When I saw in my feed a headline reading "The Preppers Were Right All Along," I foolishly got excited. "Vindication," I thought. "They've finally realized we aren't so crazy after all!"

My optimism began to wane when I clicked it and saw the Washington Post load on my browser. I cringed when I saw that the byline showed the author as a part of Bloomberg Opinion. My hopes were dashed entirely when I read the description of preppers as a group:

Preppers, as the community of bunker builders and food hoarders is known, emerged during the Cold War as fears of nuclear holocaust drove some people to go to great lengths to prepare for survival in a burned-out world. But as the movement persisted over the decades, it has been mostly ignored by mainstream society, myself included, which came to view preppers mainly as paranoid radicals.

So it's more than a little uncomfortable to confront the reality that this fringe industry is increasingly mainstream.

Imagine being so peevishly married to your ideology that even when admitting you were wrong and someone else was right that you cannot help but insult them.

Why the author thinks we're right

The article repeatedly quotes executives from survival food companies such as Readywise, MyPatriotSupply, and Mountain House, who explained how the long-term food market has boomed in recent years. The author, Amanda Little, muses how the demographic has changed from "people preparing their bunkers for Armageddon or resisting a government they feared would take away their guns" to people she actually knows. (I'm sure they're delighted that she outted them publicly on The Washington Post website.)