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Who knew that the shortage of helium would be the way to put an end to a clown show? (Original Post) Baitball Blogger Yesterday OP
It's over? We are pulling out? usedtobedemgurl Yesterday #1
Not yet. But in this absurd, seat of the pants war, the way the loss of helium will affect our economy Baitball Blogger Yesterday #5
Alvin is running out of helium too. Tetrachloride Yesterday #2
We can just speed up the track edhopper Yesterday #3
The tech bros won't be happy. nt Phoenix61 Yesterday #4
Shutting down our National Helium Reserve always felt like a mistake blogslug Yesterday #6
'Trump is cooked': Fears of 'collapse' spread as war sparks shortage of critical resource (Helium) LetMyPeopleVote 30 min ago #7

Baitball Blogger

(52,287 posts)
5. Not yet. But in this absurd, seat of the pants war, the way the loss of helium will affect our economy
Sun Mar 22, 2026, 01:38 PM
Yesterday

seems to be waking Wall Street up.

They can take us down without one missile strike. We just have a president who is stupid enough to poke the bear. Sadly, even after he leaves office we will probably get a hit from the discontent he's created with our allies.

blogslug

(39,157 posts)
6. Shutting down our National Helium Reserve always felt like a mistake
Sun Mar 22, 2026, 01:58 PM
Yesterday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, was a strategic reserve of the United States, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters (about 170,000,000 kg)[a] of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established with the enactment of the Helium Act of 1925. The strategic supply provisioned the noble gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Cold War and Space Race.

The facilities were located close to the Hugoton and other natural gas fields in southwest Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma, plus the Panhandle Field in Texas. These fields contained natural gas with unusually high percentages of helium—from 0.3% to 2.7%—and constitute the United States' largest helium source. The helium is separated as a byproduct from the produced natural gas.

After the Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86–666), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.

By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected, and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting Congress to begin phasing out the reserve in 1996. The resulting Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–273) directed the Department of the Interior to start selling off the reserve by 2005...


LetMyPeopleVote

(179,376 posts)
7. 'Trump is cooked': Fears of 'collapse' spread as war sparks shortage of critical resource (Helium)
Mon Mar 23, 2026, 08:33 PM
30 min ago

Helium is a key element for use in a host of actions/products. trump has cut off a significant portion of the world helium

The United States' war against Iran has triggered a shortage of a critical resource, one so crucial to the economy that one expert predicted a "horrendous" and imminent "collapse," while another said that President Donald Trump would bear the blame.

Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-03-23T10:00:13Z

https://www.rawstory.com/iran-war-2676572005

The United States’ war against Iran has triggered a shortage of a critical resource, one so crucial to the economy that one expert predicted a “horrendous” and imminent “collapse,” while another said that President Donald Trump would bear the blame.

That resource is Helium, which plays a critical role in applications ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to medical equipment. Shortly after Trump first authorized strikes on Iran late last month, Qatar, which supplies a third of the world’s helium, was forced to halt production of the critical resource.

Helium is critical for the function of MRI machines, a technology widely used in medical facilities across the country, including at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. where Trump received an MRI scan last year that raised questions surrounding his health. It’s also used in the space, defense and scientific research sectors.

Helium’s applications are so far spread that financial crises and geopolitical expert Tuomas Malinen issued a bleak prediction for what might be in store for the United States in the near future.

“I keep warning you that the collapse will be horrendous,” Malinen wrote in a social media post on X in response to reports of the growing helium shortage......


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