Last year, Michael Haas, a former political-science professor at the University of Hawaii, published a book titled “Beyond Polarized American Democracy: From Mass Society to Coups and Civil War.” Haas, who is now eighty-six and has retired to Los Angeles, told me that he, too, is more concerned than ever about the threat of civil war. He thinks that it could begin with an armed attempt to stop the counting of electoral votes in December. “They’ll start shooting,” Haas told me. “And in the chaos they—these pro-Trump anarchists—become the party of power. That’s where Sinclair Lewis hit it right on the button.” (Lewis’s novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” from 1935, imagines a fascist leader imposing totalitarian rule over the United States.) “The reason they want anarchy is they will be in charge. They have the guns.” I asked Haas what preparations he’s made for such a conflict. He seemed to be relying mainly on topography. “I live on a hill with a gate that’s usually closed,” he told me.
Barbara Walter, a professor at U.C. San Diego and an expert on civil war, recently detailed a worst-case election scenario. Trump loses, and protests of the result, inflamed by the former President, turn into riots. What’s left of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys join in. Assassinations first target Republicans deemed traitorous. “The Adam Kinzingers and Liz Cheneys of the world,” Walter said. The mob turns on minorities, immigrants, and other scapegoat communities. Judges are shot. The worst of this violence occurs in fairly diverse states—Georgia, Nevada, Arizona—as it did during Reconstruction in places where whites felt their privilege endangered, such as Birmingham and Memphis. An economically powerful red state, perhaps Texas, attempts to secede. Ignoring the lessons of Ruby Ridge and Waco, the Harris Administration uses disproportionate force to deter other states from following suit. Innocent people die. Everyday Americans are radicalized by the apparent validation of the extremists’ claim that federal power is the enemy. Civil war is on its way. Walter’s scenario gets foggy from there, but we know that economic growth declines during civil wars, as do health outcomes. Travel is hard. Most troubling to Walter, outside actors get involved. “China, Russia, and Iran would want to help Texas militias,” Walter told me. “Texas could become a dictatorship run by some crazy guy whose best friends are Putin and Xi Jinping.”
Such a chain of events still seems unlikely. But Anna Maria Bounds, a sociology professor at Queens College, told me that people are already “taking sides and prepping for violence.” Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly spent more than a hundred million dollars building what Wired called “an opulent techno-Xanadu” on a Hawaiian island, “complete with underground shelter and what appears to be a blast-resistant door.” Average Americans are preparing in less costly ways. Some are stocking up on toilet paper, or buying Taser guns or fish antibiotics. (They’re cheaper than human antibiotics but lack F.D.A. approval.) Others are getting Lasik, filling gas cans, or withdrawing “go money” from the bank. A Utah company called Armormax has been bulletproofing vehicles for three decades. Until recently, most customers were foreign dignitaries with fancy cars. Now many Americans are armoring normal ones. Protecting a vehicle’s glass from .44-calibre or 9-millimetre fire starts at around forty thousand dollars. For twice that, an entire vehicle, including its tires, can be made AR-15- and M16-proof. Domestic demand for these services is nearly seven times what it was in 2020. “We’re selling as many as we can build,” Mark Burton, the C.E.O., told me. On the company’s blog, he recently wrote a post with a section called “How to Survive a Civil War.” (Advice: “Make sure that the gas tank is full.”)
“Don’t worry—if we miss the curtain we’ll just fumble our way to our seats while noisily complaining about the unreliability of the subway.”
Cartoon by P. C. Vey
In late September, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled “The Most Surprising New Gun Owners Are U.S. Liberals.” It noted the recent creation of gun groups marketed to Democrats, including one in Los Angeles called L.A. Progressive Shooters. Nearly three in ten liberals now own guns, according to a University of Chicago survey; researchers at Johns Hopkins have determined that more than half of Democratic gun buyers since 2020 are first-time owners. One of them is Bradley Garrett, a forty-three-year-old academic and the author of “Bunker,” an account of Americans planning for the end times. This sort of prepping seems to have increased in the run-up to the election, he said. “You can imagine infighting breaking out in pockets of the United States, and progressives would be at a severe disadvantage,” he told me. “They don’t have the weapons or the preparation.” Garrett, who lives in Southern California, bought a shotgun this spring: “I’m on a five-acre ranch pretty far out. But, if things devolved in L.A. very quickly, I can imagine people fleeing to the desert and looking for a refuge—and that’s not gonna be at my house.” Others are taking less militaristic measures. A recent attendee of a Homesteaders of America event where participants preserved food told me that some were preparing provisions in case of political violence. “They kept talking about being ready for when ‘they come,’ ” she recalled. “Just ‘they.’ ”
In May, I spoke on the phone with a man named John Ramey, who was vague about his location. “I’m at the homestead of someone who hired me to help him choose where and how to build a home to deal with the full range of threats,” he said. The panhandle of Idaho and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are both good places to weather the worst of climate change, he explained, “but, depending on your politics, you’re very clearly going to choose one over the other for the threat of civil war.”
Ramey has done as much as anyone to help the act of prepping trade its tinfoil hat for an Eagle Scout badge. He worked as a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur, and then as an “innovations adviser” in the Obama Administration. In 2018, he launched a Web site called the Prepared, a resource for people interested in disaster packing lists, gear reviews, and emergency plans, offered in a refreshingly measured tone. Readers can learn how to use two-way radios, safely store water, and obtain body armor. Also, where to buy the best wet wipes. When Ramey sold the site, in 2022, it had eight million annual readers. “Preparedness is now part of modern adulting,” he said.
