Stockpiling

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many liberals all over America have suddenly become extremely interested in prepping. Fearing that a Trump presidency could rapidly evolve into a “Trumpocalypse”, a significant number of leftists are now stockpiling food, guns and emergency supplies. In fact, even though many had expected a sharp drop in gun sales following Trump’s victory, what actually happened is that fear of what is coming under Trump pushed background checks for gun sales to an all-time record high on Black Friday. The election of Donald Trump has awakened the left to a degree that we haven’t seen in decades, and some on the left are embracing hardcore survivalism without any apologies.

What is ironic about all of this is that on the other end of the political spectrum interest in prepping is probably the lowest that it has ever been in the history of the modern prepper movement. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how it was like “a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community“, and nothing has changed since that time.

In fact, since I originally wrote that article we have gotten some hard numbers that show how dramatically optimism about the future has surged among those on the right.

Just before the election, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey found that only 15 percent of all Republicans believed that the economy would improve over the next year, but after the election that number skyrocketed all the way up to 74 percent.

But among Democrats it is a different story altogether. That same CNBC survey found that optimism about the economy on the left fell by more than half after the election. At this point, it is sitting at just 16 percent.

It would be hard to overstate how negatively many on the left feel about Trump. We have seen many of them take to the streets to angrily protest his election, and according to the BBC others have decided to stockpile food and guns “in preparation for social and economic collapse”…

In America, stockpiling weapons and food, in preparation for social and economic collapse, has tended to be the preserve of right-wing libertarians and foes of “big government”. But the Liberal Prepper Facebook group – up to now a small band – reports a big increase in enquiries.

“A lot of people are worried that not only will [a Trump presidency] fail but that it will fail spectacularly to the point that we are going to end up on in one or more critical situations that we are just not prepared for,” says Jeff, 36, one of the group’s members.

So could we see “social and economic collapse” under Trump?

Despite the wild optimism that we are seeing on the right at the moment, without a doubt this is a possibility.

It is funny how a single election can change our perspective on things so dramatically. During the Obama years, it seemed like the left was constantly talking about disarming everyone, but now Trump has sparked a renewed interest in gun ownership among many liberals. Prominent progressive author Ana Marie Cox is just one example…

Witness Ana Marie Cox, a popular progressive writer with gigs at MTV and the New York Times. “So who else has been researching basic disaster prep stuff?” she polled her Twitter audience on Wednesday. “Bc—congrats, right wingers—I do not trust the government to help anymore!” Her next tweet extended the holiday merriment to our nation’s Second Amendment enthusiasts: “Getting my rifle out of storage this week.”

And did you know that leftists even have their own gun organization?

It is known as “the Liberal Gun Club”, and since Trump’s victory it has experienced a huge surge in membership…

Lara Smith, national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, says her organization has seen a “huge” rise in enquiries since November’s election and a 10% increase in paid members.

US gun sales hit record levels in October amid fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to draconian gun control measures.

The election of Donald Trump, who was backed by the National Rifle Association early on, was thought to bring an end to panic buying. Shares in gun manufacturers even dropped by as much as 18% following his victory.

Instead, FBI background checks for gun transactions soared to a new record for a single day – 185,713 – during the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun control news site The Trace.

Many on the right have responded to Donald Trump’s election victory by deciding that the battle is over and that it is time to go to sleep. But many on the left have been suddenly awakened and are now preparing for extremely challenging times ahead.

I hate to say this, but in this case those on the left that are busily preparing are showing much more wisdom than many on the right that have chosen to abandon prepping altogether at this point.

Of course most of those on the left don’t really understand the storm that is approaching. All they know is that Trump is “really bad” and therefore they need to try to get through the next four years the best that they can. Here is more from the BBC…

“We are not looking for end of the world Mad Max-type scenarios, we are not looking at a zombie apocalypse,” says the author of a left wing survivalist blog, who also reports a surge in interest since Trump’s victory.

He says it is “fairly easy to predict” an economic collapse under Trump but adds: “No matter what, the country is still going to be here in four years, there’s going to be another election.”

