It was an absolute delight to bring together another wonderful group for our second workshop of the After the End project focusing on ‘𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗱’. An extraordinary range of voices from the academic world brought different perspectives to the question of ‘How do we prepare, ethically and practically, for futures that are uncertain, disrupted, or even catastrophic?’.

As a thread running through the talks, speakers were asked to think about their own prep bag and to share their insights as they were asked ‘𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘂𝘀?’ Talks took us into new places including deep time, nuclear policy and engineering, environmental health policy, architecture, food security, longevity, genomic surveillance to push thinking deeper and further in relation to time and power, and endings.

We are immensely grateful to all the speakers for creating an unforgettable day of thought and discussion.

• 𝗗𝗿. Kezia Barker (Liverpool John Moores University) Between Precarity and Prophecy: Prepping and the Survival Imaginary

• 𝗗𝗿. Hunter Jones (Essec Business School) The Silver Lining to the Mushroom Cloud: How Mythologized Counter-Futures Pattern Prepper Consumption

• 𝗗𝗿. Sarah T. Roberts, (UCLA) - Left Behind: Futurist Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth

• 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳. David Aanensen (University of Oxford) Don’t Bring a Knife to a Microbe Fight: The Genomicist’s Prep Bag

• 𝗗𝗿. 𝗟𝗲𝘄𝗶𝘀 𝗭𝗶𝘀𝗸𝗮 (Columbia University - Mailman School of Public Health) Climate change, rising co2 levels, food and plants

• 𝗗𝗿. Ilke Turkmendag (Newcastle University) The Longevity Citizen: Self-Optimisation in the Age of Misinformation

• 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳. Frederic Hanusch (Justus Liebig University Giessen) The End That Does Not End: Survivalism and the Politics of Deep-Time

• 𝗗𝗿. Leila Dawney (University of Exeter) Nuclear decommissioning, memory and everyday practices after closure

• 𝗗??. Jake Hecla (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Surviving a Radioactive World

• Melodie Yashar (AENARA) The development of construction technologies to build off-world habitats including the Moon and Mars