The small trail in West Virginia, near the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, leads to a jungle camp of survivalist groups.

They began to prepare for the collapse of civilization long before the nCoV appeared and shook the world.

With boxes full of food for the whole family, freezer bags for up to 25 years and rice and flour, these people don't need to wait until the wave of buying. crazy shopping all over the US for fear of nCoV. Their food was neatly lined up in a bunker built from reinforced concrete, located a meter deep underground.

Always ready, the Fortitude Ranch survival community even has ample reserves of toilet paper and masks, the two most sought after items in the US today.

"They're worthwhile now!" Joked Steve Rene, introducing the 40-hectare shelter he managed and treating it as a resort camp.

Fortitude Ranch's motto is always "Get ready for the worst situation and enjoy the present!". Each year, the members have 2 weeks to play in this rural resort, enjoy nature, hiking or trout in the river named Lost. The group also has another branch in the state of Colorado.

Ren, with a friendly and sharp personality, tried to dispel prejudices around the existentialists from the beginning.

"This is not a crazy group of people thinking that the world will end tomorrow," he said. "We are not militaries. We have no relationship with the militia or any such force," he asserts, despite serving in the military, fighting in the Gulf in 1991.

However, on all four corners of the camp, there is a watchtower and in the living room is a large caliber rifle, to prove to the potential members that the group works very seriously.

"Desperate people do desperate things," Rene said.

The survival team sees the main threat to them not as foreign invaders, but as panicked Americans flocking to rob food if a nuclear or biological weapon attack occurs, a political uprising, a pandemic or all of that.

"Obviously those things are very unlikely, but still possible," Rene said. "If you are not ready, you will not know where to go, what to do. People scramble and things fall out of hand."

A 5-person committee, including Rene, in an emergency will decide whether to declare a "disaster scenario" or not. In the meantime, all team members will be invited to take a break in this heavily guarded camp. Anyone who wants to enter must read the correct password.

In the event of a pandemic, every newcomer will be tested for his or her body temperature before going inside and enjoy free self-sufficient ecosystems, including dug wells, solar cells, radio equipment, and greenhouses, chickens, goats and cows and a ditch, where the bodies of infected people were burned.

Fortitude Ranch founder is Drew Miller, a former military intelligence expert, graduated from Harvard University. He wants to create more than a dozen such resorts across the United States.

Contrary to the luxury bunker bunkers that super-rich built themselves, Miller turned to the middle class. Each person only pays at least US $ 1,000 a year for the basic package of a basement bed.

"This is like a lifetime insurance policy that really protects your life, not the kind of insurance policy that pays you burial expenses," Rene said. He emphasized that his shelter could accommodate up to 500 people in different buildings located throughout the campus, just two hours drive from Washington.

Rene recently received more and more requests and emails as nCoV spread across the United States. Those who are worried about disease and think about survivalism are considering their needs, he said.

The laptop next to Rene is displaying a map showing the spread of nCoV in real time. There are no red dots near his group's farm. As of March 16, West Virginia is the last state in the US that has not reported any cases of nCoV infection, although the country has had more than 4,700 cases and 93 deaths.