Veterinarian Richard Kimball of Burns has noticed a disturbing trend among some of his friends.
A Rockaway Beach couple has stockpiled food and assembled survival backpacks for their three adult children in Portland and Eugene. "If chaos arises, they can put the backpacks on so they can get home," said Kimball, 72. "There is a pistol in each of the backpacks."
Another longtime friend, a Harney County cattle rancher, recently bought an AK-47 assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. "Does that tell you anything?" Kimball asked. "He’s scared."
La Grande welder and gunsmith Jim Rector, meanwhile, said he has supplies and a jetboat at the ready to carry him and his wife to a secluded hideout along the Snake River.
Boston’s Gun Bible
Best Price: $18.51
Buy New $174.95
(as of 09:10 UTC - Details)
They’re all signs that the survivalist movement, slumbering since the Y2K scare and, before that, Jimmy Carter’s bumpy presidency, has been shaken awake.
Government officials, academics, authors and others – in addition to those doing the stockpiling – say a growing number of people are independently building caches of food, weapons and precious metals such as gold.
As in earlier movements, survivalists are centered in conservative, rural areas such as eastern Oregon. Only this time, many prefer to be called "preppers" – for preparedness – and are driven by fears, stoked by Barack Obama’s presidency, that economic catastrophe, sweeping technological failure and societal upheaval are just around the corner.
LifeGear 3 Day Survial...
Check Amazon for Pricing.
And though the movement intersects with a wave of weapon and ammunition hoarding among some who fear that Obama will clamp down on gun rights, there’s little talk of forming militias as in past survivalist movements.
Patriots: A Novel of S...
Best Price: $1.10
Buy New $1.99
(as of 03:05 UTC - Details)
"People fear change; people get angry when they don’t understand something," said La Grande City Councilman Steve Clements, 52, who teaches finance and information systems at Eastern Oregon University. "I think there is a lot of fear associated with having the first black president."
La Grande’s Mike Sirrine, a Vietnam veteran and retired human resources manager who has added guns to his arsenal and is stockpiling beans and rice, said it’s not that clear-cut.
The new survivalism, he said, reflects "an indistinct fear, not a very well-focused fear." He added, though, that in our 21st century culture, a collapse no worse than the Great Depression would trigger "rioting and people dying in the streets."
James Wesley Rawles, a survivalist author, lecturer and consultant who lives in Idaho, estimates that preppers make up 1 percent of the U.S. population – but 5 percent in eastern and southwestern Oregon.
The former U.S. Army intelligence officer is author of Patriots, A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse and creator of SurvivalBlog.com, a 4-year-old site that has logged millions of hits. It’s a big draw among preppers committed to surviving what Rawles, 48, calls TEOTWAWKI – the end of the world as we know it.
September 7, 2009
