Americans are preparing for when all hell breaks loose

Boston Globe

09-04-2025

The men gathered around him were not soldiers, police officers, or right-wing militia members. They were mostly civilians, including two pilots, a nurse, and a construction company executive. The class' title — Full Contender Minuteman — even referred to the civilians turned soldiers of the American Revolution.
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In a world shaped by war, a pandemic, and extreme weather, more Americans are getting ready for crisis — whether it's to fight a tyrannical government, repel an invading army, or respond to a natural disaster.
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They are known as prepared or professional citizens, part of a growing number of gun owners who are adapting their mindset to uncertain and polarized times. And rather than being part of more fringe 'prepper' culture, they are growing more mainstream, catered to by companies ready to offer them the tools and training to be ready.
The traditional aspects of gun ownership — such as simple target shooting — are increasingly being shelved in favor of topics like radio and medical training, night-vision shooting, drone reconnaissance, homesteading, and military tactics.
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'We are looking at a growing number of companies who are broadening the appeal and normalizing self-preparedness and the tools needed to enable it,' said Kareem Shaya, the co-founder of Open Source Defense, a startup working to normalize gun culture in the United States and invest in new companies in the civilian defense industry. 'Five or 10 years ago, we couldn't have done what we're doing because there just weren't enough startups in the space. We're seeing it accelerate in real time.'
Participants in the Full Contender Minuteman class practiced drills, including rapid rifle shots and sprinting before shooting at targets, in Leesburg, Fla., in March 2025.
THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF/NYT
Prepared citizenry and the more familiar practice of 'prepping' share some characteristics, though preppers are more focused on getting ready for long-term self-sufficiency — keeping chickens, growing a vegetable garden, and storing supplies in bulk. Prepared citizens want to be ready for sudden calamity.
The concept emerged for Roscher, 35, as he watched Russia invade Ukraine in 2022. Ukrainian civilians were flooding the streets with little ability to defend themselves.
'It really hit home for me,' he said.
Roscher began teaching firearms classes after leaving active duty in the Air Force and started his own training company, Barrel & Hatchet Trade Group, with his business partner Tyler Burke in 2020. Barrel & Hatchet also has a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, a podcast and a gear store.
Their programming is a mix of firearms reviews, training tips and lists, and lessons in being mentally prepared for a disaster. In the past year or so, Roscher's turn toward Christianity and prayer has also attracted a receptive audience and clientele.
Roscher, like other veterans or former law enforcement officers in the prepared citizen community, said he started teaching to pass on his knowledge to regular people.
His work is not limited to in-person training and even draws from global conflicts. A video on his channel exploring drone combat in Ukraine and how the technology can be used for civilians in the United States was shared on an Appalachia-based Telegram messaging channel for prepared citizens in early March, sparking interest among those in the chat.
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'I gotta find a group to train with,' one message in the group read, lamenting that their choices for training cadres were limited to local militias or other right-wing fringe groups.
'Try Barrel and Hatchet if you're in Florida,' another message said. 'They're trying to recruit.'
Josh Eppert, 40, was one of those recruits. During the pandemic, he found a group of people he liked shooting with and received much-needed instruction from Roscher and his team.
The vice president of a construction company based in Tampa, Florida, Eppert represents the quintessential prepared citizen.
'If I'm gonna own this stuff, then I want to become proficient with it — not that there's any illusions of becoming Rambo or anything like that. It's just I enjoy the challenge,' Eppert said.
And though Eppert has a less gloomy outlook on the future than his instructor, he stressed the need for self-reliance, especially with the enduring threat of deadly hurricanes across the state.
'Am I putting a bunker in my backyard?' he asked, jokingly. 'I don't have plans for any of that, but I think it's important just to be smart and be able to take care of things.'
On the other side of the tactical training spectrum from Roscher's Barrel & Hatchet is Ben Spangler, a former Army officer who has run an Instagram account called @tacticalforge since 2023. His short videos explaining military infantry tactics like patrolling and setting up ambushes and observation posts get hundreds of thousands of views and are widely shared in the prepared citizen world.
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He also has an Etsy page where he sells training kits with maps, protractors to plot navigation points, compasses and field guides. Old military instruction manuals, once a forgotten staple of Army Navy surplus stores, have had a resurgence among the prepared citizen crowd.
'They're usually quieter, because they're usually more of an observer, or they're asking questions,' Spangler said of his customers. 'They'll go on hikes, they maybe go to the range a few times, or they've got a core group of people that like doing that stuff. But it's not a militia in any sense of the word, but usually those folks, when they don't have that military background, they're just looking for information.'
For decades, fear has been a significant driver of gun sales, but what separates the prepared citizen from an average gun owner is community. Whether it's Barrel & Hatchet training classes or groups in North Carolina or Colorado that spend days in the woods, hiking and preparing defensive positions to train for notional invasions or societal collapse, prepared citizens like to collaborate and find strength in numbers.
Some 35 miles southeast of the minuteman course, Danielle L. Campbell, 43, picked up a pistol at the Orlando Gun Club and fired into a paper target a few yards away. Protect Peace, the community-focused group that she helped found in 2023, would not define themselves as prepared citizens in the same way as Roscher's cohort, but they share much of the same DNA.
'I started training after my assistant was killed by a stray bullet,' Campbell said, sitting in a lounge chair at the shooting club. 'Before that, I always had guns, but I never trained; I never took it seriously.' Her colleague was killed during a robbery in 2017, and she started firearms training soon afterward.
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Danielle Campbell, co-founder of a community-focused group called Protect Peace, practiced at the firing range at the Orlando Gun Club in Orlando, Fla., on March 15.
JACOB LANGSTON/NYT
Protect Peace serves as a community outreach group for dozens of gun owners in Central and Southern Florida, where instead of preparing for a chaotic future, they are helping local communities affected by gun violence.
Campbell's group helps provide medical trauma training; distributes naloxone, an overdose reversal drug, in impoverished neighborhoods; and hosts community shooting events attended by dozens of gun owners. She is also working to get members of the group amateur radio licenses so they can communicate in an emergency.
'Part of the reason why we do it is to really form a community,' she said. 'We had a public defender, a police officer, state troopers, all kinds of people. It was just so welcoming and inviting. I think that's where this whole concept was born.'
This article originally appeared in
.