I would have to agree that a major economic downturn is quite likely in the very near future. We have been on the greatest debt binge in history during the Obama years, and it is inevitable that this bubble will burst.

Donald Trump basically has two choices. He could try to prolong this debt bubble for as long as possible, but that would make the ultimate outcome even worse. Or he could try to deal with the crisis right away, but that would mean an extraordinary amount of pain for all of us.

No matter who won the election, we were going to have to deal with the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions sooner or later.

Let us certainly hope for the best, but without a doubt those that are preparing for challenging times ahead are showing incredible wisdom, and this includes both liberals and conservatives.

Is the U.S. government stockpiling huge amounts of food and supplies in anticipation that something bad is about to happen? Is something about to cause a major economic crisis that will require large quantities of emergency food? For a while, I have been hearing things about the government storing food through the grapevine and I have not been sure what to think about those rumors. Well, today I received a phone call that blew me away. I debated for quite a while before I decided whether or not to share this information with you all. Normally I do not like to talk about anything unless I am able to prove it by pointing to an article in the mainstream media. But the source of the information that I am about to share with you is rock solid. I cannot reveal his name, so you will just have to trust me on that. Hopefully the following information will be one more “dot” as we all try to connect the dots about what is really going on out there.

This morning I received a call from a very prominent person in the storable food industry. He has asked me not to reveal his name. I have been dealing with him for an extended period of time and I consider him to be a rock-solid source. When I talked to him today, he had just received a huge order for storable food from a U.S. government source. He told me that the dollar amount of the order was in the “five figures”.

When he asked about why so much food was being ordered, the government source told him essentially that “you know what is coming”. When pushed further, the government official did not elaborate.

It was unclear whether this was part of a larger food stockpiling program by the government. Perhaps this order was just part of the normal preparations that government agencies make for potential emergencies.

Nobody could blame the government for storing up some emergency food. That is something that we all should be doing.

The truth is that the government is taking emergency preparedness very seriously these days. For example, you can see video of a high-level NASA official urging NASA employees to develop preparedness plans for their own families right here.

But what if this is a sign of something bigger?

Remember, this is not some rumor I just pulled off the Internet. This is not something that someone got from “an aunt” somewhere.

I got this information over the telephone from the person who took the order.

I promised that I would not reveal any more specific details, so I won’t.

But this does seem to fit with a pattern that we are beginning to see emerge.

Earlier this year, FEMA issued an RFI (Request For Information) that inquired about the availability of 140 million meals of emergency food. Apparently the food was meant to be stored up in case there was a “catastrophic disaster event” along the New Madrid Fault.

You can view this FEMA RFI right here. The following is an excerpt….

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) procures and stores pre-packaged commercial meals to support readiness capability for immediate distribution to disaster survivors routinely. The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for meals in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. FEMA is considering the following specifications (14M meals per day):

– Serving Size – 12 ounce (entree not to exceed 480 calorie count);
– Maximum calories – 1200 and/or 1165 per meal;
– Protein parameters – 29g-37g kit;
– Trans Fat – 0;
– Saturated Fat – 13 grams (9 calories per gram);
– Total Fat – 47 grams (less than 10% calories);
– Maximum sodium – 800-930 mg;

Requested Menus to include snacks (i.e. fruit mix, candy, chocolate/peanut butter squeezers, drink mix, condiments, and utensils). All meals/kits must have 36 months of remaining shelf life upon delivery. Packaging should be environmentally friendly.

Mysteriously, seven days later this RFI was cancelled.

At that same time, FEMA also issued an RFI that sought to identify a supplier for 140 million blankets. You can view that RFI right here. The following is an excerpt….

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) procures and stores blankets to support readiness capability for immediate distribution to disaster survivors routinely. The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for blankets in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. FEMA is considering the following specifications (14M blankets per day):

– 100% cotton;
– White;
– 66″ x 90″

Also, there have been some much publicized shortages of storable feed recently. There has been much speculation about whether or not the government is part of the reason for these shortages.

