Profs & Pints Napa: Hunker in Bunkers, Escape to Space

Profs and Pints Napa presents: “Hunker in Bunkers, Escape to Space,” on the history and status of Americans’ responses to existential threats, with Emily Ray, associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University and co-author of Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States.

[Tickets available only online. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/napa-bunkers .]

Back in the middle of the 20th century, when we first became a nuclear world, the federal government encouraged American citizens to respond to threats of atomic annihilation by taking up doomsday preparation and bunker acquisition.

Today most regard doomsday prepping as a fringe activity, albeit one gaining in popularity. But Professor Emily Ray of Sonoma State University argues that doomsday preparation remains foundational to U.S. politics and culture and is a key driver of the new space race.

Gain insight into how much our lives, politics and culture are shaped by existential threats and survivalist fantasies by coming to Napa Yard, the new Napa Valley home of events offered by Profs and Pints, a social enterprise that democratizes access to higher learning.

Professor Ray will discuss the history of doomsday prepping in the US, from calls to grow war gardens to federal recommendations for surviving atomic bombs to today’s quest to find ways to inhabit other planets. She’ll discuss how figures like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have plans to colonize Mars partly to save humanity from worsening conditions on Earth, and how investment in the new space race is tied to climate change and political instability.

A scholar of environmental political theory and politics focused on the intersections of technology, outer-space policy, climate change, and social theory, Dr. Ray joined Prepared co-author Robert Kirsch of Arizona State University in developing the novel theory of “bunkerization” to explain our responses to collective existential threats. That theory and her upcoming talk deal with a profound question: How do we hope to address collective problems together when the solutions offered are focused on individual needs?

Her talk might leave you rethinking how you prepare for the worst. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 and the talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: A drawing by famed architect Paul László of a bomb shelter designed for a wealthy businessman (public domain).