Survivalists see war, chaos, and hunger on the horizon no matter who wins

People have already begun prepping for the 2016 election aftermath.

(Image credit: iStockphoto)

This election spells the end of the world as we know it, warn America's preppers, the survivalists who build secluded homes and stockpile seeds, canned goods, gold, solar panels, generators, and weapons to sustain and protect their families in the event of a national or global catastrophe.

In a fascinating new profile from Politico, some preppers suspect the election will be stolen from Donald Trump — "Trump will win the popular vote by a landslide, and then the Electoral College will give it to [Hillary] Clinton," one says — but they are hardly consistent Trump loyalists. On the contrary, these rural survivalists predict conflict and suffering no matter which candidate triumphs:

The end of the campaign, many in this community believe, is only the beginning: The really bad stuff will begin the day after the election. "I'll be honest with ya, I think some things are going to go down," Lucas told me."Nobody takes Obama seriously," he said, "but the two people who are running for office — a lot of people are scared that he'll hit the nuclear button without even taking a breath, and that she's so wicked that I won't be surprised if she opens the floodgates of ISIS to come in and kill all Americans." Though most of his clients, like him, support Trump, he says, "Most all of them expect there will be riots in either case." [Politico]

"It doesn't matter who wins," another survivalist mused. "We're in trouble." But the preppers' own destiny is far more certain than today's electoral outcome. For those who make survivalism their livelihood, business has boomed throughout campaign season. Cellars are stocked, off-grid dwellings built, and ammunition collected to ward off a world gone mad. Now, it is simply time to wait.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.