Encounters with survivalists

“In four years of ethnographic research, I have never met a single survivalist who is genuinely trying to protect themselves from the end of the world, but rather from some inevitable disaster – it might be
an economic crisis, or an ecological catastrophe. They’re convinced that whatever it is, it will lead to the collapse of the world order, to a world deprived of the safety nets provided by law. This is what they’re preparing for. A Darwinian dystopia where men will attack one another and only the strongest will survive.”

Six months of food stocks, off-grid sources of energy, weapons hidden in bunkers. Since the 1960es, thousands of survivalists have been preparing for the end of the world, as part of a militaristic movement trained to survive war, epidemic or natural disaster.

Mathieu Burgalassi succeeded in infiltrating the movement and he delivers a testimony as informative as it is fascinating about a heterogeneous and in many ways quite ordinary group of people, fed on anxiety-provoking political discourse, and obsessive militarism and racism. Determined to protect themselves at all costs, they have been at the origin of numerous terrorist attacks against “non-whites” and the “Arab-Muslim invasion”.