Chunks of concrete littered the ground, while smaller debris hung in the surrounding trees.
The steel kitchen cabinets were blasted open and covered in blood splatter.
“Doomsday,” she replied.
Wearing a camo T-shirt and aMAGA hat, Hubbard was fuming.
But his most heated videos are the ones where he passionately basheshis chief rival, Rising S Bunkers.
“They don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” he said.
“They’re friggin' idiots.”
Investigators were unable to determine the cause of the catastrophe.
But Hubbard was convinced, without evidence, that apropanetank was responsible for the explosion.
“you might’t put propane in a bunker or it’s gonna kill you!”
As the video went on, Hubbard grew more incensed, until he was shouting like a revival preacher.
“Today is ourSeptember 11,” he said.
“The government is going to step in, and they’re probably going to regulate these bunkers.”
Then he added what sounded like a sales pitch for his own product.
In thebunker business, paranoia is profit.
But what happens when the paranoia inflicts the bunker builders?
Suddenly, if you searched for “atlasshelter.com,” you were instead directed to Rising S’s website.
The moves pissed Hubbard off.
At the time, he was working to establish himself as the face of the boomingbunkermovement.
It turned out to be a savvy business move.
Aided by his self-promotion onYouTube, bunker sales took off.
Some are shaped like ridged cylinders; others look like extra-large shipping containers with facades of black latticed steel.
Most cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars, but custom builds can go for several million.
Hubbard, a big man with intense blue eyes and a five-o’clock shadow, greets me gruffly.
“You don’t look like Business Insider,” he says.
“They’re probably listening to us now,” he tells me.
A camo shotgun leans against his desk.
Unlike Hubbard, Scott was born into a family of preppers.
Scott enjoyed filling the bunkers with traps and hidden passages.
“I watched ‘Scooby-Doo’ a lot as a kid,” he told the podcaster.
(Scott could not be located for comment.)
For a while, an uneasy detente existed between the two rivals.
“A Chinese TV crew might be calling you,” Hubbard texted Lynch at one point.
“Do not give interviews to any TV and news fromChina.
They will just copy you and me.”
Rising S responded by filing a defamation suit against Hubbard.
“We’re not gonna engage in that.”
The guy might have followed him from my office and thought it was me and shot the wrong guy.
I don’t know."
His die-hard fans were happy to oblige.
“CombineElon Muskwith Ron Hubbard, and you’d probably have Tony Stark.”
Fans of Rising S, or at least enemies of Ron, also joined the fray.
(“That’s them making fake news,” Ron responds.)
His office was ablaze, flames shooting from the windows.
He pulled out his phone and started filming.
“Someone set my building on fire to shut me up,” he muttered.
“Just my gut feeling.”
He works at Rising S. I bet everything he did it."
The investigator did not respond to Hubbard’s text.
Dancer denies any involvement in the fire, and there is no evidence linking Rising S to the blaze.
I later call the fire station in Sulphur Springs and ask about Hubbard’s theory.
“He has a lot of theories,” the guy responds, laughing.
Midway through our interview, Hubbard’s voice suddenly gets very low and serious.
“I hope you don’t fuck me and stab me in the back.
I’ll sue the fuck out of your magazine.
Later, he tells me he is horrible at getting his lawyers to sue people.
Hubbard portrays his feud with Rising S as a cosmic struggle between good and evil.
When we talk, he compares Rising S to the devil and Charles Manson.
At one point he compares his popularity favorably to Jesus, at another, he describes himself as Batman.
When I mention that I’ve already spoken with Rising S, he seems hurt.
“But he’s the bad guy, I’m the good guy,” he says.
“Why would you reach out to the bad guy first?”
When I visit the following day, the factory is buzzing with dozens of workers.
“All three of them have obelisks,” he observes.
Even with the ongoing court case, Hubbard kept posting.
They have recently accumulated several one-star Google reviews, either from disgruntled customers or Hubbard’s fans.
Once the money had changed hands, Stanton found it difficult to reach Rising S for assistance.
“They say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re Christian and we’re going to help you.’
But they’re just trying to milk people for money.”
But Hubbard’s videos seemed to have achieved the desired effect.
Hubbard’s shots at Rising S, in contrast, chart in the hundreds of thousands.
Early last year, Rising S finally withdrew from the field of battle.
Dancer forbade his employees from talking negatively about Atlas.
He says Rising S was less conciliatory under Scott and his cousin Gary Lynch.
“Their bark and bite is pretty nasty,” he tells me.
“That’s all it is it’s ‘my dick’s bigger than yours.’
Mine’s average, so I don’t give a fuck.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Dancer says of Hubbard.
“If you have to go through life looking over your shoulder, being scared.
I never felt like it was a war.
I’ve always felt like, it’s time to make motherfuckin' money.”
It’s not clear, however, that Hubbard will agree to the cease-fire.
“I am missing the check that was on my desk yesterday for $10,825,000,” he texts.
“Did you touch it?”
“No, definitely not,” I reply.
Dropping the matter, Hubbard asks me how my interview with Dancer went.
I tell him that Rising S has extended an olive branch.
“Bullshit,” Hubbard texts back.
Rising S, he points out, still owns his domain names.
He believes they probably burned down his office and killed his editor.
“I just want to see justice done,” he says.
“I believe they need to be locked up.”
Guthrie Scrimgeour is an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC, covering wealth and power.
