Preppers distance themselves from Boelter, say their movement is about defense, not violence

Troy McKinley was launching the first day of his Minnesota Prepper Expo on June 20 when someone handed him a phone with breaking news.

An FBI agent had described alleged political assassin Vance Boelter and his wife as “preppers” in an affidavit, which also detailed his arsenal of weapons and an escape plan for his family.

Like most in the movement, McKinley bristled at the implication that Boelter’s actions had anything to do with being a prepper. The term denotes anyone who stockpiles food and supplies in preparation for an emergency, whether it’s a snowstorm or civil war.

“It’s a simple word that’s been turned evil,” McKinley said. “You get people of all kinds: People worried about economic collapse, World War III. Look at Minneapolis — what happened down there," he said, referring to the riots that broke out after George Floyd’s killing by police.

Authorities on preppers say most people associate the term with religious zealots. But preppers cross the political spectrum and date to the country’s founding.

“Americans have seen themselves as a people who are prepared to take on the dangers of the frontier on their own,” said Arizona State University associate professor Robert Kirsch, who co-authored a book on preppers. “That sort of individualistic character gets translated into emergency preparedness in unique ways.”

Prepping is often viewed as a practice by “aberrant, marginal, fringe, weird people,” said Kirsch. But he found it’s a mainstream behavior that has “some worrying dimensions if taken too far.”

As for Boelter being a prepper, he said: “Plenty of people do this kind of stuff and they don’t start murdering politicians.”

FBI agent Terry Getsch said in an affidavit that Boelter and his wife Jenny were preppers who had a “bailout plan” to go to her mother’s home in Spring Brook, Wis. He wrote the affidavit while Boelter was on the run after shootings that killed Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and injured state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Prosecutors say that after shooting the Hortmans and Hoffmans, Boelter sent his family a text saying “Dad went to war,” and warning them to leave their house because people with guns might show up.

Police stopped Boelter’s wife and four children about 100 miles northwest of the Twin Cities on the day of the shootings. Police found a safe, passports, over $10,000 in cash, and two handguns in the vehicle.

Boelter was arrested a day later in a field near his rural Green Isle, Minn., home, where court records say he had 46 firearms.

Authorities have declined to offer any more explanation for their prepper label. But David Carlson, a longtime friend who had rented a room to Boelter in north Minneapolis for the past year, said the description fit — though he wasn’t sure “how far into” prepping Boelter was.

“He always thought there would be civil war or the government would fall,” he said. “I knew he had some firearms or food, maybe. I only thought he had like five or 10 guns. I was shocked to find out he had so many.”

A 2024 FEMA survey found 43% of Americans are engaged in some kind of preparation for a disaster. While evangelical Christians might be preparing for the second coming of Jesus, northern Californians prepare for earthquakes and wildfires with “go-bags” at the ready.

You can find buckets of ready-to-eat meals at Costco, dig a fallout shelter in your backyard or buy a luxury bunker in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas.

The practice is prevalent across the political and income spectrum, although the rich tend to be more ostentatious about it: Elon Musk’s exit strategy is to colonize Mars, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a sprawling Hawaii compound with an underground bunker. Actor Josh Duhamel lives primarily off the grid in a prepper cabin in Minnesota that he says is 30 miles from civilization.

McKinley recently held his third annual three-day prepping expo in Little Falls, Minn., where 20 speakers taught people how to build fires, purify water, forage, plan an evacuation, develop a “survival mindset,” make a “bug-out bag,” wear camouflage, and make a Faraday cage to block electromagnetic fields.

McKinley became a prepper after a harrowing experience in North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch in 2010. A snowstorm with 70 mph wind gusts took down power lines.

“Being a Minnesotan, it was no big deal,” to him, he said. But some people who weren’t accustomed to hurricane-force winds in a snowstorm “panicked,” looting grocery stores.

“You couldn’t find a battery, a bottle of water, a roll of toilet paper. They were gone. I said, ‘Man, what if this were serious?’”

