(The Epoch Times)—A new poll of adults shows about 60 percent of Americans fear corrupt government officials, followed by economic or financial collapse, Russia’s nuclear weapons, and becoming involved in another World War, according to the latest “American Fears” survey by Chapman University.
The annual survey, conducted this spring, involved asking 1,014 people over age 18 across the nation about 97 different fears ranging from the environment, government, the economy, war, natural disasters, and other subjects.
In general, this year’s results showed that Americans fear five main topics the most: government corruption, the economy, war and terror, the harming or death of loved ones, and drinking water pollution.
The results were reminiscent of last year’s, when corruption, nuclear war, and money concerns topped the list.
This year’s “top 10 list is very similar to last year’s, comprising most of the same fears in varying order,” said Chapman University student Samuel Andrus, who compiled the list from the work of the university’s Wilkinson College undergraduate research, in an article describing the results. “The only exception is the replacement of the fear of pollution in oceans, rivers, and lakes with the fear of cyber-terrorism, both occupying the number 9 position.”
Although the fear of corrupt government officials still ranks first, Americans have become less afraid of the issue. In the 2020/2021 survey, nearly 80 percent of respondents said they were afraid or very afraid of it.
“Skepticism of government is baked into America’s political culture, and fear of corrupt government officials has remained the [No. 1] fear in America since first topping the chart eight years ago in 2015,” Mr. Andrus said.
However, the percentage of respondents who are very afraid or afraid of corrupt government officials has dropped from about 62 percent to 60 percent this year, according to the results.
The survey’s authors attributed the drop to Congress’s January 6th hearings attempting to hold perpetrators accountable and the “relative mundanity” of President Biden’s administration.
Meanwhile, economic concerns in America are increasing, the survey showed. Since the first such survey by Chapman University in 2013, at least one fear related to the economy has appeared in the top 10.
This year, fear of economic or financial collapse was second on the list, increasing from last year when it ranked number 8. This year, nearly 55 percent of respondents said they were very afraid or afraid of the matter.
“Considering this year’s high interest rates, high inflation, and unexpected banking crisis; economic recession was something a lot of Americans were afraid of, helping to explain why fear of economic/financial collapse ranked so high,” Mr. Andrus said.
Americans are also still feeling the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tech industry layoffs also made it hard to make ends meet for many, according to the university.
The topic of war and terror was added to the school’s annual survey last year and quickly rose to one of the top fears, with fear of Russia using nuclear weapons ranking third as nearly 60 percent surveyed said they were afraid or very afraid on the issue. It maintained its position this year, but fewer people said they were afraid of it, as it dropped to about 53 percent.
The survey team attributed its continued high ranking to ongoing media coverage of the war in Ukraine and the uncertainty of whether Vladmir Putin might use nuclear weapons.
The war in Ukraine may have contributed to a greater fear of the U.S. becoming involved in a third world war, according to the survey. That fear has risen from fifth to fourth this year.
Respondents additionally indicated they are also afraid of people they love becoming seriously ill, which ranked fifth and sixth this year, respectively, followed by drinking water pollution which was ranked No. 7. Half of respondents said they were afraid or very afraid of these fears.
A trend seen again this year was the public’s diminishing environmental concerns.
Starting in 2017, four of the top 10 fears were related to the environment. In 2018 and 2019, five out of the top 10 were about the subject, including pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes holding second place both years.
This year, the fear of pollution in drinking water remained in the top 10, but dropped to seventh place from sixth in 2022.
Also included on this year’s top 10 list are the fears of biological warfare and cyber-terrorism, ranking eighth and ninth. About 49 percent of people surveyed said they were afraid or very afraid of these fears.
Last on the top 10 for this year was the fear of not having enough money for the future. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they were afraid or very afraid of this.
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.
The only opinions which count belong to megalomaniacs like Alex Soros and Bill Gates and the Pritzkers and Nicole Schwab, spawn of Klaus Schwab, who believes she owns the planet and Swedish actress, Greta Thunberg!!!
And Howie Stern and Noam Chomsky who believe all the non–SPIKEVAXED should be sent to concentration camps?!?!