Meet SA’s doomsday preppers: Why more Australians are preparing for a global disaster

Trevor Andrei runs Australia’s only devoted “prepper” shop. He spoke to Nathan Davies about why more people are preparing for a global apocalypse.

• Aussie preppers show us their kits
• Survival expert shares advice for roaming a real wasteland

The zombies of the apocalypse won’t be undead brain-eaters — they’ll be your unprepared neighbours who want to steal your food.

This is the chilling philosophy of Adelaide-based “dooms­day prepper” and survival supplies retailer Trevor Andrei.

Mr Andrei’s Ethelton store sells everything from long-life biscuits and home-gardening supplies to hazmat suits and gas masks to people who are readying themselves for the day that law and order fails and anarchy prevails.

These people, commonly known as “preppers”, are preparing for a variety of different scenarios — foreign invasion, nuclear war, pandemics, domestic revolution, massive natural disasters or even electromagnetic pulses that could knock out a country’s entire power grid.

What they all have in common, however, is a belief that when the crap hits the fan things are going to get weird and dangerous, and only those who’ve made adequate preparations will emerge unscathed.

Adelaide survivalist and prepper supplier Trevor Andrei. Picture: Tait Schmmaal.

However, while Mr Andrei stocks plenty of items unlikely to appeal to anyone but the most hardcore of survivalists, he is quick to point out that you don’t need to have an apocalyptic mindset to benefit from prepping.

“I’m trying to show people how to prep from the base up so that if something should happen then they’re not going to be part of the problem,” the former Outback tour guide says from his supplies shop.

“And I’m trying to show everyday people that a lot of different things are escalating in a lot of different regions right now.

“Things that were never happening in Australia are now happening, and a lot of the big superpowers are pushing their knights and their bishops around the world map at the moment.”

Who are the zombies of the apocalypse? It’s simply your neighbour who doesn’t have solar lights or a spare gas bottle and doesn’t have cans of food put away.”

Mr Andrei says years living in the Outback working as everything from a guide to an oil rig roughneck have given him plenty of opportunity to hone his own survival skills — skills he has often been able to use to offset the cost of his backpacking adventures.

“When I was backpacking across the country I’d subsidise my income by jumping in the water in places like Fremantle and coming up with a feed,” he says.

“People would say to me, ‘That must have cost you $100’, when all it really cost me was a 20-minute swim.

“I spent four years living in a swag, so for me this (prepping) is just a natural progression.”

Mr Andrei rejected the idea that prepping suppliers were preying on people’s fears, saying that almost everything he sold could double as camping and outdoor equipment during times of stability and peace.

One of Trevor Andrei's typical “bug-out bags”. Picture: Supplied

Prepping, he says, isn’t that different to having insurance policies.

“The only thing that I really sell that you wouldn’t use in your day-to-day life would be like a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) mask or a hazmat suit,” he says.

“That’s for serious people. Everything else that I sell is stuff that can be both your camping gear and your prepping gear.

“And if you don’t think you need stuff like this then I say you might have been watching too much Married At First Sight and not paying enough attention to what’s happening on the news.

“It seems like people are too worried about things like, ‘How do I flip a house for a 30 grand profit like they did on The Block?’ to worry about these things. And that’s all well and good, but I’m trying to get people ready just in case.”

Mr Andrei says that while he sells prepper equipment, he also happily shares prepping information on his website for free.

“On my site, you’ll find a huge amount of information — succinct, condensed information — that tells you what you need and where to get it.

“I also tell people how they can practice for a situation. One thing I tell people to do is something I call The Cyber Challenge, which mimics what would happen if there was a cyber attack on Australia.

“You and friends turn off your phones for a weekend, you go outside and you turn off the water, the gas and the electricity. Then you can check how prepared you are.”

Mr Andrei says that while people often associate prepping with nuclear war, he doesn’t believe that is a likely scenario in Australia.

“I don’t think a full-scale nuclear attack is actually a reality — it’s far more likely that they’ll just turn the switches off,” he says.

“We are an incredibly resource-rich country and nobody would be stupid enough to poison this land.

“They might take out the US bases, but the main issues are likely to be the disabling of the infrastructure.”

However, Mr Andrei says prepping knowledge can come in handy in far more mundane situations.

“Even job loss or something like that — if you have some extra cans put away, well you can survive on that until your situation improves,” he says.

So what do you need? Well, a bug-out bag — a backpack holding everything a person needs to stay alive the first 72 hours after a disaster, as well as equipment to aid survival beyond that — is the minimum that people should have, according to Mr Andrei.

“A bug-out bag is a quick way to get out of danger and look after yourself,” he says.

For people who can’t hit the road due to age or fitness levels, Mr Andrei says “homesteading” — where people bunker down in their own houses — is an alternative option. Rainwater tanks and vegetable gardens can make this a viable option.

“I just quoted a year’s supply of ration food for a person who’s actually building their own bunker,” he says.

“That’s what I’m all about, being properly prepared, just in case.”