May 18, 2020 - 7:00am
When Californian Bradley Garrett started doing the research for “Bunker: Preparing for the End Times” — due out this August — he could hardly have imagined how prescient it would be. What was researched as a niche subcultural activity of a few strange evangelical Christians and others, locking themselves away underground, preparing for the end of the world, has become more pervasive than anyone ever thought possible.
So how fascinating to be offered a glimpse into the lives of those who take lock-down to the extreme — those who make their homes in disused nuclear weapon silos, hundreds of feet underground; those ‘preppers’ preparing for the collapse of civilisation, hoarding guns and larders of tinned food. In Kansas you can buy the whole floor of a Survival Condo for $3 million, which offers five years of self-sufficiency underground, for when the end times begin. All this is quite a few stages past wearing a flimsy face-mask as you tentatively make your way over to Tesco to stock-pile your monthly bog-roll.
Full disclosure: Bradley is a friend of mine, and one of the craziest people I know. But crazy in a good way. An academic with a serious point to make, Bradley is also an urban explorer, best known in this country for climbing the Shard before it opened, and for his various brushes with the law for unauthorised climbs of London’s most vertiginous landmarks. As someone who is afraid of heights, I still have nightmares about his description of balancing on the top of one of the chimneys of Battersea Power Station, wind gusting, his footing just one brick wide.
Three years ago Bradley very nearly persuaded me to join him on one of his adventures. This time the plan was to walk round all seven of London’s great Victorian cemeteries — known as the Magnificent Seven — and sleep the night in their crypts. In the end I was too chicken. Both because the idea of sharing a bed with lots of spiders and dead people didn’t entirely appeal, but also because I didn’t have quite the same appetite for unlawful trespass, and indeed, of getting caught.
But all this focus on death, on the end times, and on the exhilaration of near death experiences at the top of a high-rise building, has given Bradley a proximity to death that keeps a person in touch with the things that matter most in life. “Nothing sets your priorities straight better than a disaster,” he tells Stuart Jeffries at The Guardian.
Which is why the great re-set potentially offered by Covid-19 is that of remembering what is most important in life: family, friends, bird-song, silence, French wine and cheese, making children’s dens, the Eucharist, Beethoven, and mowing the lawn. Other lists are available, as they say.
But those who lock themselves away, bunker down, hoping to outlast the apocalypse, are surely missing the point: because your own personal end of the world will always catch up with you. That is an apocalypse no one can outlast.
I have been thinking about “Bunker” for weeks now, especially over Easter as the story of Jesus escaping from the tomb made such a strong contrast with those seeking to evade death by locking themselves back up in a tomb of their own choosing. For whatever else the resurrection means it is surely also that life is a release from permanent lockdown. Which is why I suspect that the evangelicals who run to their bunkers at the first sign of trouble are missing the heart of the Christian story: it’s about freedom and release — not about fear and confinement.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAmen to that
For some reason this excellent article reminds me of my favourite misheard hymn from my childhood: “up from the gravy he rose”.
and about going through crucifixion, resurrection and overcoming (the fear of) death – a challenge we’re all facing at the moment
Kind of paints ‘evangelicals’ as all thinking this way though, which I am sure to they do not. And many who do have the bunker mentality are not evangelical Christians.
It also makes absolutely no sense if they are taking Revelations as the playbook. It’s the end of the world, isn’t it? What is there going to be to come out to? And do they think they can trick the Last Judgment by hiding out? It is utterly mad.
I’m disappointed that you seem to tar all evangelicals with the same bunker brush. I would say the vast majority of evangelicals take very seriously Our Lord’s directive not to be concerned about the timing of the End. Any bunkering down therefore would be disobedient.
What evangelicals take very seriously however is what the New Testament says about the end of the world as we know it including the suffering,natural disasters and supernatural events prior to and accompanying the glorious Second Coming of Christ. It will mean the beginning of the unfolding of the “new Heaven and new Earth ” in the words of the Book of Revelation.
Jesus emphasised the suddenness of the onset of the eschatological process and each individual’s need to be prepared for the Judgement to come.