Art Bell and Steve Shenk dissect Y2K fears, from Stephen Bennett’s 1999 warnings—later dismissed as "a bump on the road"—to government manipulation of public concern to prevent panic. Shenk advocates food storage (three-month "short packs") and water reserves, criticizing patented "Terminator seeds" while stressing self-sufficiency over cash. Callers debate survival strategies: Jeff, a trucker, insists on stockpiling medications; Mark from Virginia demands fitness prep alongside supplies. Bell teases Whitley Strieber’s return, hinting at broader conspiracy theories. The episode underscores Y2K’s potential for chaos and the fragility of societal trust in government assurances. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be and welcome to another edition of the Very Best in Live Overnight Talk Radio with a twist, always with a twist.
From the Tahitian and Hawaiian Island chains out west eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the pole and worldwide on the internet, thanks to Broadcast.com and Intel Corporation.
But I think we're up on streaming video right now.
In a moment, coming up is Peter Davenport from the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington.
He's got a number of things for you, and I have one for you that I think he'll like or be interested in.
Well, there was an earthquake in Kansas City today.
A very rare earthquake, about 3.0 Kansas City today.
I have been told by somebody that I have come to trust to watch Rocky Flats.
I'm not going to say any more about that than that.
Watch carefully at Rocky Flats.
And we'll see what comes of that.
A compromise package financing the continued bombardment of Yugoslavia and aid to Central America was agreed upon by House Senate bargainers Thursday night.
So the money will go flying off to this insane bombing for peace thing that we've got going over in Yugoslavia.
Bombing for peace.
That's like reality.
You know, reality has a virus.
That was Peter Gersten last night.
I'm still working on that one.
For me, with what's going on in Yugoslavia, reality does have a virus.
Anyway, more money for the bombs.
There is a child stuck in a well again.
A toddler, more than 15 feet into a narrow well.
Firefighters trying to dig a tunnel to rescue the boy.
They could hear the 17-month-old crying, but out of the reach of any rescue equipment, the well is 20 to 25 feet deep and 8 to 10 inches wide.
Oh, boy.
The driver of a charter bus that crashed and killed 22 people was fired from bus companies in 1996 and 1989 after testing positive for marijuana four times And still they drive.
Now, Peter Davenport is normally the kind of guy who would be reporting on what I'm about to tell you about.
And he is, in fact, going to be reporting on UFOs that have been recently seen.
But try this one on for size.
This is news that you probably didn't get elsewhere.
Where?
Art, I just returned from a three-week business trip to Europe.
And this article appeared in the April 27, 99 newspaper called The Express in London.
The headline is, Pilot tells of his close encounter with a UFO.
Listen to this.
A British charter jet has had a close encounter with a UFO said to be the size of a battleship.
The shocked pilot and crew of a Debonair BAE-146 plane reported being buzzed by a long cylindrical object as they flew over the North Sea.
Here we go again with the North Sea.
Three other pilots have also independently logged seeing the bright object 58 miles off the coast of Denmark.
Last night, the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed a comprehensive report of the pilot sighting had, in fact, been received.
The report says the captain and crew first became aware of the object after the underside of their plane was immersed in, quote, an incandescent light, end quote.
A CAA spokeswoman said, quote, the captain reported seeing an unnatural bright light below his aircraft while flying at 28,000 feet.
The area below him was illuminated for about 10 seconds by incadescent light, and it was certainly not a light from another plane.
Three other, repeat, three other aircraft saw it moving at a high speed or, at times, static.
However, air traffic controllers were informed, and they confirmed there were, at that time, no other planes in the vicinity.
Ah, but the plot thickens.
Five minutes later, there was a brief radar return from a spot 76 miles away.
We believe there was no danger involved, they said.
The Luton-based, it looks like six-seater plane, that may be 96-seater plane, was flying company executives from Lingpyong, Sweden, to Humberside Airport.
A spokesman for Debonair, which runs cut-price flights throughout Europe, said Chief Executive Franco Mascala had been informed that, quote, a great red light in the sky had been spotted near one of the company's planes.
At one stage, the report says, the object came to an abrupt halt, very important phrase, an abrupt halt before accelerating past the airliner at, quote, thousands of miles an hour.
A CAA source says the object was tracked by a military radar station in Yorkshire after it entered UK airspace.
A spokesman for the 6,000-member British Pilots Association said, We get reports of this nature from our members, but they are few and far between.
In the past 10 years or so, I'd say there have been around six cases of UFOs being sighted.
Many pilots are reluctant to make such claims because it tends to lay them open to ridicule.
So when they do go so far as to make a report, we do expect it to be given credence.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense insisted there were no military aircraft in that area, adding, we saw nothing.
In a moment, Peter Davenport.
Here comes a man with the kind of dedication it takes to stay up.
He likes to stay up on the phone all night long and listen to people who call his National UFO reporting line to report stories that people were told by their parents and their grandparents.
And, you know, as many reports as we take at the National UFO Reporting Center, we don't come close to getting even a significant fraction of all the reports that are reported to UFO investigators around the world.
So there are a lot of reports that come to us that surprise even me.
Actually, my reaction to a UFO, or let's call it an anomalous object, the size of the battleship, is that that's relatively small compared to some that have been reported to us.
The lights over Phoenix, that so-called case that occurred in March of 1997, the one of at least two and perhaps three or even four objects that went over Arizona on the 13th of March, 1997, Thursday night, was at least one mile in width, and we think the evidence places it between two and three miles wide, and it was longer than it was wide.
I have a videotape of that object.
I am not speaking of the lights that were seen at 9:30 or 10 o'clock that night.
I'm talking about the object that was seen at 8:15.
Well, here's something one could be at least reasonably suspicious of.
If we accept there are UFOs, I do.
If we accept that our government is in some way aware of them, and there is an incident of that magnitude that would occur over a major U.S. city like Phoenix, then it would be really good cover to come out right after the incident and drop a bunch of flares, and your cover story comes down with it.
My suspicion is that the U.S. military must have contingency plans sitting on the shelf such that when a major event, for example, the lights over Phoenix occurs, exactly as you say, they know exactly what to do.
They launch aircraft, they launch flares.
Bear in mind, the flares, if they were flares seen at between 9.30 and 10 o'clock two years ago, southwest of Phoenix, were in fact military flares, then they were somewhere between, I'm going on memory now, but 8,000 to 11,000 feet above ground level over the Gila Bend firing range.
Now, those flares, and this point I suspect I've made before on coast to coast, and many other investigators down in the Phoenix area have too, that is awfully high for a flare to be launched.
Those flares are designed to be released from A-10s close to the ground to illuminate targets on the ground.
Now, of course, their story was that they were jettisoning those flares because they're not allowed to land with them still attached to their wings.
I would like to know whether that is in fact the case or not.
We're getting a lot of screwy information from our government.
The government today, in my opinion, appears to be a government that is set more on prevarication and deception and partial explanation of things than it is an open government dedicated to part of that is just the inertia of bureaucracy.
