, I’ll be alone, Steve explained, almost apologizing, but not quite. None of that stuff will survive, he told him. Gays without cities? Without brunch?

     But gay survivalists exist, and I am here to testify. Certain things I share with my fellow straight preppers; other things I don’t. Politics, for instance, runs the gamut among us. While some gay preppers lean libertarian, valuing self-sufficiency and distrust of government, others sign up with a left-wing or even anarchist agenda, or are motivated by environmentalism and concerns for social justice. Gay people are less likely to prep for a communist invasion or a U.N. takeover, and more likely to be driven by climate change-driven disasters, the collapse of capitalism, or the rise of wingnut extremism. Prepping for the best of us stems from a desire to protect our community, however defined, from genuine threats. A seed bank can be as radical and life-sustaining as any ACT-UP protest sign. Like those signs, they are audacious demonstrations of hope.

     At its core, the prepper ethos would regain control in chaotic times. This resonates with many gay men. AIDS in the 1980s and 90s was world-altering, even apocalyptic. Institutions—governmental, medical, and religious—failed us. Survival was not hypothetical; it was a daily struggle managed through grassroots networks, illicit treatment buyers’ clubs, and friends bedside with us in lieu of biological family. We know you cannot rely on any system to save you. The state is indifferent, at best, to your particular crisis. As one gay prepper remarked to me, “Being prepared isn’t a fantasy; it’s a learned reflex.”

     Michael, not his real name, began with stockpiling beans, just a few cans tucked into the cupboard. But soon his shelves filled, and his Seattle bungalow became a fortress of rice, water filters, and medicine. Friends teased him—“Quite the Cassandra there, Michael”—but he only smiled. They didn’t know what survival meant to him. They hadn’t buried a husband in 1993, hadn’t watched the nation pretend not to notice men wasting away, hadn’t trembled each time he went for his own test results.

     Daniel—not his real name either—also began by filling his pantry. At first, it was just boxes of instant noodles. But soon the kitchen was crowded with durable goods—water filters, hand tools, solar lanterns. Daniel’s friends joked, too. “When’s the clearance sale, Daniel?” He smiled, too, but said little. They didn’t know what survival meant to him, either. They hadn’t clawed their way out of meth addiction, hadn’t woken up in alleys or hospital beds, hadn’t rebuilt a life from scratch. Daniel was preparing to do it again.

     The intersection of gay identity and survivalist culture may surprise us at first, but it shows something. Gay men have long been survivalists—navigating hostile waters, building sanctuaries, and weathering crises. Prepping is another expression of this, adapted to contemporary fears and hopes. The longstanding Radical Faerie movement, with its “back-to-the-land” ethos of self-sufficiency, prefigures survivalism. As one SF Weekly piece years ago on Northern California’s queer Groundswell community noted, “Eco-hippies and gun-hoarding doomsday preppers aren't entirely at odds . . . someone mentioned . . . cutting off Highway 128 to thwart an exodus of panicked Bay Area residents fleeing some hypothetical catastrophe.”[3] But the ties are only suggestive, not organizational. There’s dystopian fiction and how-to-survive manuals, but gay people are rarely in the former and never in the latter. There’s no advice on how to pack supplies for your next drag ball or safe sex amid radioactive ruins. No instructions for hosting a chic dinner party when your guests are cannibals. No stories about Black lesbians holed up in the San Bernardino Mountains with the wherewithal to resist when Martians land. No TV shows about how trans people plan for life without hormone supplements. In Hollywood’s The Road, it’s a straight Viggo Mortensen and his son; in I Am Legend, memories of a dead wife haunt heterosexual Will Smith, but he’s got a great dog. Remember, some preppers are homosexual, openly or discreetly. Our respective subcultures overlap. Stockpiling food or learning wilderness skills resonates with the same instinct that once drove gay activists to create community clinics and buddy systems. And we equally love acronyms, if only because they mark us as insiders: preppers talk about WTSHTF—When The Shit Hits The Fan—and a lot of gay people (a.k.a. LGBTQ+) refer to themselves as FOD, GWM, or the bitterest, PWA. We are everywhere, as the slogan goes, and that means sitting behind the red button that will launch the missiles to destroy the planet, as well as living among their targets worldwide, some of the latter scheming how they might stay alive. 

