(End of the American Dream)—India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and now they are on the verge of war. It is being reported that India is considering a military response to a horrifying terror attack that occurred in Kashmir earlier this week, and Pakistani forces are already being mobilized in case that happens. If a full-blown war erupts, it will be a really big deal. 247 million people live in Pakistan, and 1.4 billion people live in India.
So we are talking about a substantial chunk of the global population, and if nuclear weapons are used the death toll in a war between India and Pakistan would be off the charts.
This latest crisis started on Tuesday when terrorists associated with “The Resistance Front” killed 26 tourists in Kashmir…
Suspected rebels killed at least 26 people on Tuesday in the picturesque tourist resort of Pahalgam in the deadliest such attack in a quarter-century in Indian-administered Kashmir. A statement issued in the name of The Resistance Front (TRF), which is believed to be an offshoot of the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is promising to hunt the terrorists to the “ends of the earth”, and India’s government is accusing Pakistan’s government of “funding and encouraging terrorism in Kashmir”…
Armed police and soldiers searched homes and forests for militants in Indian Kashmir on Friday and India’s army chief reviewed security there after the killing of 26 men at a tourist site – the worst attack on civilians in nearly two decades.
The attack triggered outrage and grief in India, along with calls for action against neighbour Pakistan, whom New Delhi accuses of funding and encouraging terrorism in Kashmir, a region both nations claim and have fought two wars over.
We have seen tensions between these two great nations reach a boiling point before, but never anything quite like this. Following the terror attack, India immediately suspended a very important water treaty…
On Wednesday, India suspended a water treaty governing the water flows of the Indus River and revoked the visas of Pakistani nationals within its borders. It also closed one of the only land border crossings between the two countries. Pakistan has responded by closing off its airspace to Indian planes and issuing a barrage of reciprocal visa revocations.
Millions of people in Pakistan are extremely dependent on water from the Indus River.
So it would create a major humanitarian crisis if India restricted or cut off the flow of water, but apparently that is what India has decided to do…
The government has decided to stop the flow of Indus River water to Pakistan following the termination of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, in response to the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam carried out by Pakistan-based terrorists, sources said.
Yesterday, the Pakistani government warned that messing with the flow of water would be an “act of war”…
Pakistan warned India on Thursday that it was committing an “act of war” by suspending a landmark water-sharing treaty in response to a deadly terror attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The threat from Pakistan Prime Minister’s Office followed a number of diplomatic measures imposed by New Dehli on Islamabad as tensions flare between the neighboring nuclear powers.
We really need a third party to step in and mediate this crisis, because it could spiral out of control very quickly.
In fact, there has already been shooting.
On Friday morning, Indian forces and Pakistani forces “briefly exchanged fire”…
Indian officials have confirmed Friday that Indian and Pakistani soldiers briefly exchanged fire along their highly militarized frontier in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, according to The Associated Press.
Small arms were used by both sides in the gunfight, and no casualties have as of yet been reported, a briefing by an Indian official indicated, in the first such live-fire incident since 2021. It also violates a pledge from the same year for the two nations to observe a ceasefire along the disputed Line of Control between Indian and Pakistani controlled areas of Kashmir.
The shooting has stopped for now, but social media is full of videos that show military equipment being moved toward the border.
And it is also an ominous sign that India has moved an aircraft carrier into the Arabian Sea…
In addition, Pakistan “has issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen/Mariners) for the Arabian Sea and initiated a naval live fire exercise, while putting its military on full alert in anticipation of a possible military response by India in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack,” The Print, an Indian news outlet, reported.
India, meanwhile, has the aircraft carrier Vikrant in the Arabian Sea. While the vessel deployed before the Kashmir attack, it is now doing loops in the area as a possible contingency, posited Damien Symon, a geo-intelligence researcher for The Intel Lab intelligence consultancy.
We don’t know for certain whether India will conduct airstrikes or not.
For now, we are being told that “a variety of military options” are on the table…
“There are a variety of military options, short of a full-blown war, on the table,” the Times of India (TOI) reported, citing a senior military official. “It’s for the political leadership to take the final call. If there is a go-ahead, then the retaliatory strikes will be at a time and place of our choosing.”
India and Pakistan are not equally matched.
If India really starts pummeling Pakistan, would the Pakistanis feel a need to use their nukes?
Let’s hope that we never find out.
Meanwhile, President Trump continues to warn the world about what will happen if the Iranians do not give up their nuclear enrichment program…
During an interview with Time magazine, Trump was asked whether he was “worried” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would drag the U.S. into a war.
“No,” said the president, who continued his answer after the questioner attempted to change topics.
“[H]e may go into a war. But we’re not getting dragged in.”
Did that mean the U.S. will stay out if Israel goes into Iran?
“No, I didn’t say that,” Trump said. “You asked if he’d [Netanyahu] drag me in, like I’d go in unwillingly. No, I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”
There will be yet another round of negotiations this weekend. Let us hope that they go well.
Lastly, I wanted to mention the fact that a top Russian general was just assassinated not too far from Moscow…
Russian Major General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in an IED bomb blast in the Moscow region on Friday.
This coincided with the planned peace talks between US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
According to Russia Today Moskalik was the Deputy Chief of Main Operations Directorate of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces.
Every time we take a step toward peace, something like this happens.
Ultimately, I don’t think that there is going to be peace in Ukraine.
The Russians and the Ukrainians are not even in the same universe when it comes to what a suitable peace agreement would look like, and neither side seems too keen on making significant compromises at this stage.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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.
