STOCKHOLM — People are finally listening to Andreas Karlsson.
Since the number of coronavirus cases started to climb in Sweden last week, the 41-year-old IT worker — and self-described “prepper” — from central Sweden has been fielding more calls than usual.
“Friends and colleagues are calling and emailing me saying things like, ‘You know that thing you do which we said was weird?’” he said. “‘Well, could you tell me more about it?’”
With his experience as a would-be survivalist suddenly in demand, Karlsson has taken on an informal role as adviser to Swedes wanting to prepare for the worst.
“I’ve been doing this for about 10 years, educating people who are willing to listen,” said Karlsson, who also blogs about his life as a prepper. “It is just that the number of people who are willing to listen has increased exponentially over the past few days.”
In Sweden, prepping has largely involved an embrace of the practices of a time when the Nordic state was something closer to a subsistence economy and Swedes survived by exploiting the forests and rivers.
With more than 1,900 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Sweden, the government has responded to the outbreak by declaring it a “serious threat to public health and our society” and launching a fiscal support package to mitigate the economic fallout, as thousands have to stay home or are laid off because of falling demand for goods and services.
It has also revived a booklet it published in 2018 advising Swedes on how to prepare for a crisis and stockpile vital goods like “non-perishable food” with “sufficient calories.”
At the time the pamphlet was published, people laughed it off as government paranoia and largely ignored the advice. Now, it seems, they’re paying attention — emptying local superstores of dried and tinned foods and other items on the government’s stockpile list. Big supermarkets have been reporting increases in revenue of 70 percent to 100 percent year-on-year over recent days.
Some Swedes have also cautiously embraced another source of advice: a small group within the population that, in some ways, embody the pamphlet’s ethos: preppers.
These extreme stockpilers have made a hobby out of “preparing” for unspecified armageddons — often for years.
Long largely dismissed by mainstream society as eccentrics, they have emerged over recent weeks as a new source of expert guidance on handling the pandemic. Traffic to their blogs is up, and they’re being featured on prime time television.
In the United States, the spiritual home of prepping, the movement often exhibits a millenarian tendency, with adherents building secret concrete bunkers in the wilderness stocked with powdered milk and AK-47s with the aim of riding out everything from nuclear war to zombie attacks.
In Sweden, traditionally a land with a more moderate approach to most things, prepping has largely involved an embrace of the practices of the previous age, a time when the Nordic state was something closer to a subsistence economy and Swedes survived by exploiting the forests and rivers.
Sweden’s suitability for prepping is supported by its geography: It is vast and sparsely populated. In addition, the depopulation of the countryside has driven down the price of rural real estate, making it easier for preppers to buy up land to use as bolt holes.
In the U.S., survivalists often exhibits a millenarian tendency with adherents building secret concrete bunkers in the wilderness stocked with powdered milk and AK-47s | Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
Sweden’s Cold War history has also left the place with a lot of prepper-friendly urban infrastructure. The country lived for decades under the threat of short-notice annihilation by the nearby Soviet Union and built a huge network of bomb shelters under regular apartment blocks. Most blocks have big storage rooms for each apartment in the basement.
For Karlsson, panic-buying is what people should have been doing all along. He recommends people stockpile things like dried food, water and batteries so that they can survive several days without power or access to shops.
Karlsson himself has gone several steps further, stocking a farm in the countryside with enough food to survive for two years while transitioning to self-sufficiency. He has close to half a metric ton of rice and 300 kilograms of pasta there, he said.
Still, he’s not feeling panicked, he said, and isn’t considering bolting for the wilderness yet.
The outbreak is more like a “dry run” for something worse and he hopes lessons can be learned, he said.
“Personal preparedness is always going to be good to have, and you shouldn’t wait until the crisis hits to get ready,” he said. “That is like calling the insurance company when your house is already on fire.”