Why is the number of preppers growing so rapidly? Prior to the pandemic, somewhere around 2 or 3 percent of all Americans were preppers, but now that figure has shot up to about 10 percent. Needless to say, the pandemic certainly put a good scare into a lot of people, but now it has largely passed and so you would think that interest in prepping would subside. But instead, the prepping community just continues to grow. On a very basic level, most of us understand that the party is ending and most of us can feel that something really big is coming. In 2023 and beyond, there will be more war, more economic turmoil, more famines, more pestilences and more historic natural disasters. In such an environment, it will pay to be prepared.
Not too long ago, the mainstream media openly mocked those that were preparing for the meltdown of society.
They were labeled “doomsday preppers” or “survivalists”, and entire television shows were created to make fun of them.
But now everything has changed. In fact, 60 Minutes just did a story in which they portrayed preppers as just ordinary people from all walks of life…
If you hear the term “survivalist” and it conjures images of militants and conspiracy theorists— residing on the fringes and on compounds, armed to the teeth—well, it’s time to reset your doomsday clock. A worldwide community of preppers – those who stockpile goods and skill-up for extreme catastrophes – is girding less for the end of days, than for a disaster that calls for taking cover. A climate emergency, civil unrest, the possibility of a dirty bomb, to say nothing of a global pandemic that suddenly shuts down the world. It was COVID that turned abstract apocalyptic scenarios into a reality. Modern preppers come at it from all angles and for all kinds of reasons. We went high and low, talking to a few of the millions of Americans who have joined the movement.
To me, the most interesting part of the story was when they talked to a man that worked for the Obama administration named John Ramey. Since that time, Ramey has become quite a prepper himself, and he told 60 Minutes that at this stage approximately 10 percent of all Americans are now preppers…
We think about 15 million Americans are actively prepping right now. In terms of percentage of households, we are at or about to cross 10% of all households. And just a few years ago, that was 2% or 3%.
In the old days, the vast majority of preppers were conservatives.
But these days a lot of liberals are now prepping.
And even a lot of those liberals do not believe that the government will be able to handle the sort of apocalyptic scenarios that are rapidly approaching. The following is one exchange from the 60 Minutes story that illustrates this point…
Jon Wertheim: If there’s some kind of catastrophe, to what extent do you trust the government?
Heidi Keller: I’m not gonna down the government. I mean, they do the best that they can. But pretty much the government’s not gonna take care of you, not because they may not want to, but because there’s too much going on. That’s common sense.
What Heidi Keller said is quite true.
The government is not some all-powerful entity that can shield us from all harm.
When things start getting really bad out there, a lot of people are only going to be able to turn to themselves for assistance.
Recently, one mainstream publication called “Big Think” put out an article that contained eight statements that are meant to help you determine if you are a prepper or not…
1. I have stockpiled food and water to survive a potential major disaster.
2. I have stockpiled weapons to survive a potential major disaster.
3. I have stockpiled equipment and materials to survive a potential major disaster.
4. I regularly think through in my mind ways to survive a potential major disaster.
5. I have thought through who would be in my survival group.
6. I know where I could get more supplies to survive a potential major disaster.
7. I have a plan I could put into operation to survive a potential major disaster.
8. I have attended survival courses to help me get through a potential major disaster.
For each statement, you are supposed to give yourself a score from one to five.
According to the article, the average score is 19. So if you gave yourself a score that is well above 19 that strongly indicates that you are probably a prepper.
Earlier today, I came across a news story which explained that the total number of people in the world is about to hit eight billion…
The world’s population is set to hit eight billion next week in a key milestone for humanity, according to the United Nations.
The UN Population Division said that the population will continue to grow in the decades to come, with life expectancy set to increase to an average of 77.2 years by 2050.
By November 15, the number of humans on Earth will grow to eight billion, more than three times higher than the 2.5 billion global headcount in 1950.
Not all of those eight billion people will make it through what is ahead.
In fact, there are some people that believe that most of them will die by the time this decade is over.
Could you imagine what our world would look like if that actually happened?
The truth is that we got really lucky with the pandemic that we just went through, because the death toll was relatively low.
In the future, we could easily see pestilences that kill hundreds of millions of people.
And we are also now closer to nuclear war than we have ever been before.
In addition, the United Nations is publicly warning that “multiple famines” are likely in the coming year.
We live in such troubled times, and more people than ever are getting prepared for apocalyptic scenarios.
If you are not a prepper yet, I would very much encourage you to start doing the same.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.
I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.
I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.
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.
10%, huh? Exactly what for decades I have theorized is the percentage of any gene pool that can think for and take care of itself. Lately, though, after observing Man-Bun Millennials for the last 20 years, I have grown worried that the “Grow a Pair” gene has diminished to 2-3% of the population; but this prepper survey has revived some hope.