(The Economic Collapse Blog)—A lot of people seem to think that the summer of 2024 is a time to party, but the truth is that this is a time when they should be feverishly preparing for the extremely chaotic times that are ahead of us. I just don’t know what it is going to take for people to wake up and realize how late it is. Donald Trump got shot and that shook people up for a few days, but that didn’t last for long.
Then there was a soft coup in the Democratic Party, and that got people fired up for a little bit, but that quickly faded. Of course there is a small minority that is awake and that understands that we are living in truly historic times, but the vast majority of the population appears to be clueless. The following are 5 reasons why you should be prepping like crazy right now…
#1 As I have been warning for a long time, the results of the election in November will unleash a flood of negative emotion. Whichever side loses is going to have a massive temper tantrum, and there is a very high risk that we could see widespread violence. In fact, one recent survey actually discovered that 41 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that there will be a “civil war” within the next five years…
The possibility that America could face another civil war soon is not too far-fetched for a lot of voters.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the United States is likely to experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, including 16% who consider such a scenario Very Likely. Forty-nine percent (49%) don’t think another civil war is likely in the next five years, including 20% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are not sure.
#2 Armed conflicts are raging all over the globe. The war in Ukraine continues to intensify, China has been threatening Taiwan, and the war in the Middle East could potentially escalate to an apocalyptic level by the end of this calendar year. Meanwhile, riots, revolutions and civil unrest are erupting everywhere you look. For example, it appears that Venezuela is right on the verge of erupting in flames…
Venezuela has been engulfed by violent riots as opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia announced he has proof he won Sunday’s disputed election hours after President Nicolas Maduro claimed he’d secured a third term in power.
Thousands of enraged protesters flooded the streets of the capital and several other cities, chanting ‘Freedom, freedom!’ and ‘This government is going to fall!’ as they set fire to tyres and rubbish and organised barricades to block police vehicles.
Security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds but were forced to recoil from Molotov cocktails and rocks hurled by the oncoming demonstrators, many of whom carried Venezuelan flags.
#3 The world is facing a long-term food crisis that isn’t going to go away. Global supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the UN is reporting that hundreds of millions of people did not have enough food to eat last year…
Around 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally and one in five in Africa, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published today by five United Nations specialized agencies.
#4 Many health experts are warning that it is just a matter of time before the next great global pandemic hits us. A lot of people are keeping a very close eye on the bird flu, but I am also very concerned about the frightening outbreaks of Mpox that we have been witnessing in Africa. According to the BBC, the Central African Republic is “the latest country in the region to declare an outbreak of the mpox virus”…
The Central African Republic has become the latest country in the region to declare an outbreak of the mpox virus.
Infections have spread to the capital, Bangui, after being restricted to rural areas, health minister Pierre Somse said.
He also told a local radio station that some families were hiding infected relatives due to stigma, thus increasing the risk to others.
#5 I am entirely convinced that historic natural disasters will continue to be a major theme during the second half of this year and beyond. Even here in the United States, there has been quite a bit of highly unusual shaking lately. If you can believe it, one county in Texas has actually declared a state of emergency because it has been hit by more than 100 significant earthquakes within the past week…
So many earthquakes have struck the west Texas county of Scurry in the past week – more than 100 at last count – local officials have declared a state of emergency.
Scurry County Judge Dan Hicks wrote in his Friday declaration of disaster that since the first earthquake, registering magnitude 4.9, was felt the night of July 22, “damage has been found throughout Scurry County in businesses and residences.”
The county’s buildings can handle a few quakes here and there, but the cumulative effects of so many small ones, punctuated by larger shaking, have become cause for concern.
Right now, we are only experiencing the very early stages of “the perfect storm” that is now upon us.
During the months and years that are ahead, things are going to get so much worse.
I highly recommend stockpiling food and supplies, because it won’t be too long before our world goes absolutely nuts.
Stocking up doesn’t have to be complicated. At this point, so many people are buying emergency food that even Costco is stocking it on their shelves…
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feed fine — because Costco has an emergency dinner kit, dubbed “the apocalypse bucket” online, that lasts 25 years.
The Readywise Emergency Food Bucket, which boasts 150 freeze-dried and dehydrated meal servings, has caused a stir on social media. With an online price tag of $79.99, the bucket boasts that it’s more than just food in its product description — it says it provides “readiness in the face of uncertainty.”
The bucket features 80 entrees and sides, 30 breakfast servings and 40 drink servings that just need water to prepare, for a total of 25,280 calories. The meal options range from teriyaki rice, tomato basil soup and pasta Alfredo to cheesy macaroni and apple cinnamon cereal.
The good news is that there are now millions of preppers in this country that are preparing for the apocalyptic times that are rapidly approaching.
The bad news is that the total population of the United States is 333 million.
When things finally hit the fan, most people will be completely and utterly unprepared, and that truly will be a nightmare scenario.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
JD’s manually curated links for God-fearing MAGA patriots
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
