When the going gets tough, Americans go shopping.
Following the US bombing of Iran last weekend, Google search interest for topics including “Survival kit” and “Nuclear fallout” spiked in the US to levels not seen since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, data through Thursday shows.
On Amazon, data from marketplace analytics company Jungle Scout shows searches and sales for products like gas masks, first aid kits, and solar-powered flashlights have ticked up notably in the past 30 days.
The data also show increased searches for “riot gear” and “hurricane preparedness kit” during the same period, which suggests US shoppers have a lot more on their minds than nuclear war alone. The product with the largest increase in search interest in the Jungle Scout data was a Uvex Bionic Face Shield that went viral earlier this month in connection with the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.
The search terms offer a lens into customer concerns this summer, though actual demand is affected by multiple factors, said Jungle Scout’s chief operating officer Tom Werle.
While the prospect of World War III may have loomed large last weekend, it seems Americans might also be anxious about a host of domestic concerns: a trade war possibly interfering with essential supplies; civil unrest surrounding arrests and deportations; or increasingly hot and violent wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
The military uses the acronym OBE, or “overcome by events,” when circumstances spiral out of control and beyond the scope of a mission’s plan and preparation. Chad Huddleston, an anthropology professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville who has studied prepper communities for more than a decade, said that may describe how Americans are feeling about recent events.
“People are looking in their immediate area to see what’s going on with that to determine, ‘Well, what should I be worried about?'” he said.
Huddleston started following preppers back in 2008 when the phenomenon was becoming more mainstream. He found that the events that motivated people to start prepping then weren’t the 9/11 attacks or subsequent wars in the Middle East — it was something closer to home.
“They all said Katrina,” he said. “When Katrina happened, they could watch on TV all these people suffering.”
“They’re like, ‘Oh no, that could happen here,'” he added.
Among the TikTokers posting about a possible World War III this week, one user shared a video showing how to build a survival kit for less than $20 at Dollar Tree. Her items included a headlamp, some paracord, batteries, a can of beans, body wash, and a bottle of water.
A bit of retail therapy in the form of off-the-shelf solutions can offer people the illusion of preparedness.
“I think for a lot of people — and people that I probably would not call preppers — it is a first and only step,” Huddleston said. “They go and buy the Costco food bucket, and then a bag off Amazon, and they throw it in the closet, like, ‘Cool, we’re done.'”
He said true preppers are more focused on skills and planning than on gear: “The more you know, the less you need.”
For some (who can afford it), that sense of comfort has taken the form of investing in safe rooms, underground bunkers, or survival condos advertised as able to withstand threats ranging from weather to war.
Two such companies told BI they typically receive a spike in new customer interest following incidents like the Iran bombing, but calls to several other builders did not indicate a significant uptick in inquiries in the past week.
Of course, a five- or six-figure underground shelter is likely less of an impulse buy than a ready-made bug-out bag from Amazon.
“I think that more immediate stuff is much more prominent in people’s minds and maybe in their algorithms,” Huddleston said.
If doomsday comes to the US, it’s BYOB: Bring Your Own Bomb Shelter
America’s retail-first approach to disaster prep also stands in stark contrast to other nations’ civil defense strategies.
In some countries like Switzerland or Finland (which have seen invasions and ground wars on their doorsteps in the past 100 years), there is a more communitarian attitude toward preparedness. When warning signals go off, entire towns can seek cover in well-provisioned, blast-proof shelters under soccer fields and parking garages nearby.
“America doesn’t know what a real bomb shelter looks like,” said Paul Seyfried, a disaster preparedness consultant in Utah.
Seyfried has designed and built bunkers for several clients in the US based on principles from nuclear science and European practice. He said he’s skeptical of the efficacy of many of the more heavily promoted doomsday survival concepts on the market today.
Unlike other nations that invest heavily in hardened civil defense infrastructure and detailed emergency planning, Seyfried said the US does far less than it did during the height of the Cold War.
He said the main messaging now is “stay inside and listen to your radio.”
In the US, individuals typically bear responsibility for building, supplying, and maintaining their own families’ disaster response options.
Americans also generally have high levels of mistrust toward the government. Public trust in the federal government remains at historic lows, according to Pew Research. A 2024 FEMA survey found that about half of Americans expect any level of government to provide help in the event of a disaster or emergency, though health and financial worries far outranked disaster concerns in the survey.
“It follows our general American ideal of individualism and bootstrap mentality,” Huddleston said. “I filled my bunker with Kirkland stuff. If you didn’t do that, then too bad. That’s your fault.”
That could speak to the ultimate driving force behind any surge in sales of disaster supplies: if people see that their friends and neighbors have a stockpile of survival supplies, they may want their own as well.
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