It's a chicken-egg problem, though. Modern survivalism began with The Order, which was inspired by The Turner Diaries, which was published by the National Alliance, which started out as the National Youth Alliance, which was all about George Wallace's racist bid for president. Prior to George Wallace any "prepping" was associated with hard-right government elements - the goal of Civil Defense was to protect all Americans against the creeping influence of godless communism, regardless of color. After George Wallace? White supremacists all the way down. George Romero's Night of the Living Dead put racism front and center - the only sensible person in that entire movie is black, and in the end he gets shot by a bunch of good ole'boys who use the ghoul uprising to oppress any living blacks. Romero's ouvre is a social commentary about man's inhumanity to man. Every "zombie" movie after that, though, is an excuse to be ooked out by your neighbors and hit them with a baseball bat. The pandemic was never going to satisfy preppers because a breakdown of order is only necessary to permit the wholesale slaughter of anyone they don't like. "you didn't prepare for this" was an excuse used by Nazis against non-Nazis and will always be a euphemism for "you don't follow our creed." Realistically speaking, the minute the libs started wearing masks those guys who walk around in rad badges and boil their water were going to make a reckless embracing of communal infection a calling card of racial purity.
Somehow none of that surprises me. But I’ve always found the weird psychology around a lot of the fears rather fascinating. The things Americans tend to fear are violent catastrophes that seem borne out of movies and television and especially superhero comics. Countries that actually have these sorts of disasters tend to be pretty laid back about it. In Puerto Rico, they stock up on rum and have bock parties to care for their neighbors. They don’t cower in their homes with an arsenal of automatic weapons. They help each other out.
Maszlow's Heirarchy gets beat up a lot by professionals for the same reason Freud does: people are too fucking literal. It's useful from a psych 101 standpoint, though - you aren't gonna care too much about TikTok followers if you don't have a roof over your head. The day-to-day life of a Puerto Rican whose routine can be disrupted by hurricanes and earthquakes is going to be different than the day-to-day life of a Haitian whose routine can be disrupted by hurricanes, earthquakes, civil unrest, famine and disease. Both of them have a very different outlook than a USPS branch manager in Illinois whose day-to-day is largely going to be impacted by emails from the district office. Gonna level with ya. I hate zombie movies. A rant I wrote against zombie movies got famous in certain corners of the internet a long time ago. And what I realized then and what I still believe now is that all the disaster-prep bullshit this country leans into so heavily is "commuter syndrome" - that display of unbridled rage against strangers for venial sins. The thing about survivalism is nobody ever fears clever bad guys. It's always stupid bad guys. During the Cold War, we mostly feared totalitarianism. Maszlow's Hierarchy again - hard to get tweaked out by your neighbors when the Reds could end the world at any minute. The minute nuclear annihilation was no longer on the table, though, the concerns shifted from "V" and "They Live" to tearing down mutherfucking society. I find Alan Moore's criticisms of superheroes to be cogent - they represent an abandonment of civil society in favor of vigilantism and that, much like you need to be nuked to invent kaiju, you need doomsday weapons to lean so heavily into superpowers. The difference between Batman and Duterte is the costume. Superheroes, kaiju and strongmen all get their strengths from the same place - a fear of complexity. Why investigate the causes of addiction when you can just murder dealers in the street? I had a buddy in high school who longed for the apocalypse. Why? it meant guns and simplicity. No more worrying about why this girl didn't like him, just go shoot a mutant. There's an othering that's central to survivalism and zombie movies - the former compatriot who tries to eat your brains. Better shoot them before liberal thought causes them to support transgender bathrooms! And ultimately, the dark heart of survivalism is an embracing of otherment. "things will be better when I can shoot anyone coming after my Patriot Pantry." Yeah. It's definitely about zombies. Uh huh. That's why it wasn't a disease that made everyone "zombies" during COVID, it was wearing a mask and getting microchips injected.
I think too that a lot of the fantasy is the loosening of restrictions. You can shoot people in the apocalypse. You can leave your normal responsibilities and bug off to the woods and do nothing but fish hunt and garden. No more commutes and shopping for ramen at piggly wiggly. No more spreadsheets and emails. No more shuffling the kids off to soccer practice. Just a simple little life.
Having grown up in a survivalist-heavy environment with lots of guns and lots of survivalists (had a friend remark "I coulda won Waco" once) it's entirely about doing what you want and punishing others for doing what you don't want. It's the desire for ultimate power while eschewing ultimate responsibility.