USA. They sell food here in the sizes of war. A single jar of mayonnaise as large as my helmet. I bought two. One must always keep a reserve. I entered a hall so vast it had weather. Shelves to the heavens. And upon them, no small things. No humble portions. Everything sized as if for a siege. A bag of rice I could not lift alone. A tower of paper as tall as a child. Forty-eight of one thing, ninety of another, a vat of oil that could float a boat. And the people pushed carts the size of carriages, loading them as if the snows were coming and would not leave for years. I understood at once, and I was moved to my core. For it is written that a house is judged not in its feasting but in its famine — by whether, when the long winter comes, it can feed its own without bowing to any lord. This nation does not shop. This nation provisions. Every family a fortress, stocked to outlast a siege that is not coming, has never come, and against which they remain magnificently, gloriously prepared. So I provisioned. I filled a carriage-cart to the brim. Rice for a regiment. The helmet of mayonnaise, and its reserve. Enough paper to write the history of the world. Twice. And here my heart rose, and I declared the thing a calmer man would not: “Let the hardest winter in a thousand years descend. Let the roads vanish and the rivers freeze. I will not so much as rise from my chair — for I hold, in my garage, mayonnaise enough to outlast the apocalypse, and a man with that much mayonnaise fears no season, no army, and no god.” The woman checking receipts at the door studied my cart a long moment. Then she smiled. “Big family?” “Not yet,” I told her, honestly. I took my provisions home. And because no winter came — none ever does — I did the only honorable thing a man can do with a fortress full of food. I fed the whole street. We ate for a week. The mayonnaise held. So tell me, America. You call it buying in bulk. A Costco run. A little too much, as usual. I call it every household quietly ready to survive the end of the world — and then, when the world stubbornly refuses to end, throwing a feast instead.