A private Facebook group that he founded, Michigan Preppers, has nearly 18,000 members, up from about 8,000 since the Covid pandemic. He attributes the growth to a feeling of turmoil during President Joe Biden’s term.
Uncertainty fueled by global wars, months of protests, rising costs and another presidential race — with the specter of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and now a second apparent attempted assassination of Republican nominee Donald Trump — has “preppers” like Katich especially vigilant.
“If Trump isn’t elected, I’m thinking we’re either looking at a military coup or we’re looking at a second civil war,” said the part-time steel company worker. “It won’t happen right away, but it will take time to formulate.”
Provocative rhetoric from political candidates is tapping into fears and anxiety over the future, and in Michigan, a battleground state, the prepper belief in self-reliance is meshing with the region’s history of self-styled militia groups that support individual liberties and are suspicious of government power.
“I don’t recognize this country. I don’t recognize this world,” said Michael Clark, a Trump supporter who lives in a rural community of fewer than 1,000 people near Lake Michigan. “People just want to prepare for their families and have control over their futures.”
Clark, 69, doesn’t consider himself on the extreme end of prepping; his wife has a pressure canner she uses to preserve meats.
At a prepping event in southern Michigan this month known as the Great Lakes Emergency Preparedness Expo, Clark sold dietary supplements and beauty products containing colloidal silver, or tiny silver particles in liquid, which some believe can treat infection and disease but which the Food and Drug Administration does not consider effective.
