The Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1515 - Dr. Bradley Garrett

Dr. Bradley Garrett is an American social and cultural geographer at University College Dublin in Ireland and a writer for The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. His new book "Bunker: Building for the End Times" is available August 4, 2020.

Joe RoganhostDr. Bradley Garrettguest

Jul 27, 20202h 42mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Inside Doomsday Bunkers, Preppers’ Minds, and Hidden Worlds Underground

Joe Rogan and Dr. Bradley Garrett discuss modern prepping culture, doomsday bunkers, and how global threats like pandemics, nuclear war, and solar flares shape people’s psychology. Garrett explains his immersive research with preppers around the world, from commercialized luxury bunkers in old missile silos to Mormon food storage systems and paramilitary-style compounds.
They explore how dread, distrust of institutions, and real systemic vulnerabilities (power grids, supply chains, pandemics) drive ordinary people to prep, often more rationally than stereotypes suggest. The conversation also covers alien craft claims, ancient civilizations, archeology, Native American history, and Garrett’s past as an urban explorer infiltrating underground infrastructures and abandoned spaces.
Throughout, they highlight how modern information overload, social media, and partisan culture wars amplify anxiety, tribalism, and conspiracy thinking, while governments quietly build their own bunkers and contingency plans.
The episode ultimately frames prepping less as fringe paranoia and more as a spectrum of practical risk management, psychological coping, and sometimes extreme, commercially exploited fear.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Prepping is often rational risk management, not simply fringe paranoia.

Many preppers Garrett studied are normal, non-anxious people trying to regain a sense of control over very real systemic risks—stockpiling modest food, securing water, or having backup shelter—rather than only building extravagant bunkers.

Our systems are fragile; a moderate increase in lethality or a grid failure would be catastrophic.

Garrett notes that if COVID had a ~10% fatality rate, supply chains could collapse because essential workers wouldn’t show up; similarly, a major solar flare/EMP could destroy transformers that take years to replace, crippling power, logistics, and healthcare.

Dread is diffuse and constant, driving tribal behavior and extreme responses.

Unlike specific anxiety, dread is a pervasive unease created by stacked existential threats (nukes, pandemics, climate, AI), and it pushes people into tight in-groups—preppers, rioters, hard-partisan camps—seeking security and simple narratives.

Governments have long prioritized their own continuity over public protection.

From Cold War bunkers for officials (vs. unaffordable shelters for everyone) to modern deep underground bases, Garrett argues many survival infrastructures are built for the state and elites, reinforcing citizens’ sense that they must fend for themselves.

Information overload and social media distort risk perception and fuel conflict.

Rogan and Garrett point out that global bad news is now instantly in everyone’s pocket, but our evolutionary wiring is tuned for local threats; this mismatch amplifies panic, performative outrage, and cancellation rather than nuanced, cooperative problem-solving.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

In order to not stockpile, you have to have so much faith in capitalism.

— Dr. Bradley Garrett

A lot of the preppers I talked to are not actually very anxious or paranoid at all—because they have a plan.

— Dr. Bradley Garrett

We created COVID’s pathways. It’s international flights, international trade…the global capitalist system that took the virus everywhere at once.

— Dr. Bradley Garrett

We’re all saturated with dread. We’re experiencing a sort of collective psychotic break.

— Dr. Bradley Garrett

If there’s an asteroid impact, I want it to hit me in the fucking face.

— Joe Rogan

Modern prepping culture and doomsday bunkers (from practical prepping to multimillion-dollar silos)Psychology of dread, anxiety, conspiracy theories, and tribalizationSystemic vulnerabilities: pandemics, power grid failure, EMPs, and coronal mass ejectionsGovernment bunkers, state secrecy, and perceived public betrayal since the Cold WarUrban exploration: infiltrating sewers, tunnels, abandoned stations, and critical infrastructureArcheology, indigenous oral histories, and lost or misinterpreted ancient technologiesMedia, social networks, cancel culture, and our inability to process constant global threats

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