If the end of the world is near, some metro Phoenix entrepreneurs will cash in right until doomsday.
Their clientele are known as preppers, survivalists who plan ahead for economic uncertainty, natural disasters and 2012-apocalyptic lore.
Dennis McClung of Mesa owns online survival store 2012supplies.com , which he launched in March 2007. He's part of a growing niche industry that encourages consumers to stock up on survival supplies to prepare for worst-case scenarios, such as nuclear war or the collapse of the global economy.
"At first everybody thought I was crazy," said McClung, 30, who said his site averages 3,000 daily hits. "But now it's totally paid off."
He said he earns enough to pay his bills through the single-digit sales commissions he earns from consumers' purchases through his website, which links to products such as safety kits, dried-food packages and gas masks on other companies' sites.
"What I'm selling is like an insurance policy," said McClung, who doesn't think the world will end in 2012. "If someone sells fire insurance, they're not saying the world will burn."
Lisa Bedford of Peoria said her blog survivalmom.com helped her ink a midlevel five-figure book deal with HarperCollins Publishers, which will release "Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-case Scenarios" in the spring.
Bedford, 51, got the idea for her blog one sleepless night in summer 2009, after spending the day Web-surfing worst-case scenarios about the end of the world. It gets about 2,000 daily hits, she said.
In addition to the book, she's expanding her brand by launching a weekly podcast series this month.
"The biggest misconception about preppers is that we're obsessed," Bedford said. "We're just proactive."
James Ward, a marketing professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, said entrepreneurs such as McClung and Bedford appeal to those who want to control what they view as uncertain times.
"Even if people don't believe it's the apocalypse in 2012, being prepared is psychologically comforting," Ward said.
McClung first got the idea for his website in 2003, when he realized there might be a niche market for survivalists leading up to 2012, similar to the market created in the late 1990s for Y2K, when some believed 2000 would be problematic for computers because of the two-digit year "00."
Now, some have forecast Earth's Armageddon as Dec. 21, 2012, which marks the end of the ancient Mayan calendar's cycle of more than 5,000 years.
McClung works full time on 2012supplies.com and garden pool.org , a blog that chronicles how he converted and maintains a former pool that's now a food- and energy-efficient farm and garden, complete with two goats.
The guest room in his home has six months' of survival and food supplies including tents, knives and an assortment of dried canned food ranging from chicken and rice to cheesecake. Next to the guest bed is a cage with four baby chickens.
Photographs of his two children, 2 and 5, are tacked on his refrigerator by his website's black magnets with white letters stating: "2012 Supplies: Be smart, be ready."
He said he doesn't worry his kids with worst-case scenarios, even when they have disaster drills in which they put on nuclear-proof suits and masks, which were covered in reddish dust from a recent dust storm.
"We dress up and it's like playing superhero for them," McClung said. "The masks worked great during the haboob."
Ward said he thought people were more skeptical of doomsday forecasts because of averted catastrophes, such as Y2K and Harold Camping's apocalypse prediction in May. Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster, predicted the Rapture would occur May 21.
McClung and Bedford - who, like McClung, said she doesn't believe the world will end in 2012 - plan to continue their businesses post-2012.
Bedford said she's already expanded her blog's content to include tips for families' economic survival.
"For many families, job loss is a worst-case scenario," Bedford said.
McClung said he's looking to rebrand his website as an online survival store, after his Web traffic soared to 150,000 views after Japan's earthquake and tsunami in March and the recent U.S. tornadoes. He's also gearing up to release a survival DVD by year's end.
Just as McClung's and Bedford's blogs saw Web traffic soar after natural disasters, customers packed bulk-supplies store Honeyville Farms in Chandler after the Japan catastrophes, store manager Nathan Webster said.
Honeyville sells bulk ingredients to restaurants, but its consumer-retail sales amount to 50 percent of annual revenue, he said. The most popular product is Mountain House's freeze-dried meals, which remain on back order since the Japanese earthquake, he said.
Mountain House sales manager Melanie Cornutt said domestic sales for the company, based in Albany, Ore., surged 400 percent after the earthquake, prompting them to limit stores' orders.
"We maxed out at an all-time historical high," Cornutt said. "It made the Y2K era look tiny."
She said Mountain House had quadrupled its business since 1999 and they expected continued growth throughout 2012.
"It's not always about Armageddon; people are scared of the economy," Cornutt said. "It's causing these preppers to depend on nothing but themselves. It's a way to live so that you don't have to worry about any situation that comes up."
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