Urban Preppers and the Pandemic in New York City

Anna Maria Bounds is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, USA.

• 1. Preparing for Survival versus Trying to Survive 2. History of Contagions and Chaos in the City 3. Escape from New York: When the Rich Left the City 4. Setting Up: Prepper Closets 5. Settling In and Settling Down: Life During Lockdown 6. Fostering Resiliency: The New York City Prepper’s Network 7. Prepper Advice for Post-Pandemic New York 8. Resiliency and a Way Forward for the City

"Anna Maria Bounds provides an immensely illuminating and unique analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is one that only she could produce – and demonstrates that, in 2020, Bounds was the right scholar, in the right place, at a terrible, terrible time. As it offers a forensic outline of this COVID’s spread throughout New York City, this book combines Bounds’ background as a New Yorker, leading expertise on disaster prepping, and flair as an author, to provide a definitive account of a unique moment in NYC (and the wider world’s) history. To understand what happened during COVID, why it happened, how preppers readied for and responded to the disease, what can be learned from these events, and how we (as a society and individuals) might prepare for the next big event, you need to read this book."Michael F. Mills, University of Kent"Anna Maria Bounds dives again into New York City prepper culture with this fascinating follow-up to her 2020 book, Bracing for the Apocalypse. Experience and ethnographic research of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic bring an urgent update and focus on the visceral, material realities of the disaster prepared in disastrous times. The swells of massive change in economic conditions, governance, and racialized inequality are essential pieces of the puzzle that Anna brings to the table, in her quest to make us understand all of what is at stake. Expect fascinating stories and analyses of expertise, human connection, energy for collective action, and all the things New Yorkers learned during the pandemic that they could not do without. No plans for the fall? Then read this book!"Meg Holden, Simon Fraser University"In her second book on the prepping community, Bounds offers an insightful, captivating account of life in New York during the pandemic. A fascinating peek inside the urban prepper movement in NYC that tells a story of how hope, planning, and community can allay fear during crisis."Bradley Garrett, Author of Bunker: Building for the End Times"...Bounds demonstrates [that] the COVID-19 pandemic affected New Yorkers differently depending on class and geography. Wealthy families retreated to secondary homes in the Hamptons or elsewhere. Even within the city, the privilege of working remotely was distributed differently by gender, race, and ethnicity. Bounds takes readers through her experience of the pandemic by focusing on a group marginalized in society: preppers. Stereotyped by others as paranoid isolationists, preppers, as Bounds describes them, are individuals and families who are “preparing for tomorrow” and honing normal skills found in scouting, camping, or overlanding: cooking with fire, building shelters, navigating terrain. Bounds details the social networks of skilled individuals who shared knowledge and supplies with their neighbors, a far cry from the stereotype of them. The book shines when describing the widening gulf between the government and citizens in the US, painfully evident since COVID-19. Five years after COVID's onset, Bounds leaves readers with an unsettling picture of society with a disengaged government and an angry, bewildered citizenry."R. P. Lorenzo, CHOICE (Highly Recommended)