Apocalypse Now: Preppers Are Gearing Up for Ebola

Jason Charles knows the exact moment he will lead his wife and five kids out of their Harlem home, pile into a car, and take off for the wilderness. It will be not long after Ebola reaches the population of New York City, hospitals overflow, and looting begins—when the first riots break out on the streets of Manhattan. “Right now it isn’t bad, but if the first case happens in New York, you start hearing about hundreds or thousands of people getting sick and it shotguns through the city, then you want to start getting your plan together to leave,” says the 37-year-old fireman and dedicated prepper.

Apocalypse soon: the scientists preparing for the end times

The men were too absorbed in their work to notice my arrival at first. Three walls of the conference room held whiteboards densely filled with algebra and scribbled diagrams. One man jumped up to sketch another graph, and three colleagues crowded around to examine it more closely.