     Most people appear to be hard-wired with the imperative to survive, even if the threats vary from person to person and from century to century. Not that risk tolerance is evenly distributed. We were kids who jumped from the cliff into the swimming hole, as well as those frightened of our own shadows. Some of us take pleasure in taking chances with our lives, while others shrink from hazard. You can think of preppers as risk-averse, and gay men—between the drugs and viruses—as sex-positive shading into risk-positive. But survivalism, too, is nothing without risk; it needs extreme scenarios. Gay men may find this appealing. It mirrors the thrill of living outside norms and challenging boundaries. For some, prepping is not about fear of disaster but instead adventure. Camping in remote areas, learning bushcraft, or practicing tactical skills become ways to explore masculinity and same-sex intimacy in rugged places. Wilderness strips away artifice, leaving only the body, the land, and the bonds between men. Survivalism stages homoerotic camaraderie—sweat, endurance, and trust forge connections. Gay men carved out bars, clubs, and city neighborhoods as refuges from America’s small towns; prepping takes us into the terrain of literal physical subsistence. With the rise in homophobia since the re-election of Donald Trump, gay people have more incentive to imagine safe havens, the more remote the better.

     Prepper culture proposes an alternative model of masculinity. If traditional notions of manhood are linked to physical dominance, then some gay men might feel excluded. Survivalist skills—building, farming, hunting, fixing, first-aid—constitute a realm of hands-on dominance all their own. This is masculinity defined not by whom you love, but by what you can do. The ability to build a fire, purify water, or grow food encourages an independence we can lay claim to. For some, here is a counter-narrative to the sexual trauma they grew up with. Survivalism emphasizes autonomy: the ability to live without dependence on fragile systems. For gay men, especially those rejected by their families or churches, this autonomy is empowering. To build shelter, purify water, or defend oneself is to reclaim agency in a world that has denied it to us. Weekend jaunts into the woods with preppers can create chosen families, too. Where prepper spaces are unwelcoming, we form our own: online forums, Facebook groups, and local meet-ups have sprung up with names such as “Queer Preppers” or “Rainbow Survivalists.” The “lone wolf” prepper myth—one survivalists share with that of the “serial killer”—is akin to that of the pack: trusted, capable, and interdependent. Facing crises, gay people understand the greatest asset may not be the bunker, but that queer prepper friend who is a nurse or, orientation aside, that neighbor who knows how to repair your solar panels.

     What happens when these two subcultures, the queer and the survivalist, occur in the same time and place is what I explore in my novel about two young gay men and their flirtation with prepperdom, The Seventh City of Refuge. I chose to write this story because the ethics of risk-taking compelled me both as a gay man and as one of billions staring into the face of the Anthropocene. We may think we can control everything, but we can’t. Climb Mount Everest, and you might just fall off; try a new party drug, and you could get hooked. But understanding what threatens us is also what keeps us going. Preppers may reduce the odds while gay men roll the dice, but does anyone really think it through to the end? None of us blames fate anymore; percentages of likelihood have supplanted it. Take risks away, and people will just invent new ones. 

     Each generation has its ‘peering into the abyss’ moment. Our grandparents lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and their own flirtation with survivalism teaches Conor and Pete that what unites and separates them from their neighbors is how they assess danger against the thrill of it. No one lives in a world where anything is surefire anymore, if it ever was. “Risk factors” are now the language modern people speak in common. Our parents had Three Mile Island; we have warming ocean waters. Human beings have always lived with danger—remember, predators once ate us, and occasionally still do. Today, you’re in charge of tallying the pluses and the minuses, and you either jump out of the plane or you don’t. 

     Taking risks is not solely about gaining something in the bargain. Liability is an end in itself. People might imagine reducing danger to zero, but no one eliminates it, and often we don’t want to. Confronting fear clarifies things—fear is an evolutionary advantage if you mean to survive. Keeping an eye peeled for sharks at the beach means you might just live longer. But no one is rational all the time, and wagering your life might be one of the last liberties permitted us. What participating in the prepper movement teaches us is this: the trepidation that motivates me and my novel’s characters to prepare for Armageddon is of a piece with the apprehensions that supercharge our lives. 

     The clock was always ticking for my generation of gay men, as it is now for preppers. On top of that, everyone has heard the past warning signs: Mutual Assured Destruction and AIDS; fentanyl overdoses and COVID-19; too much government in our lives, or not enough. The difference between us is whether we keep our eye on the clock’s minute hand or the calendar, and whether we are preparing for whatever surprises lurk around the corner. You might decide to prepare for the expected worst, as do the survivalists in your neighborhood; or alternatively, just take your chances in the face of an ultimately undeterminable future. If you are like me, you will do both: Not because I am hedging my bets, but because I genuinely do not not know what I’ll do. There are iodine pills stored away in my medicine cabinet, as well as a joint and a bottle of scotch in the bedroom closet that I can take up to the roof when the air-raid sirens go off and the show begins.

John Whittier Treat’s The Seventh City of Refuge is now out from Phylum Press, and available from your favorite online retailer, or https://phylumpress.ca.

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1. J. Wortham, “My 10-Day Course on Surviving the Apocalypse,” New York Times (March 10, 2025).

2. Lauren Jackson, “The Apocalypse Goes Mainstream,” New York Times (April 27, 2026).

3. “Faerie Realm: An Intentional Community in Mendocino,” SF Weekly (Dec 9, 2015).