Bunker
Building for the End Times
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
'An extraordinary achievement . . . gripping, grim and witty' Robert MacFarlane
'Unputdown-able ... No book could be more timely' Richard J Evans
Today, the bunker has become the extreme expression of our greatest fears: from pandemics to climate change and nuclear war. And once you look, it doesn't take long to start seeing bunkers everywhere.
In Bunker, acclaimed urban explorer and cultural geographer Bradley Garrett explores the global and rapidly growing movement of 'prepping' for social and environmental collapse, or 'Doomsday'. From the 'dread merchants' hustling safe spaces in the American mid-West to eco-fortresses in Thailand, from geoscrapers to armoured mobile bunkers, Bunker is a brilliant, original and never less than deeply disturbing story from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings it into new, sharp focus.
The bunker, Garrett shows, is all around us: in malls, airports, gated communities, the vehicles we drive. Most of all, he shows, it's in our minds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cultural geographer Garrett (coauthor, Global Undergrounds) delivers an engrossing tour of the fortified living spaces where "preppers" plan to isolate and protect themselves from the collapse of civilization. Using prepping "as a lens through which to perceive and understand contemporary conditions of social life," Garrett profiles developer and "dread merchant" Robert Vicino, who charges $25,000 for a bunker in his 10,000-family complex in South Dakota; sketches the history of the survivalist religious group Church Universal and Triumphant; and visits the Tasmanian "wilderness redoubt" an American lawyer built in the 1970s after reading the nuclear fallout novel On the Beach. The Church of Latter-day Saints recommends "practical prepping" to its members, some of whom store years' worth of food in their basements, and the Mormon founders of Plan B Supply, which builds "custom assault vehicles and bug-out rigs," have led their customers on missions to rescue flood victims. Garrett notes the project delays and scam allegations that have plagued bunker communities, and suggests that some developers seem to be capitalizing on "violent media narratives" of the Trump era. Yet he makes a convincing case that preppers offer hope for humankind's ability to "engineer our survival." This richly detailed account will have readers wondering about their own disaster plans.
