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That's prepstartsnow .com. What if the same company
that fills your breakfast bowls once helped design
the tools of biological warfare? That's what
I'm telling you folks. Behind the smiling mascots,
the bright boxes, and the jingles that define
childhood mornings lies a story the public was
never meant to taste. Declassified government
files suggest that General Mills, yes, the serial
giant, was once connected to a secret Cold War
research involving aerosols, powdered stimulants,
and high -altitude balloon test. The same engineers
who perfected puff grains may have been perfecting
something far more dangerous. In this episode
of Zero Signal Shorts, we dig into the irony
of a company built on comfort food that once
flirted with military science. This is not about
an accusation. It's about exploring how the same
knowledge used to make breakfast better could
also make warfare invisible. Remember to tune
in every Tuesday at 6 a .m. Eastern for our full
-length deep dives. This is Zero Signal Shorts.
Now the freshness and fluffiness of spring buds
comes to instant mashed potatoes. Introducing
mashed potato buds. Mew from Betty Crocker. Unlike
any other instance, potato buds begin with tiny
bits of Idaho potatoes. And potato buds blossom
into mashed potatoes that are light, fluffy,
and better tasting than any others, even homemade.
Try mashed potato buds. Mew from Betty Crocker.
Before we go any further, let's step back and
remember who we're talking about. Today, General
Mills isn't a defense contractor. It's breakfast.
It's bright colored boxes, cartoon mascots, and
the sound of cereal hitting the bowl. Their products
dominate grocery aisles, Cheerios, Wheaties,
Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Trix, and many, many
more. They own baking staples under the Betty
Crocker name. Gold metal flour, refrigerated
doughs, snack bars like Nature Valley, organic
lines like Cascade farms, even pet foods like
Blue Buffalo. They've grown into a multinational
empire, feeding millions every morning, yet many
of their products are criticized as ultra -processed,
high in sugar, low in nutrition, and designed
for shelf life over sustenance. It's a familiar
story, a company that profits by feeding us what
nutritionists call very bad food. And that's
where the irony begins, because decades earlier,
this same company was quietly working with the
government on technologies designed to control
something else entirely, not flavor, but particles
in the air. Chemical weapons can be both powerful
and terrifying, toxic substances that attack
the skin, blood, nerves, or respiratory system,
causing painful injury and maybe even death.
The terrors of chemical -soaked battlefields
in World War I led to regulations banning the
use in warfare. But today, chemical weapon use
persists in battle and beyond. Various chemicals
have been used in both war and personal attacks
for centuries. But industrial production of chemicals
in the late 1800s made them more widespread and
ultimately led to the use of chemical weapons
in World War I. It's estimated that during World
War I, chemicals like mustard gas injured 1 million
soldiers and killed 100 ,000, often in horrible,
painful ways. The terrible tales from war led
to the creation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol,
which aimed to ban chemical weapons, though Japan
and the U .S. didn't sign for decades. Still,
Geneva helped in that it curtailed use of chemicals
during World War II. However, countries were
still making the weapons, setting the stage for
incidents like the US's use of Agent Orange in
Vietnam in the 60s, and Iraq's chemical warfare
in the Iran -Iraq War in the 80s. Those images
thrust chemical weapons back into the public
eye, helping advance negotiations for the Chemical
Weapons Convention, banning their production
and use in war. In 1993, several countries signed
But since then, there have been many incidents
of chemical weapons use. During the Cold War,
industrial expertise was as valuable as military
hardware. General Mills, with his mastery of
milling and particle control, was reportedly
tapped to assist in aerosol research experiments,
studying how to grind materials into powders
fine enough to stay suspended in the air. Engineers
learned how to create micron -sized particles
and prevent them from clumping together. They
built nozzles, ran wind tunnel tests, and launched
high -altitude balloons under the cover of weather
research. Reports carried the title of dissemination
of solid and liquid agents. Some used harmless
stimulus to model the spread of potential airborne
materials, tracing how powders might travel,
survive, and disperse. The skill set was chilling.
What helps flour flow smoothly through a silo
could, in theory, help fine particles adrift
invisibly through the atmosphere. Imagine a cereal
plant filled with mixers, hoppers, and grinders.
Now imagine that same setup, not for oats, but
for spo - the same engineering that perfected
pancake mix could not perfect powdered bacteria.
In daylight, the company sold food to families.
In secrecy, its scientists studied dispersion
clouds. The boundary between breakfast and battlefield
was thinner. that anyone could have guessed.
Then there's another twist. During the same period,
General Mills was involved in high -altitude
balloon programs, officially for meteorology
and recon, but those balloons were also capable
of testing how aerosols spread in the upper atmosphere.
Some researchers later described a growing unease,
a sense that their work might not be purely scientific.
As the Cold War deepened, moral lines blurred.
