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Russia’s Shelling of Ukraine Nuclear Plant Sends Doomsday Preppers Into Overdrive


Until recently, Reddit’s r/Survival subreddit maintained an age-old command: “Keep all posts on the subject of Wilderness Survival,” the major forum’s Rule #2 writes.

“R/Survival defines Wilderness Survival as philosophies, knowledge, techniques and actions applied in the Wild environment, in a short-term survival scenario, to increase survivability of individuals or groups. This means no posts about urban survival, EDC, bugs, prep, getting bags home, teotwawki [the end of the world as we know it]zombies, crash, etc.”

But earlier this week, moderators announced a change. “We are temporarily relaxing rule 2,” said a recent post by a moderator.

When Russia pays terrible wages attack Ukraine, the circle of internet survivors has moved to the high stage. Some, like r/Survival, say they’re expanding the resource for Ukrainian readers. Others, often with apocalyptic goods for sale, are peddling visions of nuclear apocalypse to a wider American audience.

Americans are not the protagonists of the war in Ukraine. But growing concerns about Russia’s nuclear aggression have prompted many to offer worst-case scenarios. Nukemapa simulator that allows viewers to model the blast radius of a nuclear attack, has seen an increase in traffic since Feb. 23. The site’s founder Talk to Atlantic that the simulator is currently recording about 150,000 daily visitors, up from 10,000 to 20,000 on a typical, crisis-free day. Sometimes, the traffic overwhelmed the website and forced it to go offline.

In some survivalist circles, those nuclear fears are the cause of their re-examination of doomsday preparations — even if an attack is unlikely. Requests for radioactive nuclear devices have been widespread across discussion forums like the “survival” and “reservoir” communities of Reddit, including from users in countries like Australia. (I can imagine Australia being low on Putin’s nuclear weapons program list,” one Redditor asserted to another. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”)

Survivalist communities aren’t necessarily filled with apocalyptic fantasies. A lot, like r/Survival, often focuses on emergency preparedness, rural rescue, or radical gardening. But other sites have spent years warning of impending disaster, from Y2K to nuclear disaster – while selling disaster-ready gear at their convenience.

Mike Adams, founder of conspiracy website “Natural News,” has been selling survival products since 1999, when he warned of a bad (and ultimately unrealized) tech crisis. will take place on New Year’s Day in 2000. Today Natural News (and its sister sites like Survival News) is awash with explanations of how Americans were able to survive an explosion involving Russia. One of Adams’ recent articles on Survival News on “how to survive an American TAKEDOWN cyber attack” is now running alongside an ad about “proven protection from the harmful effects of the virus.” radiation”. The ad links to an Adams store, which sells a combination of emergency equipment and dubious supplements like essential oils.

Adams, notably, does not blame Russia’s aggression for such a potential attack, but rather the “deep state” of America, which he claims will bring down the country’s electricity grid.” all blame Russia.”

Conspiracy megalith Infowars is running its own version of its own creepy flash sale. On Friday, the website’s home page ran an article warning of a “collapse”. Next to the article was an ad for Infowars-branded supplements like “Survival Shield” (“50% off”).

Other popular tweets have now comforted Americans that, in fact, the nuclear fallout might not be so bad, as long as one has the right equipment.

“Nuclear war is bad,” a US-based survival blogger read in a viral tweet. “Very bad. Don’t get me wrong. But based on my research to date, it is more likely to survive than you think. The key to survival is realistic optimism and a positive mental attitude. In the meantime, this is how people can start preparing food.”

This tweet was linked to a blog post about maintaining an emergency pantry, which followed another blog for US readers titled “How to Prepare for a Russian Invasion of Ukraine”. .”

On r/Survival, where the censors loosen the “no end of the world” rule, the top two pinned topics are a list of Ukrainian aid charities and a border crossing information summary for people. Ukrainian refugee.

However, the bleak global mood also has some goals that are hard to envision themselves amid the crisis. Alex Wellerstein, founder of Nukemap, told Atlantic that most Americans using his website are modeling how a nuclear attack would affect them.

“So far, Americans beat themselves up most of the time,” he said. “They prefer experimental nuking. I won’t go too far in saying it’s narcissism, but our main method of using Nukemap is to watch and see what happens to us. ”



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