As Tar_Alcaran said, most of them are really really right wing.
...and neck deep in 7 conspiracy theories and get-rich-quick schemes of the week.
As Cory Doctorow puts it, "Prepping is a way of playing out a fantasy in which you are elevated to savior status, not an exercise in disaster-mitigation."
The prepper market is absolutely rife with grifts.

Prepperism is a rabbit hole that your uncle falls down that makes Thanksgiving awkward and makes the whole rest of the family worry about them. Not a benign hobby. And certainly not effective disaster preparedness.

There's of course nothing wrong with having a kerosene heater in your garage or owning a generator in case your power goes out for a few days. But luxury bunkers full of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of MREs bought from Alex Jones' online store? That's someone who thinks the government is all disguised extraterrestrials who drink child adrenal fluid to stay young and and inebriated. Except Trump who is prophesized to throw them all in jail.

[–] Sunfoil@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

There isn't anything inherently wrong with having a properly built bunker with all the food and stuff you need.

I agree there are a lot of right wing nutjobs with more guns than gardening tools, but you're being pretty uncharitable to a very broad hobby that includes just as many hippies and leftish people ready to help their local communities.

Preparedness is something everyone should have, so that when the store shelves empty at the start of the pandemic, no one is concerned about their lack of toilet paper or feeding their kids.