And they have 1.77 trillion of our dollars to spend this upcoming year.
It's a lot of money to obfuscate with, and I think that's exactly what they're doing.
But I'm intrigued by your report over the North Sea and England.
We're getting a lot of reports over our website from the U.K. and from Europe now.
You must have a lot of listeners and followers over there.
Also, we have taken many, many reports over the last four years or so that place UFOs in proximity to commercial airliners.
In fact, as I have reported on Coast to Coast in the past, Art, when we were approached by members of the U.S. federal government just about two years ago, it was April 28th when they contacted us, 1997.
The reason for my meeting with them, they wanted to know everything we could tell them about UFOs allegedly in proximity to commercial airliners.
You know, I didn't, but they're well aware of Jaime Mausson's fine work down in Mexico City.
He has an astonishing collection of videotapes.
I saw them down in Laughlin in late February.
And, you know, in fact, when I saw his presentation at Laughlin, something occurred to me.
They had a dramatic sighting over Mexico City on the 14th of November 1997, and Jaime showed a very dramatic, very, very convincing videotape of a huge cluster of lights moving across Mexico City.
The reason I mention that, Art, is you no doubt will recall the program we did together on the 14th of November, 1997 when those lights went over the Northwest and the U.S. Air Force declared that they were fragments from a Russian booster that had been launched two days ago.
But you are exactly correct because what many people don't realize is that we have evidence collected that night and on subsequent days that there were, in fact, three or perhaps four waves of objects that went across the west coast that night.
Over the northwest, over roughly Salem, Oregon, Reno, Nevada, and down over Arizona as well.
It was a very busy night.
And it's one of the really very interesting things about going to some of these major conferences where there are several speakers from around the world is comparing notes and comparing dates of incidents.
And oftentimes they coincide events in other countries with events in the United States.
Maybe we can play this when we come back after the break.
I'll give a little preface, though.
A gentleman was standing outside about 4.30 this afternoon at his Central Standard Time, and he saw a white sphere streak across the sky and disappear in a small cloud, not to come out again.
And when we come back, I'll play about a two-minute audio cut of what that gentleman had to report to us tonight.
By the way, for the latest news, not fit to print exactly, or maybe broadcast.
Actually, it's a very well-told story, and I won't say any more than that.
For the latest news, check our latest news items area of the website, www.artbell.com.
I think you will find it very instructive, and I mean very instructive, just in case you somehow have missed out of the somehow you've missed out on the chronology of events.
It was delivered by a news service earlier today.
That's www.artbell.com.
To Peter Davenport and the report that we teased you with, Bottom of the Hour, Peter.
This afternoon, well, here in Memphis, Tennessee, I was looking up at the sky, which had only a scattering of clouds, and I saw an object moving in a southwest to north, southeast to northwest direction at a high speed.
That is not unlike a number of reports we've had over recent months of objects during daylight hours, unexplained objects, streaking across the sky and just disappearing from sight.
Well, it's not clear to me whether the object flew into the cloud and stopped or whether it might simply have been obscured by the cloud, obscured from the witness's vantage point or view.
It might have turned and gone directly away from him, so it appeared to just disappear in the cloud and he couldn't see it as it was going away.
There are any number of possibilities here, and I dare say, Art, we will probably never know what it exactly, what it did after it entered that cloud, of course.
There was a sighting out there about, I think it was 9.20 this evening, that is Eastern Daylight Time, of an intensely bright light that was seen by a gentleman to streak from east to west across the night sky.
Let me just go to the cut.
I think it's about just over a minute or so.
And this is what was reported from Sebring, Florida this evening.
unidentified
Okay, I had stepped outside, and we have a TV in the backyard where I was watching a basketball game, and I just happened to, it was dark, and I just happened to notice a light start from the eastern horizon.
And as I started to notice it, I guess the first thing I thought was like a shooting star, I was going to say like normal money, money, money.
And then I realized that I was watching this traveling at a high rate of speed and still seeing it.
And I even started to walk towards the house and watched it go across to the west and had plenty of time, but yet this was such a terrific speed that it was definitely nothing I've ever seen in my life, and I'm 42 years old.
And then I ran inside and I told what I seen.
It was a brilliant white light that I don't know what when I picked it up, but I just noticed it, and it was traveling relatively low from the horizon the way I saw it.
And it's from the aviation industry, and we give those people special dispensation when it comes to identifying them because they are among our very best sources of information.
But in a nutshell, what this gentleman will describe is a very unusual event in Wisconsin, somewhere west of Eagle River.
It generated apparently a number of reports or telephone calls to the local sheriff's office.
I think this gentleman will mention the sheriff's office or the county of the sheriff and mentions a sonic boom and a mushroom cloud.
I don't know what to make of this.
I play it in part because if there's anybody out in Wisconsin who is witness to this event, we would certainly be most grateful for any kind of reports they could provide us over the internet.
Let me just go to this audio cut.
It runs only about 30 seconds or so, but here we go.
unidentified
We had a few reports of explosion in the western sky from the Fireless County Sheriff's Department near Eco River, Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin.
Also some other reports from the Airport Peninsula.
Exposure in the western sky with a mushroom light cloud and probably sounded like a sounding boom, possibly.
From what they're reporting as an explosion.
But maybe you plan to do something and want to research it or whatever.
Just informational stuff for you.
And I don't think we're going to get any definitely a report of what it was.
Yeah, what we would really prefer, if anybody saw that or any other sighting this afternoon or evening, we would be most grateful if they would simply go to our website.
And that website address is one of these easy to remember website addresses.
In other words, if something is imminently going on, if you walk outside and you see something happening now, you pick up the phone and you call this number.
And our hotline number in Seattle is area code 206-722-3000.
That number, again, is area code 206-722-3000.
And I would like to add, Art, that we are taking so many phone calls, a lot of them about Venus, I'm afraid to say, that we prefer if people call about only truly dramatic sightings or dramatic cases, if they have past sighting reports from four, five, or six days ago, if there's any way they can get to a friend's computer if they don't have access to the Internet themselves, and just go to our website.
That website, again, is ufocenter.com.
We have a standardized report form on our website.
They can click on it, and a report form will come up on their screen.
They can just fill in the boxes, click on it, and send it directly to us.
In my opinion, we are dealing with something that is very real.
And if it is real, then it is of tremendous consequence to not only the American people, but all living things on this planet.
I think we are dealing with something that must be gotten out to the public.
They must understand that we are dealing with something real.
That's part of, I think it explains the compulsion I think I feel to play some of these audio clips to let our listeners know, to hear it with their own ears.
I mean, it's one thing for you to come on here and say, here's the report, here's what the fellow saw, but to hear it from the person involved, that's a different story.
When you hear the emotion in their voice, you hear the inflection, you hear them, oh, there are a lot of cues, a lot of aspects to a report like this that make it, give it a human side.
