"how Angela Merkel in Germany has encouraged her citizens to begin stockpiling food and provisions to protect themselves in the event of an “attack”."
Wrong. One regulatory body of government had been working on updating the general advice on preparing for emergency situations for over 10 years. The last update I believe was in 1995, and after 9/11 they spend the next few years deciding to update them, and another decade or so actually doing it. Now finally they are finished and it gets release, right as there are some conspiracy theories about the state of Europe.
Either this is a complete co-incidence or it is simply dropped now to make those people who believe Europe is in a bad situation seem crazy. Certainly there is no state of emergency, nobody is panic buying anything and Merkel had no official part in publishing the advice.