Today, the US government advises every citizen to build a disaster kit and concoct plans for an array of cataclysms. According to a 2023 survey from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 51 percent of Americans are in some way “prepared for a disaster.” This helps explain why the prepping industry’s market cap is forecast to be nearly $300 billion by the end of the decade. Two of the firms competing for market share have nearly identical names and offer the same basic slate of products: power generators, dehydrated food, and water filtration. There’s Stapleton’s employer, 4Patriots, and its rival, My Patriot Supply. While exact revenue figures are difficult to pin down, officials at My Patriot Supply tell me that, before the pandemic, they rented part of a 45,000-square-foot space; today, the company built and fully utilizes a 428,000-square-foot warehouse not far from Stapleton’s home.