And I think it's very important that people hear the raw data with their own ears.
You know, let me go back to a case that occurred just about almost exactly a week ago out in Hawaii.
You know, we have talked about fireballs on many, many occasions.
I know many of your guests have done the same thing.
I called that young lady just shortly after this report came in and talked to her at length.
And she said that that lime green object that streaked across her head a week ago tonight in Hawaii was larger, from her vantage point, was larger than a full moon.
It did not explode into fragments the way meteors or fireballs or bolides frequently do.
And it simply winked out, and the illumination was constant.
When a meteor or a meteorite comes into the atmosphere, traditionally it will flare up like a match, and then it will die out or explode when it fragments.
It could, but for a fireball to be the apparent size of the disk of a full moon and be usually, if they're skipping off the atmosphere, that means that they don't bury into the atmosphere more than 10 or 20 miles.
So they're still 80 or so miles above the ground, the surface of the Earth.
So it doesn't, to my way of thinking, it doesn't seem consistent with an event like that.
But we're getting reports like this all the time.
A similar event occurred over Vincennes, Indiana, just yesterday, Wednesday morning, at about 4.45 a.m., except that one was orange, and the gentleman saw it for about 15 seconds.
That's a pretty long fireball.
If anybody was up in Vincennes, Indiana or in that vicinity Wednesday morning, the 12th of May, and saw that object, we would be most grateful for any kind of report they could give us to corroborate this event.
In a moment, Steve Schenk is going to talk to you about Y2K and why you should be storing food, not just for Y2K, but for this godforsaken weather we're having or any other eventuality.
We're going to be talking about a variety of things.
Let me hit you with a little news.
There was a very rare earthquake in Kansas City today.
The earthquake registered about 3.0.
That's fairly small, but rather very uncommon for Kansas.
The professor at the geology department at the University of Kansas said, quote, it's an unusual event, but nothing to be alarmed about.
And the Mississippi continues to go in the same direction.
Looks like in Washington, there's a compromise package to finance the continuing insanity dropping on Yugoslavia bombs for peace.
So they're coming to an agreement to send more money for more bombs for more peace.
Question mark.
Also, our NATO planes, mainly, of course, U.S. planes, are preparing to begin their missions from Turkey.
Apparently, Turkey has given permission.
We have a child in a well in Kansas again.
Remember the child in the well?
This one's down 15 feet, a very narrow well, and they can hear this poor 17-month-old crying.
I would imagine CNN and company are rushing to the scene.
All the networks.
The bus driver who had the wreck that killed 22, we just have learned, was fired from bus companies back in 1996 and 1989 after testing positive for marijuana four times, not once, but four times fired twice, and he was still driving a bus.
Boris Yeltsin in Russia is being tried for treason, genocide, and various other crimes like ruining the Soviet Union and bringing the country.
The genocide part, by the way, is the sad state of affairs that the Russian people are in.
Australia's Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial wolf believed to be extinct, may be, check this out, reborn in a few years with geneticists cloning it from perfectly preserved baby tigers kept in museums.
Australian museum director Mike Archer said the discovery of a baby tiger preserved in a jar in his Sydney Museum had encouraged him over the past year to investigate the possibility of bringing the wolf back to life using its DNA.
Isn't that interesting?
I have a raft of Y2K reports here, no doubt sent to me by people in anticipation of Steve Schank being here this evening.
Long before Y2K set people onto the current path to self-sufficiency, Steve Shank was educating families of the importance and advantages of this way of life.
Raised on a dairy farm in Minnesota, Steve learned early in life the importance of hard work and the value of family reserves.
Key word, reserves.
The youngest of six, he was raised by parents who managed to keep the family farm through the Great Depression.
As a successful executive for one of the top three U.S. automakers, I wonder which one.
Steve stepped away from that position to pursue a career helping thousands of families become self-sufficient.
Over the last 20 years, he has distinguished himself as the foremost expert on long-term storable foods.
Steve is presently director of the J. Michael Stevens Group.
His capacity is to implement shipments of storable food families nationwide.
Now, that said, I'm breaking one of my own rules.
I don't have sponsors as guests on the show.
I have a strict rule against that, personal one.
But I broke it myself.
And let me tell you straight up front: there is no remuneration in any way.
This is not a paid program.
This is not an infomercial.
It's not intended to be.
He didn't come to me.
I asked him to come on the program.
And I think as you listen to Steve, you will shortly know why.
and that is for the latest on what's going on in a pretty wild ride, you might check the number one headline as you scroll down my web page.
That's all I'm going to say: www.artbell.com.
The first headline will give you a chronology of events.
It's really strange.
A news service printed this story earlier today, and somebody sent me the URL, and it blew me away because whoever wrote this, I have no idea who it is.
Well, I do actually, because the name is there.
Whoever wrote this got it right.
The chronology of events is just about exactly right.
Can you tell me generally what it is about Mormons and stored food?
I mean, everybody sort of knows that Mormons are told to store food how much a year's food or as much as they can, or what's the deal with Mormons, anyway?
It has been counsel for many, many years that in the event that it's just prudent, that's all, to have a storage of food.
You've got to realize I was raised, my daddy was 62 when I was born, Art.
And so we kind of skipped a generation, but the old-timers always had some food in, a little bit of cash.
They had their homes in most cases paid for, and they virtually could weather just about anything.
You said in the opening remarks about me that my folks were able to save their farm during the Great Depression.
Right.
That was exceptional, but a lot of the small farmers were able to because they didn't need resources from the outside.
They grew their own food.
They had some place to stay.
But the LDS, LDS is the way we refer to Mormons out here.
That stands for Latter-day Saints.
Mormon isn't actually the name of the church.
We've been counseled just through prudence to put in some food.
There have been various suggestions, but it's open to the family's discretion pretty much.
At one time, some of the folks, Ezra Task Benson was LDS, and he was the Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower.
And he came back, and he was a great advocate of preparation because he'd been through the experience of the reparations in Germany and Europe after World War II and saw the impact of lack of food and the control of food by some of the more socialist countries and what that could mean to people.
I mean, you've had various guests on your show that are talking about the upheavals within the crust of the earth, the possibility of the continental plate slipping and Phoenix becoming a waterfront community, the number of earthquakes and volcanic activity that has increased tremendously in terms of statistical analysis and comparative relationships to the past.
We're going through some very interesting times.
They're exciting times, but for some, they're quite scary.
I think that we have four jergonauts coming at us.
We have weather conditions and changes and climactic conditions that are pretty much unprecedented in the known history and weather reporting of our country.
We've got the worldwide government in the offing that some are looking at with some concern.
We have the Y2K, of course, which is, in my opinion, a giant, a colossal technological oops that could cause us some severe problems.
And then, of course, we have a large contingency of families across the country that are deeply Christian and looking at the book of Revelations and saying, hey, my goodness, then is now.
