(CNN) -- In a rural part of the United States, a small community is growing -- clearing land, building houses and preparing for what it believes is the inevitable.

Located on a former dairy farm, the group -- which does not want its name or location identified -- is building a self-contained world. Miles from nowhere and "off the grid," the 25 families involved are hoping to ride out what many expect will be a technological meltdown -- brought on by what history will probably remember as the Y2K bug.

"The Bible says a wise man sees trouble from far off and takes another road," says Carl Mandell, a member of the community. "The fool goes headlong into it and is destroyed. I think that there's trouble coming."

The man behind the new community, who also does not want to be identified, says he did not start out trying to attract those afraid of Y2K fallout -- but that Y2K concerns coincided with community members' desire to move to the country.

"This is a Christian home-schooling community, not a survivalist community," he said in a recent e-mail communication. "People are coming here because they want to raise their children in a more rural setting with good influences. Y2K is a peripheral issue. There are preparations being made by families here, but they are not much different than preparations people are making in the cities."

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Carl Mandell's concerns over Y2K prompted him and several other families to start a new rural community.

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The owner of Brigade Quartermasters comments on the interest in Y2K-oriented products.

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Anxiety about the coming months is also manifesting itself at the cash registers of camping and so-called survival gear shops.

"In certain categories directly related to Y2K, we've seen the volume increase probably seven-fold in those categories that are related to food, water, food preparation," says Ron Rumney, director of sales for Brigade Quartermasters in Kennesaw, Georgia.

The store's current catalog makes no bones about the Y2K bug's selling power. It features "Y2K" in large print on its cover, surrounded by pictures of storage containers, military MREs (meals ready-to-eat) and wind-up flashlights. It also challenges potential customers with the question: "Are You Ready?"

"We are certainly profiting off the fear (of Y2K)," says company president Mitchell WerBell. "We didn't start yesterday to do this just for this event. We've been in business for 23 years. So we're just capitalizing on an event that's going to happen, one way or the other. Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen."

But must we all leave town, study preparation guides and stock up on essentials? The ticking sound accompanying the countdown to 2000 seemingly grows louder every day. This is due in part to the media's hype of the event, as well as voices such as that of Gary North -- whose popular Web site predicts the Y2K bug will create a "nightmare for every area of life, in every region of the industrialized world."


The Brigade Quartermasters catalogue features "Y2K" in large print and a challenge to potential customers: "Are You Ready?"

But there are other opinions. The Rev. Jan Nunley, rector at St. Peter's and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Providence, Rhode Island, is taking a balanced approach to the controversy.

"I work with computers every day," she says. "I know how buggy these things can be, how they can crash on a normal day, how interactive we are, how much we depend on them. And when I run into this (Y2K question) I think: 'Multiply this by a certain factor, and that's what Y2K will be.'"

But while Nunley says she expects the inconveniences brought about by Y2K to be on the "major hurricane" level, she criticizes the doomsayers.

"A lot of people give credence to Gary North, but he's slid under the radar," she notes. "Most people don't encounter, on his 'official' Y2K Web pages, his religious extremism and apocalypticism. He wants to raise the level of fear. So if there isn't a problem, he wants to create a problem."


Sales of emergency food rations are increasing at some sporting goods stores ahead of Y2K

Nunley, who has written on the Y2K issue for several national Episcopal publications, says she is infuriated by "people who say you have to go buy a .22 and some ammunition. It's un-Christian, and anybody who touts that is stepping over the line and away from the kingdom of God. You've got to balance preparedness with an understanding that it's all in God's hands -- that if the worst is going to happen, no amount of stockpiling food or weaponry or building shelters is going to stave off disaster."

She is also troubled by what she describes as the growing obsession with Y2K preparedness -- the fear that "if something should happen and I'm not ready for it, that I'll have been found not judged fit to survive. That's social Darwinism, not Christianity."

Instead, Nunley believes Y2K could provide some new solutions to coincide with the new century.

"We know there's a problem in our communities," she says, "that people don't talk to each other ... people don't know their neighbors. For all the profiteering that's going to go on, the only way to combat that is [to] reach out to people -- use this as an opportunity. ... Show the face of God in this."

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