Abstract
Abe is an urban survivalist who does not embody the image of the survivalist portrayed in our media or popular culture of an armed and embittered right-wing zealot crazed by racist, religious, or conspiratorial delusions—the images many now have of David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh, and the militias. Yet Abe does represent what is perhaps the most common type of survivalist: an individual not allied to any organized group or religion and not fanatic or apocalyptic in the classic sense. Concerned mainly with the negative effects of a rapidly changing world, including a deteriorating society and way of life and the potential for major social disruptions in the near future, Abe preaches “disaster preparedness“—the mantra of the “boy scout survivalist.”
So prepare and make yourself ready, and all of your family, and be on guard against the enemy.
Ezek. 38:7, RSV
I really don’t know if I’d shoot someone who was coming after my last Snickers Bar—but I might.
Abe, 25-year-old urban survivalist 1
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Notes
The discussion with “Abe,” the urban survivalist, is based on a series of interviews conducted between 1990 and 1991 at Abe’s apartment in a modern, low-rise complex in a small city northeast of Boston, Massachusetts.
Daniel Boone (1734–1820), frontiersman and legendary American hero, helped blaze a trail through the Cumberland Gap, a notch in the Appalachian Mountains near the border between Virginia and Tennessee. Zebulon Pike (1779–1813) was a U.S. Army officer and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado is named. In 1805 Pike led a 20-man exploring party to the headwaters of the Missouri to discover the source of the river, negotiate peace treaties with Indian tribes, and assert legal claim of the United States to the area. Pike also explored the Southwest and Spanish territory. Pike served in the War of 1812 and was killed in action on April 27, 1813. Davy Crockett (1786–1836), frontiersman, politician, and Indian fighter, was a legendary figure who made a name for himself in Tennessee during the Creek War (1813–1815). In 1821 he was elected to the Tennessee legislature, winning popularity with homespun yarns and humor. When he failed to win election to the U.S. Congress he headed west to Texas and joined the American forces against the Mexicans. In 1836 he and fewer than 200 Texas volunteers were killed by 4,000 Mexican soldiers at the eighteenth-century Franciscan mission in San Antonio known as the Alamo. Purportedly a real trapper and mountain man living in the mid-19th century, Jeremiah “Liver Eatin’ “ Johnson (so-called because of the way he devoured his victims) was made famous by the Sydney Pollack film Jeremiah Johnson (1972) starring Robert Redford. Jeremiah Johnson was writted by John Milius, author of Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn.
Two decades of legal squabbling and unruly protests turned the Seabrook, New Hampshire, nuclear power plant into a symbol of everything that was wrong with atomic energy in the United States during the 1980s. After years of start-ups, shutdowns, and protests that led to more than 2,500 arrests since the mid-1970s, the beleaguered power plant continues to operate, but at a lower level.
James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987).
Stephen N. Linder, “Survivalists: Ethnography of an Urban Millennial Cult” (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis: University of California, Los Angeles, 1982).
John G. Mitchell, “Waiting for Apocalypse.” Audubon 85:18–24 (1983).
Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground (New York: Free Press, 1989).
Richard G. Peterson, “Preparing for Apocalypse: Survivalist Strategies.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 12(1):44–46 (1984).
James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994).
Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Philip Lamy, “Millennialism in the Mass Media: The Case of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31:408–424; (December 1992); Coates, Armed and Dangerous; Peterson, “Preparing for Apocalypse.”
There are (and have been since before World War II) other American militarytype magazines, including serviceman and veterans magazines. Although these deal with the military, weaponry, and international politics, they cannot be called gun magazines. Nor do they bear even passing resemblance to the paramilitary magazines of today. There is also a gun and war history genre that primarily concerns antiques and popular history. The popular history and the hobby content, however, do show correspondence with the paramilitary magazines. In the 1950s there were examples of military and masculine literature such as True, Journal of the Foreign Legion, and Stormtrooper Magazine (mid-1960s), a publication of the Ku Klux Klan. Stormtrooper now exists as a “home page” on the Internet. The sport/hunting magazines have continued on, largely unaffected by paramilitary literature. If anything they may have profited by the general interest in guns. Some of the changes that have occurred have been in the direction of paramilitarism and survivalism. For example, survival products are commonly advertised in American Hunter, Guns and Ammo, and Sports Afield.
James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994).
Soldier of Fortune Magazine (SOF), January 1984,97.
SOF, October 1985,106.
SOF, January 1983,79.
SOF, October, 1985,89.
On the revisionist history of the Vietnam experience, see Gibson, Warrior Dreams; Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
William Broyles, Jr., Brothers in Arms: A Journey from War to Peace (New York: Knopf, 1986); and the “Vietnam War” issue of the Journal of American Culture 4 (1989).
According to Soldier of Fortune former assistant editor Susan Max (SOF field notes; September 15, 1990), SOF art director (since 1979) Craig Nunn was a born-again Christian whose religious values strongly influenced the graphic look of the magazine. A member of a Christian motorcycle club, Nunn was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1989 (SOF, October 1990).
SOF, October 1982, 75; October 1983,110.
SOF, March 1990,14.
SOF, May 1983,85.
SOF, February 1983,88.
SOF, October 1983,85.
SOF, April, 1991,94-100.
SOF, August 1994,108.
SOF, April 1983,70; May 1984,25; October 1985,109; August 1995,97.
SOF, October 1983,110-111; August 1984,108; April 1988,103; July 1991,103; May 1984,109.
SOF, April 1987,105; June 1990,95; August 1995,98.
Similar books in the apocalyptic genre include Billy Graham’s Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1984); Mike Evans’ The Return (1986); Corrie Ten Boom’s Marching Orders for the End Battle (1969)—to name but a few. Mike Evans, who has appeared on ABC News’ Nightline as a media spokesman for American Christians, runs a ministry for evangelical outreach and has a newsletter and elaborate mailing system, which warns in each mailing of the coming Apocalypse, including detailed accounts of news events with their scriptural correlations. The Mike Evans Ministry has also produced a variety of other media and multimedia presentations concerning “the return” of Christ, including films and videos, audiotapes, and a wealth of books and other literature.
Eric Zency, “Ecology and the Peril of Doomsday Visions,” Utne Reader 31:90–93 (Jan/Feb 1989).
Weart, Nuclear Fear.
Ravi Batra, The Great Depression of 1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
Barry Brumett, “Popular Economic Apocalyptic: The Case of Ravi Batra,” Journal of Popular Culture 24:153–163 (1990).
Robert R. Prechter, Jr., and A. J. Frost, Elliot Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior (7th ed.) (Gainesville, Georgia: New Classics Library, 1995).
Christine Ward Gailey, “‘Rambo’ in Tonga: Video Films and Cultural Resistance in the Tongan Islands,” Culture: Journal of the Canadian Ethnological Society 9:21–32 (1989).
John G. Cawletti, The Six-Gun Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: University Popular Press, 1975).
Michael Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974).
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© 1996 Philip Lamy
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Lamy, P. (1996). Tribulation. In: Millennium Rage. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6076-4_3
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