The Preppers Were Right All Along

In the first seven months of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic brought America to its knees, sales at survivalist supplier Augason Farms surged, tripling its annual revenue. The company couldn’t make its mylar packages of long-storage comfort foods — powdered eggs and nut butters, freeze-dried stroganoffs, casseroles and lasagnas — fast enough.

To meet the demand, founder Mark Augason simplified his production, knocking his 60 products down to the core best sellers and cutting off dozens of distributors so he could funnel his sales largely through Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. “It was like my Super Bowl — it was finally here,” Augason told me. And it hasn’t yet ended.

Augason’s Super Bowl moment has lasted three years and may persist for many more.

Just when Augason Farms and other major survival food brands, from Mountain House to ReadyWise and My Patriot Supply, were beginning to see a softening of demand this summer as Americans returned to pre-pandemic behavior, the worsening impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit, along with rising fuel costs and inflation, and withering drought and heat waves in the western US and Europe. Then came Hurricane Ian, which caused nearly $2 billion in agricultural damage in Florida alone. Survival food sales have remained strong.

Preppers, as the community of bunker builders and food hoarders is known, emerged during the Cold War as fears of nuclear holocaust drove some people to go to great lengths to prepare for survival in a burned-out world. But as the movement persisted over the decades, it has been mostly ignored by mainstream society, myself included, which came to view preppers mainly as paranoid radicals.

So it’s more than a little uncomfortable to confront the reality that this fringe industry is increasingly mainstream. In fact, in an era of growing environmental volatility and geopolitical unrest, Augason and his competitors appear downright prescient, maybe even pragmatic.

Disaster after disaster has reminded us all of the disturbing premise underpinning prepper thinking: We’re increasingly at risk of being cut off from our normal food supply. One recent report predicts that the survival food industry, which now produces very roughly $500 million in annual sales (privately held manufacturers don’t like to share their numbers), will grow by $2.8 billion by 2026.

The growth of this industry speaks volumes about the fear mindset that has crept into mainstream consumer behavior. You probably have at least one friend, colleague or neighbor who has been toying with the idea of becoming a “prepper.” Maybe not building a full-on bunker, but lining their pantries with long-storage food in the event that another major storm, blizzard, wildfire or another public health crisis hits.

“Early on, our market was mostly the people preparing their bunkers for Armageddon or resisting a government they feared would take away their guns,” Aaron Jackson, former chief executive officer of ReadyWise, told me. Like Augason Farms and most other survival food companies, ReadyWise was founded in Utah to serve the Mormon community, which is encouraged by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to prepare for the end of times. But Mormons, and more broadly, men, no longer represent even the large majority of survival food’s exploding market.

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