It's been roughly ten months since the height-- or should we say depths?-- of last year's holiday shopping frenzy, and chances are, if you were one of the thousands of poor shmoes who had an iPod on his or her list back then, you're only just now starting to recover. We've heard the war stories: tales of shoppers lined up at dawn in hopes of snagging one of the elusive lil' critters, dark circles ringing dead eyes devoid of hope; shoving one another like animals, teeth bared and lips flecked with foam in the mad scramble for the last battered unit on the shelves; limbs strewn across the aisle, victors wearing necklaces of human ears, maimed shoppers resorting to buying lame iPodalike wannabes in despair. The horror... The horror...

While we're loath to trigger flashbacks to the mayhem you no doubt barely escaped with your life, the holidays are back, folks, and given the meteoric rise in iPod popularity over the past year, there's a better chance than ever that someone on your list is dreaming of a white-and-silver Christmas and you're going to have to dive back into the fray. At least you're not expecting as much carnage, though, right? Because Apple has obviously learned its lesson from the piles of bodies last year; back then it took its highest forecast for demand, tripled it, cranked out the goods, and then watched in dread as the body count rose because demand still outstripped supply. So given that Apple sold 733,000 iPods that quarter and two million of them last quarter, obviously the company has the situation all figured out and is squeezing out gajillions of iPods to keep supplies healthy and civilization from collapsing from unfulfilled iPod lust.

But wait-- is it physically possible for Apple to make as many iPods as shoppers will want to buy? Because as the company mentioned during its recent quarterly earnings conference call, it came out of last quarter with iPods on backorder-- minis and classics. So it was already in the hole, and demand during this quarter will obviously be at least twice as strong as it was last quarter-- and that's a conservative estimate, what with holiday shopping and the U2 commercial in heavy rotation and next week's expected announcement of a U2 special edition model. That's a bare minimum of four million 'Pods in various flavors needed to feed the beast, and we can't help wondering if Apple can really build them fast enough.

And just for the sake of angsting it up a little around here, allow us to make that knot in your stomach a bit tighter: an article over at Metroactive quotes Steve Jobs on the topic of the holiday iPod supply as saying that Apple's made its "best guess" and is "building a lot, but the demand may be even larger." In other words, "if you want to be sure to get an iPod this holiday season, I'd get one soon." And maybe you should consider wearing some body armor when you go.