Dressed in a navy-and-white-striped polo, fitted khaki shorts, and a hefty silver watch, Mike, 37, blends in with his neighbors as they return to the well-appointed high-rise they inhabit in Alexandria, Virginia, after a casual Friday at work. Mike, who moved to the D.C. area about a year ago for a website job in nearby Crystal City, is the picture of American industriousness and upscale success. He's the first person in the office each morning, he's working on a master's in communications in his spare time, and he lives in a sleekly designed apartment with a spectacular view of the Washington Monument.
There, he's stashed enough food and water to live on for 90 days. The inventory is staggering: a floor full of water jugs lined up like soldiers; 150 water-purification tablets; 75 freeze-dried meals like kung pao chicken and two dozen ready-to-eat meals (MREs), complete with mini Tabasco bottles and breath mints; 20 pounds of rice; enough canned goods to stock a grocery-store aisle ... and dessert. "I love chocolate," Mike says; his personal hoard includes 60 Hershey's bars--50 of the 3.5-ounce variety and 10 one-pounders.
He shuts the pantry doors and continues the tour in his living room, where there are 10 backpacks lined up against the rear wall. Some are filled with more freeze-dried food, others with camping gear. "This is part of my thing that is maybe weird," he says, betraying no sense of irony as he opens one backpack and pulls out a T-shirt, pants, a rain jacket, and a hat--a full camouflage outfit. "If things do go bad, I'm not going to walk down the highway looking like everyone else."