There are some products that simply were not available for an extended period of time. For example, the following was posted on the Mountain House home page….

As you know we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily. The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.

The shortages around the country got so bad at one point earlier this year that a special alert was posted on Raiders News….

Look around you. Read the headlines. See the largest factories of food, potassium iodide, and other emergency product manufacturers literally closing their online stores and putting up signs like those on Mountain House’s Official Website and Thyrosafe’s Factory Webpage that explain, due to overwhelming demand, they are shutting down sales for the time being and hope to reopen someday.

Unfortunately, shortages have not been limited to storable food. Most Americans don’t realize this, but there is a significant shortage of certain pharmaceutical drugs in many areas of the country right now. Just check out the video news report posted below….

In addition, it is not just in the United States where food is being aggressively stored up. For example, a recent article in The Telegraph noted that governments all over the globe are now stockpiling food….

Authoritarian governments across the world are aggressively stockpiling food as a buffer against soaring food costs which they fear may stoke popular discontent.

Also, some governments are now gobbling up as much farmland as they can.

According to the New York Times, China has been buying up “vast tracts of Latin America’s agricultural heartland” and is seeking to acquire quality farmland all over the globe.

So what does all of this mean?

It could mean something.

It could mean nothing.

But as I have written about so much recently, we really do seem to be on the verge of a major economic crisis.

The signs that the financial world is melting down are all around us. I won’t take the time to repeat what I have covered in the last few days here. If you missed any of it, just go back and read these articles over….

*Is Financial Instability The New Normal?

*Depressed As A Nation? 80 Percent Of Americans Believe That We Are In A Recession Right Now

*Nervous Breakdown? 21 Signs That Something Big Is About To Happen In The Financial World

One thing that I haven’t covered yet is a very curious move by Lloyd’s of London. It turns out the Lloyd’s of London has started pulling money out of banks in Europe’s peripheral economies according to Bloomberg….

Lloyd’s of London, concerned European governments may be unable to support lenders in a worsening debt crisis, has pulled deposits in some peripheral economies as the European Central Bank provided dollars to one euro-area institution.

At this point, world financial markets have officially entered “bear” territory. In fact, global stocks are down approximately 20 percent since May.

Many believe that what we have seen is just the beginning of another major financial crisis.

For example, in a recent editorial for The Ticker, Karl Denninger (who saw the 2008 crash coming) warned that the house of cards is starting to fall once again….

Well, America (and the world), you’ve been scammed by the financial institutions and governments for the last 30 years. 2008 was the first spasm of recognition but was short-circuited by…. you guessed it…. even more scams. Rather than demand truth and an end to the games the American consumer lapped up the frauds and schemes of the politicians on both sides of the aisle who conspired with the financiers to rip you off once again.

Later on in the editorial, Denninger stated that he hopes that all of us have “taken the last couple of years to become prepared”….

Now recognition of that fact is dawning on people in a convulsive fashion, and markets of all sorts are reacting as one would expect when their entire worldview is exposed as having been a gigantic and intentional pyramid scheme constructed of debt layered upon debt thatcannot be paid down. The wrong thing was done in 2008 and there is zero evidence that our government has changed one iota in their singular focus on misdirection and lies in this regard.

Welcome to awareness; I hope you’ve taken the last couple of years to become prepared.

Well, if the anecdotal evidence presented above is an indication of a larger trend, it appears that the government is getting prepared.

And if the government is stockpiling food, who can blame them?

It should be obvious to anyone that the world has become an incredibly unstable place.

Hopefully we are not about to enter another major economic crisis, but it never hurts to be prepared.

If anyone out there has any additional information that is relevant to this report, please let me know.

If the government really has started to aggressively stockpile food, that would be an important thing to know.

If it is happening, the mainstream media surely will not tell us about it. So we will have to rely on one another for information.

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below….

Trumpocalypse? Suddenly Liberals Are The Ones Stockpiling Food, Guns And Emergency Supplies

Is The U.S. Government Stockpiling Food In Anticipation Of A Major Economic Crisis?