TVNZ’s new documentary introduces us to the everyday New Zealanders who have prepared for the end of the world.
The opening moments of Meet the Preppers feels like an unexpected sequel to The Blair Witch Project. The TVNZ documentary begins in the dark of night with an extreme close-up of a woman’s terrified face. “Jesus,” she whispers, looking behind her nervously. The handheld camera shakes as we glimpse a medley of bizarre images: a gnarled tree branch, some drooping leaves, what appears to be a tarpaulin. A mysterious buzzing sound is the final straw. “What the fuck?” the woman says, before fleeing the hellscape she’s found herself in.
It’s a dramatic start to a documentary about one woman’s efforts to find out how to survive a major disaster. Self-confessed catastrophiser Kylie is a mother of three (“four, if you count my giant man-child partner”) who spends a lot of time on social media, freaking out that the world is ending. She worries in front of the fire and she frets on the toilet, contemplating deadly pandemics, cyclones and nuclear war with an ever-increasing feeling of doom. “I wouldn’t have a clue what to do,” Kylie admits, as she dons a World War II gas mask and enjoys a quiet moment of existential crisis.
But Kylie (we’re never told her last name, but spoiler alert: she also presents the NZ Seniors insurance ads on morning broadcast TV) isn’t about to take the end of the world sitting down on the toilet. She decides to travel around the country to unpack the go-bags of everyday New Zealanders who have already prepared for the worst, in the hope that she’ll learn a few life-saving tips and tricks. First, she meets Paul, a “bug-out” prepper who’s ready to leave his home quickly when danger strikes, and can load his van in under 20 minutes with everything he needs to make a hasty departure.
“I’ve got some weaponry here, if you need it,” Paul says, as he welcomes Kylie into his saloon filled with animal skulls and crossbows. Paul has six go-bags at the ready, and reveals that the 1984 Queen Street riot showed him how badly people behave when the social order is broken. He plans to escape to somewhere far from other people, and calmly reveals his plan to hurt intruders by building a booby trap with sharpened sticks inside.
“If you start talking to people about this, they think you’re a bit kooky,” Paul warns. Tell that to Wellington “bug-in” prepper Richard, who’s preparing to stay indoors during a crisis until it’s safe to leave. Paul has 100kg of flour stashed around his house at all times, and shows us his “shed of food chaos” filled with chilli flakes, large bags of rice and lollipops. Moments after Richard admits that people might say his approach is “way nuts”, he gives Kylie a fake knife and a quick lesson on the deck about how to defend herself in a fight.
Paul and Richard are two of the more committed preppers in the documentary, but Kylie also meets other New Zealanders who are preparing to help entire communities. She visits a Whangārei marae that joined with other iwi to install an emergency mobile bunker full of life-saving radios, water and freeze-dried meals, and Wellington group DIRT, who meet regularly to role-play how to respond to different civil defence emergencies. It’s a collective approach all about resilience and self-sufficiency, and a reminder that being prepared doesn’t mean doing it by yourself.
No matter how extreme the survivalists in Meet the Preppers might be, they all have something in common: being prepared gives them peace of mind. That’s why Kylie decides to spend a night in the wild, with the assistance of Nelson survivalist Clay Tall Stories, where we find out what made Kylie panic at the start of the documentary. “There are so many noises I can’t identify,” she tells the camera from inside her shelter, as native birds sing outside. Then, the worst happens. For all those existential crises Kylie worried about while sitting on the loo, a lone wasp entering her shelter was not one of them.
Kylie admits she’s taking baby steps towards becoming a prepper, and who can’t relate to that? Meet the Preppers offers a light, humourous insight into the skills and equipment we need to survive an emergency, and while most of us can’t afford to build a bunker in our back garden, the documentary’s easy tone makes a serious topic accessible to viewers. You won’t feel any better about the end of the world, but Meet The Preppers makes it clear that being even a little bit prepared is a better option.
And if you find yourself still worrying about things that might never happen, perhaps we should listen to the friends of Hokitika prepper Alesha. When Kylie revealed how much she catastrophises while on social media, their solution to worrying about the end of the world was simple. “Stop scrolling,” they said. “Put your phone down, and go and enjoy life.”
Meet the Preppers streams on TVNZ+.
