Those preparing for one apocalypse or another (and their personal shoppers) are driven by myriad forces: facts, prejudices and profits among them. But I’ll add another cause to those obvious ones: hope. I don’t believe the culture of dystopia is ringing cash registers because people are literally hopeful that billions of human beings will die, but I do think many hold dear the fantasy of a post-civilization because of the disquiet the developed word causes. To think that it could all be over is to ease anxieties. Maybe we don’t only fear scarcity but also the absence of it. From Jason Concepcion at Grantland:

“Modern life is way too dark for stories about building great nations. Tides are in full ebb. Dystopian fiction and media is a reaction to our reaction to the now constant whisper of bad fucking news: terrorism, financial crisis, the erosion of the middle class, historic drought, racial animus, global warming, choosing between water and energy. In dystopian stories, as in real life, the only sane reaction to a stranger with a gun is fear and flight.

Dystopias reflect the fear that our future will be one of scarcity, without the the promise of a great manifest destiny. ‘In a way, how can you be a sane and compassionate human being and not be increasingly alarmed by what’s happening to the planet, when it’s potentially civilization-ending?’ said author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) recently in the New York Times.

Dystopian fiction takes the stark drama of the frontier and moves it into your neighborhood. This modern-frontier idea manifests itself most tellingly on reality television. Shows like Doomsday Castle and Doomsday Preppers take environmental and economic fears and view them through the lens of America’s demographic shift.

Both shows can be summed up as terrified white people stockpiling food and guns. One man on Doomsday Preppers explains his system for hiding and securing food supply caches thusly: ‘Out here in the rural areas, people are going to be spilling out to take what farmers have. I’m not going to allow my family to be a target.'”