Preparing for the worst at Europe’s first survivalist shop

Here, in the south-western corner of Britain, is a store that caters for the end of the world. The Preppers Shop, Europe’s first survivalist emporium, opened in Bedfordshire in 2014. Having moved first to Newquay and then Wadebridge, it now offers “everything that you require for your camping, prepping and survival activities”.

But what exactly are customers preparing for? The banal answer is everything, but more specifically, preppers prepare for disaster, from earthquakes to nuclear war, lethal pandemics to social collapse, power cuts to Armageddon.

This movement, or lifestyle, or outlook, depending on your level of commitment, emerged, inevitably, in the US as a form of doomsday libertarianism. Although its exponents came from all walks of life, it was disproportionately represented by the kind of men who drive large pick-ups, boast a concrete bunker in their basement and maintain an active fascination with semi-automatic weaponry.

While observers agree that the numbers are rapidly increasing, no one knows how many preppers there are in Britain. The UK Preppers & Survivalists Facebook group has more than 24,000 members, but the Preppers Shop has a mailing list of 85,000 people (90% of whom are in the UK). An article by Liverpool University academics claimed that one in five Britons prepped for Brexit.

For various reasons, not least our strict gun laws, UK prepping takes a more benign form than the US version, although it should be noted that one of the Preppers Shop’s best sellers is a metal khaki “ammo” box.

“We sell hundreds,” says Polly Gill, the business manager. “People use them for all types of storage. They use them to store food.”

Who needs Tupperware when there’s heavy steel at hand? Of course, steel may be preferable in the kind of harsh unstable environment preppers ready themselves for. But there may also be just an element of lifestyle signalling, the suggestion of interest in rugged self-reliance, even if all you’re packing is lunch.

The same tendency may also explain why the overriding colour of army surplus clothes on sale in the shop is camouflage. More than 95% of the shop’s business is conducted online, and it now exports to 87 countries, says founder Lincoln Miles. They send off between 30 and 40 international orders a day, and hundreds of UK ones.

But a small section of the warehouse space in Wadebridge is given over to a retail shop, where people can walk in and buy any number of camouflage outfits, survival packs, water filters, compressor coolers, chemical protection suits and bushcraft knives.

Wadebrige is a few miles inland from the gastronomic delights of Padstow, popularised by the celebrity chef Rick Stein. But the food that is on offer on the shelves here comes in a form that is unlikely to excite the interest of the Michelin judges. Contained in what look like gallon paint pots is a range of “just add water” options such as pasta arrabbiata, vegetable chipotle chilli with rice, and custard apple crunch pudding. T he key culinary detail is that t hey’re all good to consume for 25 years.

So do people seriously envisage a future in which they’re sharing out these kinds of rations? The short answer is that a growing number apparently do. In April this year, when there were power outages in Portugal and Spain, demand surged on the Preppers Shop website. When Miles set up the business, he says, people were less concerned about war or power grid troubles.

“Back then, it was much more like bad weather in the winter. People stranded on the motorway. So it was about having an emergency car kit with some food and water in it in case you broke down,” he says.

A large, bushy-bearded man, who in his safari shirt and shorts looks like a younger version of the late TV botanist David Bellamy, Miles is keen to divorce his clientele from the popular image of paranoid bunker-lurkers.

“For the first four or five years [of the shop being open], the perception of preppers was always a bit of a laugh, bit of a joke. You know, ‘Look at these nutters’, sort of thing. But now people aren’t afraid of saying: ‘I’m a prepper’. It’s become much more normalised.”

If that is the case, it’s because there is a more dystopian feeling in the air, or on the news – a greater appreciation of the fragility of everyday life. But before wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and immigration and customs enforcement raids in the US, what really changed perceptions and turbocharged the business into today’s thriving enterprise was the Covid pandemic.

“That was the big mindset shift,” says Miles. “Before that, everyone sort of thought the government had a plan that would help us out if something happened. Then Covid happened and they realised that we are on our own.”

It’s a fascinating analysis because in one limited sense – a psychological-business sense – it’s true. Before Covid, the Preppers Shop was just Miles and a part-time worker. Now there are 16 staff and the retailer is continuing to expand – and the ever-rising demand all began with the pandemic.

But it’s odd that what prompted all the profitable fear and anxiety was a situation in which the government did act. And far from being left to their own devices, the nation’s workforce was given generous furlough payments, supermarkets (aside from hysterical runs on lavatory paper) did not go short and while there was disagreement over lockdown policy, the country was relatively united as an impressive vaccination programme was rolled out on a massive scale in record time.

You could argue that it was an advert for the effectiveness of government in extreme circumstances. But that’s not how many people saw it. Rather they saw themselves as characters in the 1970s BBC drama Survivors, using their own ingenuity and will to battle against an invisible force much greater than themselves.

Perhaps that explains the Preppers Shop’s healthy trade in crossbows; weapons such as the Excalibur Assassin Extreme recurve crossbow kit for £1,199 or the PSE Viper SS 50lb pistol crossbow, a snip at £49.99. Should civil society collapse and the highways fill with roaming bands of thugs and mercenaries, a little self-protection may come in handy.

“Those products go to Europe a lot,” says business manager Gill. “Because if they have their own piece of land, they can go out hunting for rabbits, etc. We can’t do that in this country. We’re really highly regulated. But there is a huge market here for hobbying with archery and crossbows at archery clubs.”

Many of these hobbyists, it seems, are women. When Miles started out, the clientele was almost entirely male, but it’s close to 50-50 now, he says – though Gill suggests it’s more like 60-40 in favour of men.

“I get calls all the time,” he says, “from people saying: ‘Can you help me? I should be prepping, but I don’t know anything about it. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I’m not from a military background, but I’m worried about this. What do you recommend?’”

What does he recommend?

“Food and water, your basics,” he says. “So water filters to purify dirty water and longlife rations.”

What the shop offers, he says, is not food for anxious rumination but instead “peace of mind”.

People just want a sense of security, he believes, which is why one of the shop’s best sellers is a month’s supply of food rations.

But if, for example, nuclear war did devastate this country, it’s doubtful how much help a month’s supply of cooked diced chicken and rice pudding with strawberry would provide. The human spirit, however, doesn’t sit well with that brand of fatalist realism.

If there’s space in the garage, there will always be a desire to be ready for the worst, with ammo boxes stacked with imperishable food supplies and, of course, arrows for your tactical pistol crossbow with its red-dot sight scope. Not for no reason was the old Boy Scouts’ saying: “Be prepared.”

Photographs by Jim Wileman for The Observer