The prepper is often the subject of scorn, derided as a paranoid nut drunk on millenarianism and conspiracy theories. With the coronavirus pandemic, however, preppers are getting their due.

Bare store shelves, jacked-up prices, and a startling lack of basic medical supplies have many people scrambling. But not preppers. They’ve been methodically stocking up their basements and bunkers for years, fine-tuning their collection of survival supplies in anticipation of just such an event as this.

It’s not only individuals and groups like the New York City Prepper’s Network. Some countries are preppers, too. Switzerland has enough cooking oil, wheat, rice, and coffee to last the entire country for months. Finland has been dubbed the “prepper nation of the Nordics.” Cognizant of its reliance on Baltic Sea shipping lanes for imports, Finland has, since the 1950s, maintained national stockpiles of food and medical equipment in secret warehouses.