That’s when he began to realize “how vulnerable we are.” He now owns a company called Survival Resources, LLC.

“I just want to bring people together to make connections with each other so they don’t turn against each other,” McKinley said.

One of his expo speakers was William Fish, a retiree who lives near Prior Lake. He taught preppers how to work on older ignition systems in case an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) damages electronic equipment in vehicles.

“I would call myself a semi-prepper,” Fish said. “I don’t get carried away with it.”

Erik D. Pakieser, a former police officer and Army veteran, taught at the expo about “tactical gear options for practical use, from defending the home to full-on civil unrest.”

He said he has seen enormous growth in first-time firearm owners. Many are transgender people, minorities or immigrants who want to be able to defend themselves. Others want to be more prepared after the 2020 riots in Minneapolis.

Pakieser said the fact that Boelter is a prepper is irrelevant.

“In the context of this dirtbag, that’s like saying he’s a homeowner, or driver, or gardener,” Pakieser said.

Adam Fetterman, an associate psychology professor at the University of Houston, got interested in the subject after watching the National Geographic reality series “Doomsday Preppers.” The St. Cloud native ended up researching the prepper mindset for the European Association of Personality Psychology.

He said prepping doesn’t need to involve building bunkers, having elaborate “bug-out” plans or stockpiling assault rifles — but it makes sense for everyone to have enough food and supplies for two weeks. He learned that firsthand after the 2021 winter storm that caused widespread power outages in Texas.

He stores canned food, supplies for his cat, protein bars, water purifiers, fire starters, and items to evacuate a car if it’s submerged.

“There’s a little prepper in all of us,” he said. “We all think of bad things that could happen and try to prepare for it.”

Still, Fetterman found that preppers commonly hold a cynical and pessimistic view of human nature and humans’ ability to handle catastrophes. He also found a link with paranoia, and a conviction that they’re right.

Prepping is built into some religions, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which encourages members to stockpile food and water for emergencies. The right wing’s tendency to distrust and protect itself from the government can lead to prepping, but there are also preppers on the left, such as hippies and people who live in communes or off the grid, he said.

Some preppers subscribe to a “survival of the fittest” mentality; they’re excited about living in a post-apocalyptic world and want to “win,” Fetterman said. Their primary concern is weapons, protecting themselves and defeating others.

Kirsch, the Arizona State professor, researched preppers at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies in Germany and co-authored a book titled “Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States.” He calls himself a “cheerful apocalyptician.”

People who prep don’t think the government will help them during a crisis, so they plan to hunker down, steel themselves and focus on protecting themselves, he said. During the Cold War, people bought fallout shelters, which are coming back in vogue, said Kirsch, who grew up in Fargo.

You could also go so far as to reserve a room at Fortitude Ranch, which has eight survivalist compounds across the United States — including one in central Wisconsin — where members can take refuge during a “collapse.”

Founder Drew Miller, a retired Air Force colonel, said whether a solar flare takes down the electric grid or civil war breaks out, he’s certain “marauders” will run wild across the country.

You can secure a spot at Fortitude Ranch for a $3,000 to $26,000 down payment, plus quarterly and annual fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the luxuriousness of the quarters and length of the membership.

“It’s kind of like joining a country club,” Miller said, except it’s “not even a three-star hotel.”

And you’ll be expected to help grow food and guard the compound. They have farm animals, gardens and a stockpile of food and weapons. His members include liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans and everything in between.

“A marauder group is not gonna attack Fortitude Ranch; they’d get slaughtered,” Miller said. “If it’s months, even if it’s years, we will survive at Fortitude Ranch.”

Kirsch prefers to follow FEMA guidelines and keep 20 gallons of potable water and two weeks of dried food on hand. He lives in the desert, so preparedness largely revolves around water. But if all hell breaks loose, he plans to rely on his community rather than guard himself against it.

“My existential gamble is that if things go south, I’m betting that my community will support each other and we will not come into conflict,” he said.