‘Prepping’ – the storing of food, water and weapons as well as the development of selfsufficiency skills for the purpose of independently surviving disasters – is an emerging market as
well as an expression of generalised anxiety about existential threats (e.g. technological collapse
and catastrophic climate change). Whilst accounts of eccentric prepping are common in
mainstream media, there is little empirical investigation into how consumers imagine and
prepare for a temporary or permanent halt to functioning market systems, and with it, a consumer
society. A netnography of European preppers reveals prepping to be an anticipatory mode of
practicing for a post-market, post-consumer society before it becomes a reality. We find that
preparation is a struggle for cognitive legitimacy through four different modes: vulnerabilising
the market, common-sensing market signals, othering civilian consumers and unblackboxing
objects.