But I mean, really, if it is the end times, one could just take the attitude that some of the defeatists that back a few years were looking at the nuclear situation and saying, well, Art, I think I just want to go stand on ground zero and have them take me first because I don't want to have to put up with the times and the events.
I understand, and I agree to a certain extent with you, but I happen to have a bit of an attitude problem, and I'm sure that'll come up through the rest of our conversation.
I'm kind of a die-hard that says, well, now wait a minute.
I've read some of the books that talk about the fact that most people assume that in a nuclear situation that 80% of the people will be wiped out and the last 20% won't have a life worth living.
With a little bit of understanding, at least it's my perception, and I'm in no way really knowledgeable about the subject.
It's my perception that if people will appraise themselves, in other words, forewarned as forearmed, and just understand how fallout works, how radiation works, that literally they can, by just a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of preparation, a little bit of understanding, turn the statistics around so that 80% would survive and 20% would be lost.
But let me put it this way: if it is, it doesn't make any difference.
If it isn't, it doesn't make any difference.
If I take my philosophy and say, I'm going to learn what I feel I need to know, what some of the quote experts say that you can do to protect yourself, fact is, I'm going to be here anyway.
I mean, if truly they are the end times and the Lord is coming back and everybody out of the pool, then in that case, you really might want to be at the front of the bus if possible.
Again, I say, go check the first item on my website under headlines.
It's a rather authoritar chronology.
All right.
Good news for a change.
A little bit of good news.
Authorities have rescued a 17-month-old boy from a well near his Kansas home late Thursday after a delicate operation involving dozens of emergency personnel.
The boy named Jesse suffered only minor injuries, was taken to a local hospital.
They got him by actually tunneling horizontally to where he was, 25 to 30 feet deep.
But I realize, Steve, that I have not an unusual situation, a lot of people with wells in this country, but a fairly rare situation.
The majority, I mean, after all, they're listening to us in New York City and Seattle and L.A. and Chicago and in places where most people don't have water wells.
And so let's back up a little bit and let's talk about Y2K.
I've had Gary North on.
I've had Jordan on.
I've had a variety of experts on Y2K.
Some say it'll be eight or ten on a scale of ten.
It'll be horrible.
And there could be months or even in worst case, we could never quite recover from Y2K.
That's worst case.
And then others, of course, say it's going to be nothing.
Everybody's going to be laughing because not a thing is going to happen.
And I believe personally that we are going to have some very, very serious difficulties.
But the point is, what I want to do with my family, and what I'm almost on a vendetta with regard to what's going on with the downplay of Y2K about, is I want to be in the same situation with my family that you are with your water, where I can sit back and say, maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong.
I figure there's a pony in there someplace.
There's going to be a problem there someplace.
And it's probably going to be severe.
At least I know a lot of the people that are coming up with the statistics.
Jim Lord, I talk to fairly regularly with regard to what's going on.
Jim has the Y2K newsletter and he's done some publishing and he speaks quite regularly around the countryside and is very respected in terms of his understanding of what's going on with the grid and the Y2K difficulties.
His current take is that we're going to have some serious financial difficulties in July and that the grid is going to be a factor and a concern.
But I think from families that call me, no one really has a feel.
Most of the people that call and talk about putting in reserves are saying, Steve, I don't know what's going to happen, but just in case, I'll feel a lot more comfortable.
And you see, well, let's go back and let me summarize real quickly.
You asked me about the end times, and this fits in here.
I didn't finish what I would do and what I have done.
What I would do is I would go to all the sources, I'd look at the book of Revelation, says there's going to be a serious famine, and the oceans are going to flip themselves out of their bonds.
Ed Dames has seen some of those things, and we've got Gordon Michael Scallion that gives us some cooperation with regard to his theories.
So what I've got is one of Gordon's maps up on my wall, and I've got myself a little place up in Idaho.
And I believe the famine thing, famines are going to occur.
They occur regularly on a cyclical basis.
And so I've got a food reserve, as you can probably imagine.
And I'm seeking to provide that same stability that you just provided for you and your sweetheart that says, okay, if this stuff happens, then I am prepared as far as I can go so that I can be unconcerned.
I meant if the power simply went out and stayed out for two or three weeks or a month, it wouldn't be a carefree time, even though I've got the ability to have all the water I want.
And there wasn't a serious refugee problem until the bombs started to drop.
You've got to ask yourself, where did this go?
But you see, the problem is, Art, that a child that goes to bed crying because they're hungry, or a mother that needs a little bit of food to keep her health up so that she can provide the milk through her breast to her baby really doesn't give a hoot what dictator or what bomber wants to fly overhead.
But you see, what would have happened, you see, we've got the Book of Revelations we've had around for years, and people can prepare themselves so that they never have to be forced unless by other means to take the mark if they're concerned about the mark of the beast.
Have you ever, do you recall a time when our country, either independently or in concert with others, Attacked a sovereign nation in a conflict that had not spilled across to any other border, and we simply decided to attack a sovereign nation.
I think I said to you on the phone the other day, and I've said to my audience, I consider this to be the first big step for the new world order.
And there is even a certain rationale, obviously, with respect to what's going on in Yugoslavia, but not to follow the course of action that we're following now, in my opinion.
The only problem is that right now, I think we've got a bunch of Republicrats that are very strongly toward the liberal socialist big government versus small people.
Well, you've got to realize that in terms of conservative, I could very easily be referred to as slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.
I don't like I'm into this liberty thing.
And I really want to get back to this Kosovo as an example of what should be being done with Y2K in our country.
If you don't mind me taking off on this, and I'll make it brief.
If the families over there that are being foisted out of their own country had been counseled or warned two years ago and said, listen, we don't know if this is going to happen, but it could.
So what you might want to do is think in terms of the fact that you might have to pick up in the middle of the night and get out of Dodge.
What would you do?
How would you go about it?
Would those families be in the dire straits that they are right now?
You can say that they're only being allowed to take the clothes on their back.
But if they'd have known two years ahead of time that something like this could happen, that you could literally have almost a religious war going on.
Sure.
Some of the wealthier ones, and the contacts that I have with the relief group say that some of the first people came out were not your down-and-out families that were lost.
They drove out in their Mercedes-Benz, but they could take only what they could drag in their car.
But some of those families would have maybe looked ahead and crossed the border, found a little place to stash some food so they wouldn't be desolate.
And If you told me, and I'm taking this to a third party, rather than going to our situation, because a lot of times if you make people own a situation, they go into denial.
But if we can take these people over there and say, hey, if someone was warning them, if they were being counseled, look, it might not happen, but it could, so act accordingly.
They'd have had some tents in the back of their Mercedes.
Or on their tractors, they'd have had a grab pack that they could throw on that tractor and on the hay rack that they were riding out on that could sustain them for four or five days of food and a tent to crawl into if it started raining and they wouldn't die of thermal problems.
And I don't want you to get carried away with that example, but I was really surprised to hear that you imagine refugees as being people that are basically down and out and have nothing.
The wealthier families are being thrown out of their country just as well as the middle class and poor people.
