Why do Mormons tend to have survivalist attitudes. If Mormon heaven is so great, and their knowledge of the truth is so strong, why in the hell would they want to remain on this orb eating insect infested wheat and canned foods, during a nuclear winter or a Mad Max scenario, when they could be up in heaven servicing their 10,000 celestial wives. It seems that Mormons are petrified of what is after this life.

When I was TBM I used to ask this same question.
IMO, I would want to be the first to go. I couldn't think of any reason why I would want to survive all the turmoil.

Not one person ever had a good answer. Mostly I got dirty looks.

I'd tell people that if something awful happened and I had to eat cracked wheat for a year I'd really rather just die at the outset and save myself the misery. I got the same dirty looks.

Because Mormonism is a fatalistic death cult? Your reward comes after death, after life passes you by.

It's not like living is the point of life. That would be too easy.

I think more of them know or suspect it's all untrue than let on.

Just human nature. Natural selection. People don't want to die, not usually, even the ones that claim to know better.

i'm going to go waaay out to left field for this one... but i don't think it's actually because of mormon-end-of-the-world doctrines - i think that's just the excuse...

i grew up around guns - lots of them - but each one had a specific (hunting or competitive target shooting) purpose

it wasn't until after college that i encountered the mormon survivalist - while we did have guns in common we really weren't approaching them from the same perspective - at all - they just seemed to want to talk about the 'specs' and hoard them instead of actually getting good at using them

i know that there are some exceptions to this but... the one common thing that i found in most of these mormon survivalist guys is that this current society wasn't really working out so well for them

what i mean is that... it seems to me like these guys actually want the current system to collapse so they can become the "important" people - and that can mean because they have more munitions than anyone else or it can mean that they will be part of Jesus' "Kingdom" on earth - or both

tl;dr i think it's about the powerless hoping for power

it's cultural.

i think it comes from the early days of mormonism with 'jumpy' joe. paranoia everywhere. he never knew when the husbands and the fathers would come after him for revenge.

then b.young in the west with the 'under siege' type of mentality.

I imagine it's for the same reason that kids shot up columbine.

They don't fit in; they'll never fit in. So they like the idea that the dynamic could change so dramatically that there would be nothing to "not fit" into.

Then they'll finally be the cool kids, because they'll be all that's left.

Mormons have been on the run since 1832. They've been on the run. They are reall not welcome anywhere. In fact if society could it would would probably do away with all of them. They are very afraid and rightfully so.

They are millennialists. The church teaches that the world is getting worse and will reach a terrible point, then Jesus will come and everything will be milk and honey for one thousand years. So the extreme ones want to survive so they can be here when Jesus comes back.

Persecution complex and siege mentality, mixed with the belief that they're the only good people in the world and therefore deserve to survive.

ADULT RESPONSE!
The comedienne Rita Rutner said "if I hear that the bomb is headed my way, I'd forget about going to a bomb shelter. I'm going to Sees Candy with a vibrator.

My crazy TBM ex "Mr. Paranoid" insisted in all this preserved food, but he said people would get hungry and kill us for our food. (lived in an area where there are not that many members.) If that were so, what would be the point?