The Pentagon Pizza Index — which can allegedly predict the next global crisis — is getting hot this week with Israel and Iran trading strikes.
In Washington, D.C., insider circles, the index is this idea that the busier the pizza joints are around the Pentagon, the more likely something major will go down. If there’s a brewing conflict, Pentagon staffers will be so busy that they will order a ton of pizza.
Right now, multiple X/Twitter accounts tracking this theory are banging the alarms. Thursday night, around 6:59 p.m. ET, all the pizza spots around the Pentagon had a spike in activity. Around 8:48 p.m., Israel launched a preemptive strike on Iran. And after the attack, the Pizza Index surged again.
This theory is by no means scientific. But as far as other insane pizza conspiracies in D.C. go (think “Pizzagate”) this one has a predictive track record.
Popular lore says it dates back to the Cold War, when Soviet intelligence would monitor pizza joints in D.C. to predict when the United States might do something next. But it’s not proven.
However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a lot of news outlets reported that pizza sales spiked during notable moments, a metric they called the Pizza Meter. Apparently pizza deliveries to the Pentagon doubled before the Panama invasion, surged before the Grenada invasion, and spiked during Iraq’s surprise invasion of Kuwait. One D.C. pizzeria owner, Frank Meeks, told the Los Angeles Times that he could predict when military action would happen based on pizza sales.
And per Slate, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who used to cover the Pentagon, said, “Bottom line for journalists: Always monitor the pizzas.”
