Preppers & Mutual Aid/ Death Stranding in the Covid Era

Intro 

As we enter Death Stranding, we see a world wrecked by a cataclysm. The human population that remained have moved underground in bunker-cities and prepper shelters, isolated and scattered across the landscape. From the player’s perspective, this underground habitat is out of sight for the entire game, as our attention is directed to the above-ground, where the gameplay unfolds. With only bits of text-lore for us to peek into the human lives underground.

Death Stranding is a timely fiction for our quarantined lives. Some of its novums, or speculative ideas, could find compelling reflections in our present, real-life scenarios. And conversely: we could find bits of meanings in the novums offered by this imaginary setting to animate some aspects of our current world. This video touches on two of these novums: preppers and mutual aid networks. 

Preppers

There are two types of bunkers in the setting. One is the bunker-cities. Each containing forty to eighty thousand people. To the audience however, the surface cargo stations are the only symbols of these cities, for the game offers no description on how they look and function. We could imagine these underground cities through other fictional examples, such as the “Geofront” in Evangelion and “The Institute” in Fallout 4. But these examples can only supplement us with low-res impressions and nothing more.

The second type of bunkers is residential prepper shelters. Their occupants are either pre-apocalypse preppers or their descendants. Through reading the mails and interviews of a few NPCs (notably Fragile,[i] the Elder,[ii] and the First Prepper[iii]), we get a glimpse into the minds of these people and also the pre-Death Stranding world. We know that these private shelters were commodities designed and sold by a few companies. They were marketed to an existing population who perceives their government as incapable of providing services and security. According to the First Prepper’s account, America was [quote] “bogged down in stupid wars overseas and faced ridiculous levels of inequality at home. People totally lost faith in the government, and another new generation of preppers was created”[iv] [unquote].

So how could this relate to our real life? For one, microbes, perhaps the stupidest thing possible, has disrupted our world in 2020. Like the preppers in Death Stranding, most of us have bunkered to our homes, carrying on in secluded habitats, endlessly swiping on our phones. In February and March 2020, the threat of coronavirus moved many to engage in prepping, as symbolized by the toilet-paper craze. But for some people in some corners of the planet, like the First Prepper in the game, stockpiling has been a part of their lifestyle and identity for a while.

Anthropologists Kabel and Chmidling had argued[v] that prepping could be traced back to the Cold War era civil defense programs, mostly concerning the atomic threat. In America, shelter programs were delegated to the local governments, tasked to identify existing buildings with sturdy basements to be retrofitted as fallout bunkers.[vi]/[vii] Like the pre-apocalypse era in Death Stranding, 60s America also witnessed a growth in consumer shelters market.[viii] According to a historian, this paralleled the federal government’s outsourcing of “civil defense programs to local business interests.”[ix] Around the same time, the pamphlet The Family Fallout Shelter was distributed,[x] offering the steps and materials needed for do-it-yourself, family-sized bunkers.

The preppers today are a geographically scattered network of people sharing certain beliefs and practices. The beliefs involve some combination of rugged individualism, an ideal of absolute self-sufficiency, a distrust of government, a sense of individualized responsibility to protect oneself and one’s family, and an anticipation of societal breakdown scenarios such as economic collapse, natural disasters, nuclear attack, famine, and of course, pandemic.[xi] Their practices include stockpiling of commercial goods, bolstering of one’s residence, learning survival skills such as shooting, farming, sewing, and mechanics. Healthcare is a trickier topic, especially for those with chronic issues, which would require indefinite professional and pharmaceutical support. Here, prepping culture would suggest ‘self-weaning’ from medical dependencies, such as exercising and dieting for insulin-dependent diabetics, or in extreme circumstances, suicide. 

This contradiction between the isolationist mindset and survival lead some[xii] to point out that preppers nonetheless network on the internet to share skills and debate about issues such as whether it is possible to make insulin at home. The dependence on some social organization seems to be implicit in survivalist projects. In the words of Fragile, “while they prepared, they hadn't prepared to live there forever.”

Mutual Aid Networks 

Network is the end goal of the gameplay. Playing as a courier, besides materializing a supply chain, your mission is to establish a network infrastructure that bridges all isolated cities and shelters: bunker by bunker, node by node. 

Many saw the game as addressing our so called “loneliness epidemic.” But a concrete glance at the world building, namely at the particular lives of the preppers, Kojima seems to construct them as individuals of purpose, each with a goal, a skill set, an identity. Some of these characters are in the names of the Photographer, the Roboticist, the Geologist, the Ecologist, and the Doctor of the main quest, who, once linked to the network, would gain the capacity to remotely perform diagnoses and treatments. Even though the only instance of remote assistance in the game is carried by the Doctor, one example is sufficient to illustrate the kind of practice ‘mutual aid’ would look like. 

In real life, mutual aid is the idea that we could form into networks to share knowledge, skills, and resources in a grassroot, self-directed manner. Rather than being the passive recipients of assistances from above, which may be non-existent and inadequate in many parts of the world, mutual aid practices transform isolated individuals into active participants in collective survival. And it constitutes a contrast with the prepper mentality defined by rugged individualism. 

In times of pandemic, mutual aid networks sprung across the planet with the assistance of network technologies. They’re particularly impactful for vulnerable and low-income groups, some of which were already under-resourced prior to the crisis.[xiii]/[xiv] Such networks usually perform tasks such as organizing local volunteers to deliver medications and groceries to the immunocompromised and the elderly. Some provide resources to feed the hungry.[xv] Some organize emotional supports such as counselling and pairing up people for video-chats to help ease isolation. Some more unique practices include gangs taking initiative to enforce lockdown in ghettos, as in the case of Rio de Janeiro.[xvi]

In short, Kojima seems to indicate a more uplifting suggestion: that despite isolation in material space, each individual could still activate their potential through being embedded within a social network; to be useful to one another. For we may have more difficult challenges to come.

[i]https://deathstranding.fandom.com/wiki/Preppers_(interview)

[ii]https://deathstranding.fandom.com/wiki/Prepper_Shelters

[iii]https://deathstranding.fandom.com/wiki/Preppers_at_the_Turn_of_the_Century

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Kabel, Allison, and Catherine Chmidling. 2014. “Disaster Prepper: Health, Identity, and American Survivalist Culture.” Human Organization73(3):258-266.

[vi]https://web.archive.org/web/20120305044705/http://mywebtimes.com/archives/ottawa/display.php?id=366305

[vii]http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/cdmuseum2/commun.html[viii] Bishop, Thomas. 2019. ““The Struggle to Sell Survival”: Family Fallout Shelters and the Limits of Consumer Citizenship.” Modern American History 2:117-138.

[ix] Ibid., 118.

[x]http://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/the_family_fallout_shelter_1959.pdf[xi] Kabel and Chmidling 2014. 

[xii] Ibid. 

[xiii]https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/3/24/21188779/mutual-aid-coronavirus-covid-19-volunteering

[xiv]https://technode.com/2020/02/03/chinese-mutual-aid-platforms-to-extend-coverage-to-coronavirus/

[xv]https://theconversation.com/activist-farmers-in-brazil-feed-the-hungry-and-aid-the-sick-as-president-downplays-coronavirus-crisis-136914

[xvi]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/brazil-rio-gangs-coronavirus