The U.S. is now seeing a rapid growth in the number of preppers, with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic contributing to that increase.
Prior to the pandemic, only to two or three percent of all Americans were preppers. Now, that number has soared to about 10 percent. While the fear brought about by the pandemic has passed, most people’s eyes were opened to the importance of preparedness when SHTF.
Prepper John Ramey, who runs a website for preppers called The Prepared, believes that around 15 million Americans are actively preparing for the worst. “Broadly speaking, more and more people [are] realizing that they are their own first responder,” he said. (Related: Thanks to covid, prepping has gone mainstream.)