Pat expresses especially acute concern about the have and have-not dynamics that pervade any major disaster. “I’m not so sure I’m gonna be strong enough to turn somebody away if they need food.” She continues: “I’ve just started learning how to shoot. And I’m thinking, am I gonna be able to pull a gun out and shoot somebody because they’re trying to … ”

“Steal from us,” Bill finishes.

“ … steal from us,” Pat echoes. “Or hurt Bill. These are the types of things we discuss in the chat rooms.”

The threat of atomic annihilation was the catalyzing fear of the boomer prepper, while many younger ones point to 9/11. Other major events in modern prepping lore include Hurricane Katrina, the Ebola outbreak, and then, in quick succession, the 2020 Covid pandemic, the 2021 Texas power grid outage, and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Sources from both Patriot companies told me that presidential elections also routinely goose sales. One explained that after Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, “we knew that sales were going to plummet, and they did.” He later muses, “I’m genuinely confused why the Left doesn’t start getting prepared.”

When I entered Stapleton’s home on the morning of September 10, all was normal. Thirty minutes later, though, news broke that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk had been gunned down at Utah Valley University, just nine miles south of American Fork. By the time I descended into the Stapleton family’s subterranean bunker, Kirk’s killer was still on the loose.

A few hours later, in front of the hospital where Kirk’s body was being held, I witnessed a vigil of grieving Americans. One was Kelsie Gruenewald, a member of the Latter-day Saints wearing a red, white, and blue T-shirt and holding an American flag. As it turns out, she owns various shelf-stable food products from 4Patriots. In a later interview, Gruenewald tells me that her prepping instincts have hardened in response to various forces, including the day of March 18, 2020, when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake shook Salt Lake City just as Covid-19 was shutting the entire country down. She was again shocked when her abundantly safe, generally moderate home state was struck by political violence. “Evil,” she said, “can creep up anywhere.”