But now let's take it over to what's going on in our country right now.
Sure.
This Y2K thing, the one world government, their earth changes, the book of Revelations, all of this has kind of been adjusted in our thinking, and the big jergenaut that we're dealing with is Y2K.
Now, we've seen a situation, you mentioned on one of your ads, that someone has the Bennett report available.
I would love to see also, after that report, that says, man, this is going to go down bad, that they would also have where he backpedaled and said, oh, it's going to be a bump in the road.
I've got it sitting right here in front of me, and it goes through statistically.
And you see, one of the things that they point out in the report was the response from their mailers out to the various utility companies and various organizations was very, very small.
And so, you know, when I was in graduate school, I was taught a concept with regards to statistics.
You give me any fact that you want to prove, and I can back it up statistically.
Because numbers don't lie, but liars sure can figure.
And I'm not saying that there's any lying in there, but I'm just saying that there's a very, very questionable skew with regard to the small response that they got, which would indicate, in my opinion, that the people that were verging on doing something about it are the ones that were proud to respond, and those that were doing nothing kind of shut up and sat back in the corner.
It basically went through the utilities and the various things that everybody has heard about and pointed out that things were shaky and of concern.
And Mr. Bennett came on TV.
He was broadcast cast here in Utah because that's where he's from, on several instances, painting a very stern picture of concern that said, this thing is going down badly, and it doesn't have, as we can see, an adequate chance of being resolved before we run into the problem.
Ed called me about 10 minutes before airtime and said, hey, Art, he actually said more than this.
He said, watch Rocky Flats in Colorado.
He really did say more than that, but I'm not at liberty for obvious reasons to give you the rest of it.
And he also is mentioned in a fax that just came in.
Hey, Art, please share this story with Steve Shank with regard to the end times of the bees.
If your listeners like to garden, or they have a gardener, better yet like to eat fruit and vegetables, they might be interested in this story.
How stupid can I be?
Ever since Ed Dames talked about the bees being blinded by our sun on your show almost two years ago, I've noticed that they aren't around much anymore.
Last summer, a lot of old-timers up here in New Hampshire were complaining about a lack of bees and bad crops.
That's the whole home, by the way, of Gordon Michael Scallion, too.
Especially the squash cucumbers and apples.
They've never seen it like that before.
And they blamed it on the heavy rains in the spring of last year.
But this year, we've had plenty of dry spring.
And guess what?
No bees.
And my cherry trees are full of blossoms.
And there are no bees to pollinate them.
So that leaves me to try to pollinate them myself with an artist's paintbrush, which I did this last Sunday.
On the same day, I saw in the news that an 18-wheeler flatbed turned on its side in Falmouth, Maine, spilling part of its cargo, which, believe it or not, were bees.
To be precise, 20 million bees escaped, and they didn't say how many more were actually on that load.
It was even on CNN headline news.
The bees are shipped to Maine to help pollinate the apple orchards and blueberry crops, according to the news.
But you've got to wonder, this is one truck that turned over how many trucks got through.
And why are we having to import bees?
I mean, that's really something worth a little thought.
steve shank will be right back all right back down to uh... steve shank And Steve, welcome back.
Welcome.
Let's see, where do we want to go from here?
I think Y2K, let's stay with that, and let's stay with the Bennett report.
Now, the Bennett report was pretty damn serious.
I mean, it really shook up a lot of people and got a lot of action going at the beginning of the year, and people really began to pay attention and said, oh, yeah, well, maybe there really is something that's going to happen.
Stephen Bennett came out and basically said it was going to be a bump on the road.
And then he was questioned after that.
And he said, well, I didn't say how big a bump.
The other thing that happened was that where the media before was going strongly with all of the things that were being done to prepare and the concern that it wouldn't be accomplished and were basically fanning the concern and the realization that there was a serious issue here that the population needed to.
If with your program and with the various voices screaming, something had to be done.
There was a deep concern here about Y2K.
At first, there were short news blasts that came out and said, things will be fine.
It'll be cool.
But ultimately, they were drug-kicking and screaming backwards through the knothole of public opinion that said, what's going on?
They had to address it.
Now, if you and I were smart and we were running the show, we would, instead of resisting at that point, we would all of a sudden turn around and go with the flow.
And I think that the switch was flipped at the beginning of the year.
And then you had all of this information and all of the pump that came through the media that was coming from the authorities as such.
And that gave them credibility so that the population was saying, golly, they're on the bandwagon.
They're recognizing this.
They're saying there's something serious.
I guess we better do something because they say that it could be of concern.
Now, let's look at it.
I know that these folks are well-intended that run our government, and they are basically on our side, and they're trying to take care of us.
If they understood human nature and what went on in places like Kosovo and this type of thing, would it make sense to you, Art, that they would continue to pass on information?
Hey, it could get rough.
Any of you guys that can take care of yourself, do it, because we can't take care of everybody, and a bunch of people are going to be taken care of.
Now, we don't know for sure that it's going to go down badly.
We're doing everything we can to mop up and damage control, but we may not be able to handle it, so be aware.
Go ahead, and those of you that can, prepare as much as you can do for yourselves because we may not be able to handle it.
Now, if nothing happened, would anybody be mad at them?
Just about everybody knows that probably in the, I don't know, September, October area, people are going to begin to think, oh, gee, I better have a little cash and they're going to go to the bank.
And the banks are scared to death of this.
I know because I've talked to my banker.
And any banker will tell you they're scared of it.
So it may well be that Senator Bennett had a little pressure put on him to contribute to the cause of not making this a self-fulfilling prophecy, and hence you see the cover letter.
On the other hand, it seems to me that this Y2K thing was a beautiful opportunity to encourage a large nucleus of families in this country to become stable and free, just like you are with the preparations that you're doing.
And these people that call and talk to me are not the wild-eyed radicals that are half a bubble off with one ore and a water, a brick shy of a load, you know, this type of thing.
They are quietly saying, I feel like there could be a concern.
I don't know.
But if I stabilize my family's economy and get myself to where I am free and have liberty just like you have with your preparations, then if nothing happens, what will the harm be?
I'll have a little bit of a savings.
I'll have a reserve of food.
I'll be less obligated and bound by debt, and I will be more secure than I was before for having done this.
What would be the matter with having a nucleus of families in this country that were physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually stable in the event that something did happen?
Fine.
But these are just good principles to live by, for pity's sake.
And here we've had an opportunity.
I look at the Y2K thing as actually a tremendous opportunity for families to stop dead in their tracks and say, wait a minute, we have given away our liberty.
We are bound in debt.
We cannot take a day off from work because if we did, the treadmill that we've set up of our economic travel is at a speed that's slightly faster than what we can run.
And if we took a day off from work or if a boss that was oppressive got a little bit too much so, could we quit our job and have the resources to maintain ourselves for whatever time it would take to find a better position?
