“I was more interested in riding my bike,” he added.

To hang out for a few days in some of Anchorage’s military surplus and survival gear stores is to hear a lot of casual fatalism like that. People who are used to calculating risk said they saw little reason for increased alarm now from North Korea. City officials, from the mayor on down here in the state’s largest metropolitan area, have also said they were seeing little sign of panic or fuss.

“What are we going to do up here that we’re not already doing? They’re not going to evacuate Anchorage. We have more to worry about from an earthquake and tsunami,” said John Humphries, 56, a former military helicopter pilot who is now an investigator for the state medical examiner.

Mr. Humphries was shopping on a recent morning at 907 Surplus, a military supply store in a strip mall east of downtown, where a stream of men and women — many in uniform, stationed just down the street at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson — were coming by on a recent morning.

At 907 Surplus you can buy a green sniper scarf, a biochemical gas-mask canister or a pair of sub-zero-rated Army boots. Marpat Woobies, camouflage-colored wet-weather poncho liners beloved by Marines and great for backcountry Alaska, too, go for $30. But if you have to ask what they are, then you’re probably shopping in the wrong place.

The store’s co-owners, David Chatterton and Jeremy Wise — both Army veterans themselves — said they had heard little concern from their customers about North Korea. So-called preppers, mostly civilians, are part of the market in shops like theirs, but prepping — laying up emergency food, weaponry and shelter supplies — goes only so far when it comes to a potential strike by an atomic warhead.