Jayson Orvis has a 300-acre doomsday compound in Bountiful, Utah

“We have more asparagus and raspberries than we can pick,”

said 57-year-old Utah entrepreneur Jayson Orvis, whose sprawling 300-acre doomsday compound in Bountiful, Utah, is stocked with 110,000 pounds of grain, a freshwater well, and solar arrays designed to shelter up to 200 people if civilization collapses. PEOPLE reports that for over ten years, Orvis has converted the land into an independent haven complete with a full arsenal, a machine shop, greenhouses, a butchery, and a huge inventory room stocked with items ranging from portable radios to medical textbooks.

From Credit Repair Fortune to a Self-Sustaining Sanctuary

More than 15 years back, Orvis accumulated great wealth when an equity fund bought out his credit repair enterprise. Growing up with a father who worked as a firefighter turned metal fabricator and prepper, he wrote his first article for a prepper journal at the age of 15. After selling his business in 2010, Orvis began focusing on philanthropic work, assisting former special forces soldiers in launching entrepreneurial ventures like Black Rifle Coffee and the self-reliance website retailer Readyman. This philanthropic outreach introduced him to former Green Beret Jeff Kirkham, with whom he co-wrote the post-apocalyptic thriller Black Autumn book series. That literary project eventually spun off into a feature film and Angel Studios’ Homestead: The Series, which uses the Bountiful property as its primary set and recently returned for its second season.

Rejecting the Underground Bunker Blueprint

Unlike tech billionaires who construct massive blast-resistant underground concrete bunkers, Orvis argues that burying oneself deep beneath the earth is a flawed Cold War concept. He points out that emerging from a sealed underground shelter leaves survivors with few viable long-term prospects. Instead, his above-ground property relies on a pesticide-free “food forest,” wild game including deer, turkey, elk, goats, rabbits, and chickens, and a diverse community of residents. If societal collapse occurs, Orvis plans to retreat behind the compound’s gates alongside family, friends, medical experts, master gardeners, beekeepers, Navy SEALs, and Afghan refugee commandos.

Redefining Community Preparedness in Bountiful

Orvis aims to steer doomsday prepping away from a dark, nihilistic, every-man-for-himself mentality. Drawing on experiences shared by his co-writer Kirkham from conflicts in Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Orvis emphasizes that survival depends on strong, cohesive communities rather than isolated individuals wielding belt-fed machine guns. Despite devoting over ten years and extensive resources to building the sanctuary alongside his wife, Pamela, Orvis acknowledges that the likelihood of a total global collapse in his lifetime remains remarkably slim, estimating the odds at roughly one to two percent.