By Coronavirus pandemic fuels 2000% increase in underground bunker inquiries
The coronavirus pandemic is fuelling a rise in the sales of underground bunkers and survival equipment.
One US company, which runs what is billed as the “world’s largest bunker survival community”, is reporting a 500% increase in the last year, with a 2,000% surge in enquiries.
Vivos now has nearly one million members around the world – and at least 1,000 in the UK.
It comes as Britons have increasingly turned to survival supply sellers who cater for “preppers” – a broad term used to describe people who prepare for worst-case scenarios.
Crime in the UK and many parts of the world has declined over the course of the pandemic – but that hasn’t reassured concerned preppers.
Some of Vivos’ clients have even gone so far as to move into their bunkers.
In the UK, coronavirus and the risk of Brexit-related trade disruption has pushed people to buy products like freeze-dried foods.
Justin Jones, a prepper and sales director of UK Prepping Shop, said their sales have gone up by 487% in the last three months, with many first-time buyers.
He said:
“I don’t think people expected there to be empty shops”.
“It’s always been laughed at when preppers have talked about this in the past”.
“It came true and now we’ve got a nation of preppers”.
Michael Mills, a prepping expert and criminology lecturer at the University of Kent, expressed that the “declining faith in institutions” has accompanied the rise of the prepping movement.
Photo: The Vivos Group.
