Preppers and Survivalism in the AustLit Database
This work has been affiliated with the Preppers and Survivalism project due to its relationship to either prepping or prepper-inflected survivalism more generally, and contains one or more of the following:
1. A strong belief in some imminent threat
2. Taking active steps to prepare for that perceived threat
3. A character or characters (or text) who self-identify as a ‘prepper’, or some synonymous/modified term: ‘financial preppers’, ‘weekend preppers’, ‘fitness preppers’, etc.
As a tier two work, this text has been identified as key to prepping in a broader, more conceptual relationship. These texts have been classified as ‘key’ prepper-adjacent texts that are important to prepping, even if they themselves are not about prepping or do not include preppers. These texts have been identified in the database through various means such as interviews with preppers, scholarship on preppers, and online prepper forums.
'Hell is still the safest place on earth.
'When you've run out of choices, you've only got yourself.
'As war rages, as the enemy closes in, as Ellie and her friends fight for their lives, they are left with nothing. Nothing but courage, spirit and pride' (Source: bookseller's website).
'What's the biggest danger you can think of? This is bigger. What's the toughest challenge you can imagine? This is tougher. What's the greatest fear you have?
'You're about to find out.
"How long do you think they'll keep looking for us?" I asked Lee, as we lay there.
"Until they find us," he answered grimly.
'They came in summer. They fell upon the land swiftly and suddenly. Through autumn they spread, like locusts, like mice, like a plague. Now it's winter. They're still here. But so too are Ellie and Homer and their friends.' (Source: Trove)
'COVID-19 is changing the way we live. Panic buying, goods shortages, lockdown – these are new experiences for most of us. But it’s standard fare for the protagonists of young adult (YA) post-disaster novels.' (Introduction)
This chapter explores apocalypse in children's literature with reference to literary attitudes to children, nature and dystopia. Examinations of works by Lee Harding, Victor Kelleher, and John Marsden then focus on how these writers adapt apocalyptic themes for a juvenile audience. Their novels display tyranny, large-scale catastrophe, invasion, and children in danger, and their apocalyptic settings reveal anxieties about isolation, invasion, Indigenous land rights and colonization. (108)