If you love cheese and you’re looking for a place to hide away in the event of a nuclear disaster or some other catastrophe, there are some caves in America that might be the perfect place to hide, if you can find them.

Commonly called the government cheese caves, it has been confirmed that they exist by Snopes, but it is not clear where exactly they are. Location aside, these caves are reported to house over 1.4 billion pounds of cheese, which should be enough to last you for quite a while.

But why is it there?

The answer to that question begins back in the 1970s. At the time, there was a shortage of dairy and inflation on dairy products reached as high as 30%. To help address this issue, President Jimmy Carter decided to help the dairy industry out with a cash injection of about $2 billion, according to the Farmlink Project.

With that money available, the dairy industry started working overtime to produce as much as possible. If you want dairy to keep, you turn it into cheese, and that is exactly what they did. The government had purchased about 227 million kilograms (500 million pounds) of cheese, which they kept in warehouses around the country.

Back at this time, there were people who actually seemed to care about government spending, and many of them felt that having government owned cheese just rotting on shelves was a bad use of money.

So, President Ronald Reagan launched the Special Dairy Distribution Program, which gave out 14 million kilograms (30 million pounds) of cheese to various nonprofit organizations that could distribute it to people throughout the country who were hungry.

While the intention may have been good, much of the cheese was already moldy, so it either got thrown away, or people ate food that they really shouldn’t have been. Either way, the idea of government cheese being what poor people ate was born.

In 2016, the government started buying up cheese once again, this time building the stockpile up to 600 million kilograms (1.4 billion pounds). This time, rather than putting them in warehouses, they used former limestone mines since the temperature and humidity was much more favorable for storing the product.

As of now, there is no plan to distribute the cheese to people or use it in any government programs. It is largely there because the dairy industry (lobby) was able to make it so the government would buy up cheese to help stabilize demand.

While that amount of cheese could feed many people, it is likely that eventually it will just be disposed of in some wasteful way. That is, after all, what the government does best.

If you think that’s impressive, check out this story about a “goldmine” of lithium that was found in the U.S. that could completely change the EV battery game.