PREPPER ALERT: Inside The National Strategic Stockpile Every now and then NPR puts out a piece that invokes a whole lot of Hollywood comparisons. This time, the reference is to Raiders of the Lost Ark (I actually think the better comparison is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but the same principle applies). See, somewhere in America, we have six different GIGANTIC warehouses collectively known as the National Strategic Stockpile each of which is loaded with all sorts of stuff to get us through a biological attack. (Hopefully.) This is closer to what it looks like: According to Greg Burel, the guy in charge: If you envision, say, a Super Walmart and stick two of those side by side and take out all the drop ceiling, thats about the same kind of space that we would occupy in one of these storage locations, Burel says. A big American flag hangs from the ceiling, and shelves packed with stuff stand so tall that looking up makes me dizzy. We have the capability, if something bad happens, that we can intervene in a positive way, but then we dont ever want to have to do that. So its kind of a strange place, says Burel. But we would be foolish not to prepare for those events that we could predict might happen. Nell Greenfield Boyce, the writer of the piece, signed a confidentiality agreement, so there is no information on where any of these warehouses are, or exactly what is in them, although given the exchange from one official, its a good bet we are not stockpiling cobra antivenom. The inventory, started in 1999 with $50 million, now has an estimated value of $7 billion. The Stockpile was accessed after 9-11 and during the cleanup of Hurricane Katrina. Minute specifics of the contents of the warehouses is not available, but Greenfield Boyce writes of seeing row after row of ventilators, and includes a partial list of medications and vaccines that are contained in the buildings, although no specific amounts of each item. Addictive medicines, like painkillers, are locked up to avoid them disappearing. Medicines with time sensitive expiration dates are rotated on a regular basis. (The article was not specific about additional items like masks and durable equipment, but its a good bet that anytime these are used, they are replaced quickly.) All this preparation is both good and terrifying at the same time. Theres just one problem with the set-up as it is. The warehouse is fine in terms of the management of stuff in there. What gets in the warehouse and where does it go after the warehouse, and how fast does it go to people, is where we have questions, says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Apparently, there is no distribution system in place at this time. In addition, with the continuing changes in the intelligence landscape, the realities of what we need to be stockpiling are changing. The process goes by the clunky acronym PHEMCE and involves agencies from the Department of Defense to the Food and Drug Administration. Theyre looking to acquire or develop products that can meet the threats. A lot of under-the-hood, background work goes into identifying what the size, the scope, the special needs are, and what medical countermeasures exist or need to be made, says George Korch, senior adviser to the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services. That then drives the rest of the process for research, development, procurement, stockpiling, et cetera.. The government recently hired Gryphon Scientific to do an analysis of how well the stockpile was positioned to respond to a range of scenarios based on intelligence information. The studies that were done before have all been one-off. Theyve all been looking at a single type of attack at a time, or a single type of weapon of mass destruction, says [Rocco] Casagrande [of Gryphon]. They havent looked across all threats to make decisions about whether you should buy A versus B. Scared yet? Just remember that the Obama Administration is still in charge. 