Be Prepared reveals the surprising ways doomsday prepping is woven into the fabric of American institutions—and shows its significance for understanding the fault lines of liberal democracy.

Robert E. Kirsch is an assistant professor in the School of Applied Professional Studies at Arizona State University.

Emily Ray is an associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University.

Nancy S. Love, author of Trendy Fascism: White Power Music and the Future of Democracy:
In Be Prepared, Kirsch and Ray present "prepping” and “bunkering” as fundamental features of American politics rather than extreme behaviors. “Being prepared” emerges as integral to modern liberal and now neoliberal concepts of limited government, consumer citizenship, and individual responsibility. The idealized “prepping citizen” reveals class, gender, and racial inequalities, and forecloses collective responses to crucial issues such as climate change. This book could change how political scientists understand American democracy.

Brad Evans, director of the Centre for the Study of Violence, University of Bath:
Kirsch and Ray provide a deft and original account of the history of "prepping," considering the dangers, the absurdities, and the anxieties that underlie it. Rigorous and accessible, this book also offers a warning against the overreach of the security state and a call for the rest of us to be vigilant toward both deniers and doomsayers.

Elisabeth Anker, author of Ugly Freedoms:
Kirsch and Ray locate doomsday prepping not at the paranoid margins of society but at the very center of American life. Amid growing fears of catastrophe in our neoliberal era, prepping becomes a common practice of individual survival. Full of incredible stories of hoarding, hunkering, and consuming, Be Prepared brilliantly reveals the perils of our bunkerized society.