And do you realize that this Y2K thing is an opportunity for those families to stop and say, wait a minute, because of their concern for something that could possibly happen, if they were being told, look, guys, if this thing goes down, and we don't know that it does, if this goes down, try and get yourself prepared so that you have a little something to eat, you have a little bit of cash if you need it, you've got some place to stay,
and you don't have a lot of heavy bondage to the extent that you can, because we can't take care of all of you if it does go down.
If it doesn't go down, what'll you have?
You'll have a little bit of cash if you ever need it.
You don't have to get a loan to buy a new tire for your silly truck.
And you see, the interesting thing about a reserve with food, and I don't want to whip this thing to death because you know I work with food.
But the reason I work with food art is it's the easiest, the cheapest, the most effective reserve that a family could put in.
If a family has a food reserve of, say, six months, that means that if they get in trouble with their house payment, the present cost of food per month, let's say that they're spending $400 a month on food.
All of a sudden, that $400, they go to their reserve.
That $400 could be applied to the house payment that they're short on.
That food reserve literally backs up every other economic factor in the family with a reserve that is greater than cash.
For example, if you take a food reserve and you put it next to a cash reserve, you have a straight-across dollar value in the cash reserve.
Also, if that food is in your home, you have total control of it.
You might not be able to get to the cash if it's in a savings account.
Or if, for example, you have a three-month or six-month supply of food in, if that family takes what they would spend on groceries, that means that if they're spending $400 on groceries, they have $400 in cash to work with.
It probably only took $200 to put in the food that covers that $400 in grocery cost.
Right.
Because as you know from our discussions, when we put these shipments together, the food is cheaper than anything else that they can do for storable or in groceries.
And so they literally, by taking a dollar and putting it into a food reserve, have multiplied the value of that reserve and it covers everything that they need because they don't spend money on groceries and they take it and spend it where they need it.
I think, and this again is my opinion, and you know what those are worth.
I think that the backfire has been lit to avoid the panic, to allow the banking system a breather so that when the run comes, it Can be handled.
I don't think they're ready to handle it yet.
Now, this is a very negative view.
Let's take a more positive view and just say that in their attempts to protect us from ourselves, which most liberal forms of government have a tendency to do, and I don't want to discuss that much further, but anyway, to protect us from ourselves, they, out of great concern, have gone along with this, but they feel that they need to dampen this down so that after maintaining the credibility of recognizing it and saying it's a problem,
then what they're doing is using that credibility and saying it's fixed.
And where they go in and take some of the critical elements that were considered crucial areas of concern, they have reduced the list by those areas that will not be taken care of and left only those which will.
And we now have a high percentage of resolve on the problem.
Welcome back to the Best Talk Radio in the Nighttime.
No brag, just facts.
We're the best.
And it's because of all of you, and I want you to know I appreciate it.
Back now to Steve Shank.
And Steve, I've got a story here that says, look, if you're planning to stay up on New Year's Eve, 99, in the hope that you might witness massive chaos at 12.01, don't waste your time.
Only 8% of system failures will occur during the actual rollover.
The remaining 92% spread out over 99, 2000, and 2001.
I think that what happened was that they saw that they couldn't hold back the flood waters, and so they rode with the tide and in fact increased it.
This is a good way to deal with a confrontation.
Over-respond, or at least respond to the point where people feel that you're with them.
At that instant, I think if they had not had their agenda well in mind of trying to prevent the panic, they could have been able to see that this was not creating a panic.
It was allowing a massive flood to come down the stream.
And you know what they do when a flood's coming?
They open the gates on the dam to allow it to go through.
If they would have allowed it to continue to go through and encourage the people to prepare and encourage the people to realize that there might be nothing happening, but in case there is, be wise and prepare the best you can.
Bloom where you're planted, in other words.
But the problem is that I think that they were still concerned that the flood was happening.
So they, using their credibility that they'd established by going along with the flood, then said, okay, everything is fine.
All is well in Zion, as it were.
And a lot of people went back to sleep.
The problem with the folks that have gone back to sleep, Art, is that it took a jolt for them to come awake to begin with.
They got on the wagon, and then when they have fallen back off again, it will take a more severe joke, a jolt, a very severe jolt, to get them awake again.
Obviously, for example, your company or any other company like yours is, if it's getting a very strong demand, it's going to ensure or try to ensure a sufficient supply to meet that.
If the demand drops, the supply drops, and if the demand should suddenly sharply rise, guess what?
And you see, as a result of that flood that was coming down the riverbed, at one point in time, most of the suppliers out there, you and I talked, and I think you announced on your show, that we didn't backorder.
Most of the suppliers were dealing with six and eight months of backordering.
At the point where families realize that they're going to have to have food, and it literally breaks through the dam, there isn't a supplier in this country that's going to be able to react, except maybe our operator, the people that we order from, because we're still anticipating that this thing is going to hit.
But be that as it may, what I'm really most exasperated about is not the drop in the preparation.
It's the betrayal of the trust of the families.
The problem that we've got is that the leadership doesn't have any faith in us.
We have, the people that are calling me, Art, are magnificent, intelligent, capable Americans.
These people care about their family.
They're the ones that go to work every day and supply the backbone for this operation that we call America.
And what's happened is that in all the wisdom of the liberal mentality that says we're too stupid to come out of the rain, they have concluded for us that we will not handle the need to prepare correctly, and therefore they need to prevent us from panicking.
Well, I'll tell you what, if that flood were allowed to take its course, if they'd open up the floodgates and say, go ahead, prepare, the banks wouldn't have a run on them because people already had started taking out little bits here, little bits there.
But as soon as there's the realization that this thing is going down, you'll have everybody and his brother's cousin standing on the doorstep of their bank the first thing on that Monday morning when they realize it, and you will have a run on a bank.
So if that flood could come down and the people, as they got their food in, then they thought, well, we better get a little cash in.
You'd have a few thousand people going down and taking out a couple hundred dollars and putting it into their reserve, and it'd be an influx, but you wouldn't have had a run.
Now these knuckleheads have set it up where they've got this thing dammed up and they've got it stopped and they've got it toned down.
Well, when we do have that impact, whatever it is, whether it's the banks, the economy, the stock market, any number of things, when we do have it, it'll be a situation where they'll have to have trained troops to handle civil unrest.
Because those people that have been caught short, just like those folks that are coming across the border in Kosovo, if somebody would have warned them and had given them a chance, nowhere near the number would have been panicked and out on the street.
If you want to have blood running in the streets and if you want to have riots and things like that, you just hold this flood back until something hits that shakes everybody loose and they realize, my gosh, it's real.
One time when all six kids were home, we were sitting out having a family home evening on a Monday night on a trampoline out in the middle of our yard in the middle of June, and we discussed this very thing.
And we concluded that if somebody came to the door and was threatening my family and was going to take my food at gunpoint, I'd shoot them.
If they came to my door hungry and needing food, I'd feed them.
But things have changed, Art.
You see, in countries where people starve, you have your riots and things like that when the first upheaval starts.
