I think that the average first worlder is just fucking bored. There are so many people who live such mundane lives that they "want" (or at least think they do) this to actually be the Bubonic Plague. To me I think there's a ton of overlap with people who claim to really want a civil war or the people who blabber on about how dangerous white males are or how Trump is the devil, etc. Hell, I bet it overlaps a lot with the people who are/were really into all of the zombie themed stuff in media for the last decade or so (which seems to have petered out a lot as political autism has become a new source of entertainment/fear porn) and politically I think it's pretty clear which side engages in this more, at least from my perspective.
Some really are true believers that think that walking outside is like being dropped into Chernobyl in the spring of '86, but for most I think they just crave excitement and some kind of struggle but they know that the things they're going on about really aren't that big of an issue in the real world. Of course if they ever got those things for real they'd be shitting their pants in fear and the larp wouldn't be nearly as fun to post on Twitter and Tik Tok about.