Far Cry 5 preview: How to survive a religious doomsday cult

THE highly anticipated action game Far Cry 5 is out later this month — and it is really something else.

AS AUSTRALIANS, we all know the importance of being prepared for a natural disaster — be it bushfire, flood, or the dreaded sharknado.

Usually that means keeping some bottled water and tinned food in the cupboard, along with a torch, batteries, medicines, and maybe a transistor radio as well.

There are people out there however — and it will surprise no-one to discover they’re mostly in the USA — who have taken preparing for something bad happening to a whole new level.

Known as “preppers”, they store vast quantities of food, water, medical supplies, firearms and associated skills so they are prepared for any eventuality should the proverbial fertiliser hit the ventilator.

Game studio Ubisoft is set to release their eagerly anticipated action game Far Cry 5 later this month, shifting the action to rural Montana, USA and pitting the player against a destructive religious doomsday cult known as The Project At Eden’s Gate which has taken over the fictional Hope County.

Given the rural US setting of the game it’s no surprise there’s a lot of rugged individualists in the game who are prepared for pretty much exactly the situation they find themselves in, with a number of them being identifiable broadly as members of the prepping movement.

Dr Michael Mills is a lecturer at the University of Kent in the UK who has conducted extensive research into the phenomenon of prepping in the US and spoke to journalists about the subject at a recent Far Cry 5 press event in Paris.

“Prepping, fundamentally, is a set of practices or activities oriented around self-sufficient survival in situations of major disasters,” he said.

“Those engaged in prepping seek to become self-sufficient, in preparation to survive a major disaster, which might be a situation in which food, water, and electricity are no longer available through conventional means, and in which government assistance may be on its way but not there yet or not present at all.”

Dr Michael Mills is a lecturer at the University of Kent in the UK who has conducted extensive research into the phenomenon of prepping.

The reasons behind prepping being largely American thing were complex, Dr Mills said, but included the nation having self-reliance as one of its cultural values including “the idea that self-reliance is celebrated, to a certain degree, as various expressions; the idea of being proud of not being on welfare, for instance, or not really relying on the government or other people for most things”.

“I think prepping emerges out of that kind of worldview and to a large degree, Americans suggest it’s their responsibility and they should take pride in being able to provide for themselves — just this time, it’s in a disaster scenario rather than everyday life.”

Dr Mills said it was important to note that unlike the now-defunct Survivalist movements from the 1970s-c. 2001, preppers were not envisioning the actual end of the world.

“All of the interviewees I spoke with were not anticipating the literal end of civilisation. Rather, they were preparing to survive some kind of medium to long-term event which might take place over a series of weeks or months that they would have to survive before normal order was restored,” he said.

“None of the people I interviewed had a very particular idea of what would cause some kind of disaster that they would survive. Instead, they reference numerous potential scenarios that could happen, which could be a global disease, some kind of flu that would spread around the world. It could be an economic collapse, it could be a terrorist attack, foreign war, etc. There’s a whole catalogue of potential scenarios that preppers tend to raise.

Game studio Ubisoft is set to release the eagerly anticipated action game later this month.

“But even within that, the people I spoke to across these 18 different states were not certain that any such event was going to occur in the near future. So unlike some of the characters featured in Far Cry 5, particularly the cult that has this compelling vision of an impending apocalypse, none of the preppers that participated in my research were even sure that some kind of disaster was going to happen.”

Dr Mills said his research study participants spoke about their activities as being precautionary, or a kind of insurance policy.

“There’s no certainty that disaster was going to occur. There was no certainty about what would cause it. And there was rejection of apocalyptic thinking, including any kind of enthusiasm for some kind of apocalyptic collapse,” Dr Mills said.

Dr Mills said while it might be tempting to look at the Eden’s Gate Cult members in Far Cry 5 as preppers, the Hope County residents resisting the cult where actually a better representation of the phenomenon.

“What I think what was interesting about what (Creative Director) Dan Hay was saying earlier today was that some of those who resist the cult in the game tend to be preppers and survivalists and possess the weapons and the know-how and resources to be able to confront the disaster that the cult themselves represent; I think that’s perhaps a much more realistic interpretation of what a prepper might look like,” he said.

Dr Mills said prepping was typically an American phenomenon practised by middle-aged, middle-class caucasian people with families who were established enough in their lives and jobs to be able to plan for the future and how to survive disasters of some unspecified kind.

“I’m of the opinion that I think that it takes a certain amount of stability to be a prepper, or to begin to worry about other things that preppers are worried about,” Dr Mills said.

Although predominantly found in the US, Dr Mills said preppers were also present to a lesser extent in places such as the UK and Australia.

“I think Australia might be a slightly different case, partly because it has elements of that self-reliant, rural culture that the United States also has; but in Britain, for instance, it’s quite strange thing for someone to be preparing, because most people generally have faith that the government would cover most things,” he said.

The author attended the press event as a guest of Ubisoft

Originally published as Far Cry 5 preview: How to survive a religious doomsday cult