The Premise
Bunker isn’t going to help you put together a five step plan to survive the end of the world or convince you to buy that freeze-dried food bucket or backup generator. It’s a book about the people preparing for the end of the world, and the people profiting off their fears.
Garrett, a veteran urban explorer and cultural geographer spent three years and four continents exploring this world to find out what exactly is it we’re preparing for, who profits from our fears, and what happens when those fears aren’t even named? Garrett started the book before COVID but finished it in the first few weeks of the pandemic giving it an even more unsettling sense of timeliness.
If you’re someone who already keeps a go-bag by the door, this might be the book for you. It turns the lens back on the prepper, instead of just giving them a checklist of things to buy.
The Breakdown
The fear that is not directed at anything in particular Garrett calls dread. There are plenty of people, Garrett points out, who are happy to cash a check made out of dread. These are Garrett’s dread merchants: the entrepreneurs, developers, salesmen and influencers profiting off fear with no clear object.
Garrett’s targets are these dread merchants. The actual preppers Garrett meets along the way he treats fairly, even sympathetically; they mostly strike him as regular folks trying to insure against a bad outcome. His book is structured like a travelogue, beginning in a decommissioned government bunker deep below Britain, moving on to America’s survivalist heartland, luxury silo-condos, eco-bunkers in Australia, billionaire bunkers in New Zealand, and ending with an illegal excursion on foot into the Chernobyl exclusion zone. At the opening of each chapter a photograph shows Garrett embedded at each site.
Garrett’s approach is more Louis Theroux than FEMA pamphlet. He mostly eschews editorializing and lets his interviewees speak for themselves. Readers looking for a takedown of preppers may find Garrett too soft; those averse to conspiratorial thinking may find themselves squirming at his willingness to wade into such conversations.
The Verdict
Where Bunker shines is as a critical exploration of the end-times movement, from the fringes of society to the gated community, who is promoting it, who is falling for it, and why.
Bunker is not a how-to book and shouldn’t be read that way. There’s no information here on how to fortify a building or purify water, so if that’s what you’re after you’re better off elsewhere. It should be read alongside such books, and for preparedness-minded folks that critical perspective can be as valuable (and as rare) as any guide.
Where the book falls down a bit is where Garrett’s politics and sympathies become obvious, particularly in the material he added after the book was first published during the pandemic. Still, it’s an invaluable window into a corner of society you might not otherwise have access to, and essential reading if you want to make sure your rational take on preparedness doesn’t get hijacked and funneled into someone else’s agenda. Just don’t mistake the reconnaissance for instruction.
About the Book
- Book & Author: Bunker: Building for the End Times by Bradley Garrett
- Publisher: Scribner
- MSRP: $28 Hardcover
- URL: bradleygarrett.com
- Pages: 336
- Rating:
Thrive| Survive |Die
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