When the projects ended, General Mills quietly
sold off its defense operations and returned
back to food. The surviving documents are fragments.
Many redacted, and none confirmed whether live
biological agents were ever used. Still, they
reveal the ambition to make aerosols stable in
the atmosphere, reliable and invisible. That
knowledge didn't vanish. It resurfaced in later
defense and biodefense projects, long after the
cereal boxes were back on store shelves. Now,
fast forward to present day. The same company
that once helped perfect aerosol systems sells
billions in packaged foods each year. It's fa
- Factories use the same precision, particle
size, texture control, thermal stability, preservation,
the engineering of appetite replaced with the
engineering of aerosols. When critics call these
foods addictive or unhealthy, engineer for profit
more than nourishment, it feels poetic. A company
once tied to biological research now sells edible
chemistry that changes the body more slowly,
more subtly. Maybe the weapons just evolved from
those that harm instantly to those that profit
gradually. Food science and weapon science share
a vocabulary. Stability, dispersion, delivery,
control. The only difference is intent. When
the same corporate DNA can feed nations and fuel
militaries, what does that say about the line
between nourishment and manipulation? We may
never hear the original recordings from the Cold
War labs. There were machines or the hiss of
compressed air, the arguments about ethics, but
the echo remains. Care quietly through every
serial aisle. that this food is horrible for
you. Perhaps it's time General Mills didn't abandon
the science of biological influence. Perhaps
they just changed its purpose. Maybe they shifted
from creating weapons that targeted the body
to crafting products that targeted the appetite.
The biological harm became slower, safer, and
far more profitable. A steady drip of sugar,
of salt, of synthetic flavor that keeps us coming
back for more and more, like in this video. Is
it canoeing? With your pets? You will it? Uh
-uh. It's eatin' banana wackies! Banana wackies!
Wow! A whack, whack wacky is cereal! Ooh! From
General Mills. They promote them banana -flavored
bits. In the whack, whack wackiest shape. Banana
bingles! Banana jangles! Oakloops! Oakclots!
And lots more wacky shapes! Wacky! Wacky! Yeah,
yeah, yeah! A new Big G General Mail cereal!
It's a Wack Wack Wacky! Banana wackiest, huh?
What they're showing us is a cartoon gorilla
and boy eating a cereal filled with marshmallows
and sugar, what later turned into an addiction
and a generation of obese Americans. What I tell
everybody is be careful what you're feeding your
children because companies out there, they don't
care about their health and nutrition. They care
about their bottom line. But you know, this episode
isn't about vilifying a certain company. It's
about patterns, how commerce, science, and defense
intertwine and how public trust is often traded
for innovation. General Mills didn't invent the
marriage between industry and the military. It
simply illustrates it perfectly. The same brand
that sells breakfast of champions once contributed
to the science of covert control. And perhaps
it still does today. What we do know is that
the defense contract records don't vanish. They
just go quiet. From the early 2000 through the
mid -2010s, General Mills maintained a steady
relationship with the Department of Defense,
supplying rations, baking mixes, and cooking
oils through the Defense Logistics Agency and
the Defense Commissary Agency. Government procurement
databases list nearly $2 billion worth of awarded
contracts during that period, not for research
or weapons, but for sustenance, cereals, grains,
and shelf -stable goods. that keep bases stocked
and soldiers fed. At least that is what they
tell us. Then somewhere around 2014, the public
paper trail fades away. The annual totals drop
to zero and the records stop listing General
Mills by the name. Maybe the contracts ended
as military supply food chains consolidated under
larger distributors like Cisco and Tyson. Or
maybe the work simply shifted, buried under subcontractors,
private label logistics, or subsidiaries that
never needed to carry the General Mills brand.
Because in modern defense procurement, disappearance
doesn't always mean departure. Sometimes it just
means the logo was removed, the contract re -bundled,
and the supply line made invisible. Who knows
what they are doing behind government closed
doors. So tomorrow morning, when you pour your
cereal... and see that smiling G on the box?
Take another look. That logo isn't just about
marketing. It's a monument to the merger of optimism
and industry. The food that built families was
engineered by minds that once studied dispersion
clouds. Different ingredients, same exact process.
And maybe that's the real conspiracy. Not secret
meetings or hidden labs, but normalization. A
world where making food and making weapons become
two sides of the same machine. But for me and
my family, I'm opting out, steering clear of
anything. that might trace his origins to a sanitized
bioweapon philosophy dressed up as progress and
slip quietly onto our plates. You've been listening
to Zero Signal. Stay tuned for more forgotten
intersections of science, secrecy, and society.
Next time, we'll explore another story where
innovation and manipulation share the exact same
recipe. Until then, eat carefully, question everything,
and remember, sometimes the biggest conspiracies
are hidden in plain sight, printed right on the
back of cereal boxes. you