I’m devising plans for a novel based on an episode of Doomsday Preppers, one of my favorite shows on television that documents the lives of real people preparing for end of the world scenarios. The episode features one prepper couple who has convinced the rest of their cul-de-sac to join their prepping efforts by dividing into teams and launching a mock attack on the couple’s house. Those defending the house devise tactics such as pepper spray, custom wooden boards to secure the lower windows of the house, and, obviously, guns. Fortunately, no one was injured, except for some folks who got pepper sprayed in the eyes.
Perhaps because of this show, or because of the wariness of the people in this country, prepping is a movement that is slowly gaining ground in certain circles. The advertisements on this show are almost exclusively marketing products like ready-made meals that will appeal to the prepper base. This begs the question, what if one prepper was able to build entire communities where preppers and like-minded people could live completely off the grid?
In my story the main character is an architect who sets out with a cohort of trustworthy childhood friends: a sous-chef, an engineer, a former fbi agent, a librarian and a barber. Together they build a new civilization inside the walls of a canyon. It grows so large that the prepper people declare themselves a new country. At this point the United States military declares war on the prepperians and threatens to launch a nuclear missile strike at the canyon. China and Germany get involved because New Prepperland has become a trusted ally and trade beneficiary of the palladium-rich mountains where the prepperians harvest livestock and grow perennial foods. With the advent of WWIII, the preppers have fulfilled their own prophecy.
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