But when people get into the starvation mode, a lot of times they just literally sit down and get very lethargic.
But I think that what we're dealing with here is a very serious moral issue.
And I've had a lot of family.
You know, I was talking about the wonderful people out there.
I had one family out of Oregon that called in and ordered a phenomenal amount of food.
They've got 10 members in their family.
The husband and the wife, and they've got eight kids.
And about two months later, they called in and said, you know, a lot of our friends and relatives think that we're one taco short of a blue plate special for getting prepared, and so they're not doing anything.
So we're going to put in some more.
That family, over the period of time, ordered two additional times, and they have sitting in their reserve about three or four years of storable foods because they know that they're going to feed people.
Art, this is not a matter of us versus them.
This is a matter of us.
We as a country, we as a people are facing conditions that have never been faced in the history of mankind.
We've got the end times possible.
We've got earth changes and weather conditions.
We've got the political structuring that many refer to, or that many look to the scriptures as saying this is occurring.
We've got a Y2K situation that could any one of these could be totally.
So instead of sitting around saying, okay, there are going to be all these hungry people out here, we don't look at it that way.
The objective that we've got, and this is why I've said it three or four times already, I'm so aggravated at the way this Y2K thing has been handled by downplaying it.
We have an opportunity to have this whole nation as a people pulled together against a common foe technological impact.
I had a little gal call me that was just absolutely a sweetheart.
She was an older lady.
She was a mature lady.
And she said, you know, Steve, I believe in the rapture.
And I'm not too sure whether I'm pre-mid or post-trib rapturist.
And I'm relatively convinced that I'll be taken.
But, you know, I'm going to put in a two-year supply of food anyway because if it comes and I have to live through part of this tribulation, I'll need the food.
And I'm going to feed some other people, too.
But you know, if I'm fortunate enough to be one of those that are taken, there will be something here for those who remain.
This is a Christian attitude, Art.
And this is the attitude that I have family after family after family calling me and expressing.
I'm willing to bet on you, and I would want you to bet on me.
And the thing that gets to me is that these guys that are pulling this stunt by downplaying the concern aren't willing to bet on you and bet on me and bet on the other people.
And, you know, what would happen if some idiot politician just really took a flyer and decided that, you know, we're concerned about a run on the banks.
And they came out and said, hey, folks, the banking system could be in real trouble if you ran, you know.
In our population, with the mentality that we have, the me first, the welfare mentality, the liberal take care of me approach, might not work.
Might not work.
But I tell you what, by what's going on here, the downplaying of it, putting everybody to sleep, not giving people a chance to say, I want to take back my liberty.
I don't want to be dependent on sucking on the nipple of society.
Based on the typical viewpoint that a paternalistic society that's based on liberal socialism would view it.
You guys are going to be stupid.
We are smarter than you.
Therefore, we will decide whether you should be motivated to prepare for yourself.
And you see, the thing that's being missed is that if they encourage those families to prepare, if they encourage those families to have a little reserve to become financially stable, do you realize that if they would have let this flood continue, enough families would have had a little savings, a little food reserve, a little less debt to the point where this country could possibly not any longer be bankrupt?
Well, I would say very simply that he can totally ignore what you say and what I say.
Many of your sponsors are supplying.
He obviously doesn't feel that he needs them.
And so since we are in a country where, and we've been talking tonight about families taking back their liberty, he has the liberty, fortunately, to choose not to pay any attention to our foolishness.
Now, I've got some other families that think we're right in line.
And if you were to call any one of those folks and say, I've got a family out in Lufkin, Texas, absolutely delightful people.
If you'd call up that couple and say, Johnny, if Steve Shank is a wild-eyed nut that's just really promoting this Y2K thing, you put a bunch of money into some storable foods.
How are you going to feel about Steve Shank when this thing doesn't go down?
I'll guarantee you, just as sure as I'm sitting here looking at Ugly Art, that Johnny will come back and say, you know, Steve Shank is a bit of a bum, but I am really happy that I'm in a situation now where I have a reserve.
I'm in better financial shape.
I'm in better emotional shape.
My family is stable and secure, and I feel wonderful.
What we have done just recently, you've got to realize that a lot of the folks that have been calling in so far are very comfortable with a whole year supply.
Sure.
But there are also some folks that either can't afford or are on the fringe of saying, you know, this thing could go.
It could not go.
I'd feel better if I had something, and it does make sense, Y2K or not, to have a little reserve of food.
So, what we've come out with, and I'll be writing some script for you and getting it to you Monday, we've got what we call a short pack, and that's going to enable people to get a small amount just in case or as a reserve.
And we're able to, you've mentioned earlier that if the Cadillac, and I know what you're trying to say, I don't want people to have the impression that we're talking about Cadillac in terms of expensive.
We literally, by doing it the way we do, are able to get the cheapest possible reserves out there to families that they can possibly do.
Now, if they don't want to order through your suggestions, through JMS, I would encourage families to go out and get anything they can get.
You really need to put in food that's in line with what you're used to eating right now.
If presently you're eating a high percentage of grain in your diet, it's perfectly fine to store grain.
But there's a real problem if you have too high a percentage of grain in your diet.
You can get something called high-grade dysentery and actually head towards scurvy because it doesn't have the balance.
And the human digestive system has a hard time with a high percentage of grains, particularly now that we have become accustomed to the type of diet we're on.
What families should do is they should always have some sprouts on hand or sprouting seeds on hand because they can be grown in two or three days.
And you've got, if you will put in a cup and a half of sprouts into your diet each day, nutritionally, they will supplement a family's present diet so they'll be much healthier.
To think that our government, the Agriculture Department, will go into cahoots with a seed-producing operation, get a patent on a seed that literally terminates itself.
It's the most despicable.
It's an atrocity against mankind, for pity's sake.
And Art, if I ever develop any feelings about that, I'll let you know.
Well, concerning Y2K, I wanted to get your ideas beyond food and money reserves, what other type of reserves people should be looking out for with the possibility of some hardships coming out with this Y2K problem.
Now, if you were going to do that, you know that they have you put some little tablets in the water bed to prevent it from growing funny things as you sleep.
And what you can do is you can either get a good quality water purifier that you would purify the water as it comes out to get those chemicals out.
Or you would use it and maybe use a little bit of Clorox bleach and then you'd have to rotate your water so you'd have to drain it and then put it back in, drain it, put it back in.
You can go down to a health food store and get some little tablets or something, but the simplest thing is if you have a five-gallon container to put about a tablespoon of Clorox bleach in it.
unidentified
Okay.
You keep referring to keeping on hand a small amount of cash.
Could you be a little bit more specific as far as like maybe a percentage of maybe a person's weekly or however often they get paid?
Maybe, you know, should they be like taking $50 out of each paycheck between now and then?
If you feel like you would like to be able to handle, say, a three-month period of time where you could not get to work, you probably wouldn't need gasoline for your car.
But if you already have your food reserve in, you aren't going to be spending groceries, then calculate what you would need if you and your family were sitting in your home and you were basically not traveling or not, you know, you were just existing, what you would need to apply.
Add about 10% to it.
In other words, calculate what you take per week, what you would need in cash per week.
Add about 10% to it for what Art's referring to is the things you didn't think of.
I want to say, first of all, you know, I've been listening to your show while I drive my truck around the country, and I have full confidence in both of you gentlemen's integrity.
And I just, as far as your guest goes, I agree with just about everything you say, and he really sounds like one of the most level-headed persons I've heard talk on the subject.
However, I just have one small criticism, and that is that a lot of the things that you point out, you attribute to a so-called liberal agenda.
Swarming Southern Supply Lines00:15:36
unidentified
And I have a slight problem with that because I believe that that has a way of maybe fostering division.
In other words, what I'm trying to say, I think there's enough blame to go around for just about any political persuasion you want to.
All right, the government has started to play down the Y2K problems to keep the people from not being prepared with all the food and essentials.
Talking to some of the politicians here in San Diego, I will not name names, the objective appears to be to keep the government in control with food lines controlled by the military and other means.
If the people are mostly prepared and helping each other, and they realize in the midst of disaster that they don't need the government, then the government loses control and would have to impose force to take that control back.
Right, and we do security for this island and many other places.
We do strategic security international.
And I just wanted to, by the way, I've been working on the Y2K situation for over a year, and our computer department, which is really very high-tech, doesn't feel that it will be a problem.
Now, what I've done is I've used Gary North's website, GaryNorth.com.
As a guide, and we've come up with a presidential order, an executive order that was passed in 96 that created a PCCIT commission, which is the Presidential Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection.
Are you aware of that?
No.
Because that's the Gary North's information, and your people should really check on that.
It was created in 96 and signed by Clinton, and it states in the executive orders that Y2K is an acronym and it really doesn't exist.
And that acronym is going to be coded cyber terrorism shortly.
In fact, it already has been coded that and starting to be called that.
And the reason we're not hearing about a lot of Y2K is because it happens on a specific date at a specific time and it affects everything, but cyber terrorism could happen at any time and affect any system.
Yeah, there's a lot of people out there telling the truth about this.
And I took the time and trouble to go I talked to my own power company, the gas company here, and I really am not at liberty to give you all the details, but they're not all that thrilled with the prospects.
The other thing that I ran into is these good friends that I was referring to down in Lufkin, Texas, have some folks that work for one of the major oil companies.
And there was an interesting discussion where the people in the oil company were discussing what was going to happen.
And they're essentially going to shut down their refineries in one of the areas here in the country about a week prior to the turn.
And actually, I think, Mr. Schenck, you might have actually answered my second question.
The first one in two parts is, do you anticipate being able to have a supply to ship out to customers in, say, August through, like, say, November of this year?
Well, it's been our policy to absolutely never backorder.
There's some very strong reasoning behind that.
But at this point, with the anticipation of a serious flood to the market, we have geared up, we're stronger, our suppliers are stronger than any other possible source in the country.
And they have gone back into their supply lines and have geared up actually the growers and the suppliers to them.
So we have very strong supply lines, but there's no way of predicting how severe the flood will be.
My second question, I think you've kind of answered.
Because when I inquired with the company and got the information, a year supply comes out, I think, to $1,700, $1,800, which is not really that bad when you look at it 365 days a year, it's like $5 a day for three meals.
But in the short time allowed, I don't have that personally right now, but I guess you're talking about a three-month pack.
The company is advertised on this show as generally caring about people.
And I think that's a good thing that you guys are going towards because it does help more people.
It allows more people to get in at least some kind of a supply.
And plus it helps you guys, you know, because you can't.
The problem that we had before with everyone backordering and the supply lines being crucial in most of the industry, just to be able to handle the volume of activity, we had to ask people to make no changes and to be able to ship out consistent blocks.
We have geared up personnel, and now we've been wanting to do this for some time.
Now we are able to break it down to where we have a three-month packet.
This will put it well within the range of people.
With regard to the pricing that you were mentioning, it would be a bit less than what you mentioned, but we always make sure that the units or year supplies or quarter packs that we ship out have much, much greater value than what it would appear.
They will always replace, in most cases, about twice the dollar value of food that you can acquire any other way, like canned goods, for example.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, $5 a day for three meals.
I mean, like, if I had the sources right now, I'd probably go for a year supply myself, but I think this is good that you guys, and I'm sure I would imagine that a lot of this came from people asking for things, you know, a shorter supply because of financial constraints.
Actually, there have been people asking, but most of it came from our dealing with how people were having to store, and also the fact that we've been at this for long enough so that in order to get a nutritionally balanced quantity of food in economically sized containers, this has been our real challenge.
We've got that resolved right now.
unidentified
Is that available now, or is that still something that's in the works as far as the three meals?
And I just want to make one quick comment was, you know, your regular medicinal stuff like aspirins and acids, stuff like that.
You know, when I was in the service, and you didn't have medics around all the time to get that stuff, and you were really hurting if you didn't bring it with you.
Any people that are on medications, right now in our family, we're working very hard to get some of the family members who have physical conditions that need to be resolved.
We're trying to get everybody healthy as much as possible.
And then we're trying to do something to have a reserve of some of the medications that are necessary.
Some of them are very hard, and it's a difficult issue, but this should be addressed by families that have medical needs.
unidentified
Yeah, and another point I wanted to make real quick was: you know, everybody's talking about guns and personal protection.
Dogs, pets make great protection.
They bond with people really well.
And, you know, no one I've ever really heard so far on our show mention that yet.
In this time when you're talking about Y2K and the necessities of protecting one's family's interests through storage of food, it is so refreshing to hear someone with your level of common sense, your obvious commitment to the integrity of your company, and the way you are handling your business.
I've listened to Art's program, and he has many quality guests, but I am most impressed by your dedication to doing what's right.
And if there were more people in this country dedicated to doing the right thing, we'd be a heck of a lot better off.
I commend you for your integrity and your interest and your service to all the people that you're trying to help.
Normally, Art, I'm out in the morning doing a 10 or 12-mile run with my headphones on listening to your show.
And it really drives me crazy because a lot of your guests have a lot of good information about storing food or whatnot, getting ready for Y2K, but they never talk about physical fitness.
And to me, that's like the simplest thing you need to take care of.
Generally speaking, we used to tell folks that they'd last about one to three years.
But now with some of the blow-molded cans and the excessive amount of heat that sometimes is used in canned goods, some of the stuff is in the range of six to nine months.
The real concern, though, Mark, is not necessarily the storability of it.
It's very bulky, very heavy if you'd have to move.
But the most important thing is nutritional levels.
One of the reasons that we go with the dried food and the different processes, right, is that you need to maintain, you were talking about health.
You need to maintain the maximum nutritional level you can possibly get.
And canned goods drops quite a bit in the process.