Though the situation is ever changing, currently the Russian government has announced an official shutdown of ALL natural gas exports to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and plans to maintain the shutdown until the EU ends its economic sanctions over the war in Ukraine. This means that around 40% of Europe’s energy resources are now gone, with supply chain issues surrounding the other 60% and prices skyrocketing for households and businesses.
Back in March in an article titled ‘The Biggest Lies (So Far) Surrounding Russia And Ukraine’ I noted that:
“…There’s something else the media does not talk about much, which is Europe’s reliance on Russian oil and natural gas. If you want to see actual price inflation caused by Russia, let the EU ban Russian oil imports, or watch as Putin cuts off the supply. Europe is dependent on Russian oil and gas for about 40% of overall energy production. They cannot even survive a single year without it. If Russia retaliated and blocked energy exports to Europe, the the EU would have to siphon oil from many other countries, reducing global supply dramatically. This would cause gas prices to explode to double or even triple current levels.”
Back in April of this year in my article ‘The Media Is Ignoring These Two Events Which Could Cause Economic Collapse’ I predicted that:
“…The Russian economy is not about to fold anytime soon, and now the EU, which is reliant on Russian oil and gas exports for 40% of their energy needs, is about to face economic doom unless they submit to paying for energy in rubles (which they won’t) or find a replacement source for gas and oil (which is impossible). Furthermore, with Europe on the global market looking for alternative oil sources, a big chunk of the oil market will be rerouted.
What does this mean? Less oil and gas to fulfill the demand in other countries. In other words, prices are about to skyrocket higher yet again.”
The media disinformation surrounding the economic situation with Russia disarmed millions of people and fooled them into believing that it was Russia facing fiscal disaster rather than Europe or potentially the US. Now, it would seem my predictions of a full spectrum crisis are coming true. The question is, what happens next?
For now, all talk in the mainstream media will revolve around two things – What will be done to prevent disaster, and how evil Russia is for cutting off the European population from warmth in wintertime. I’m not going to get into the weeds on the morality of Russia’s actions vs European sanctions (After all, the EU sought to economically destroy Russia. And, as I have written in the past, BOTH sides are being played by globalists to create a worldwide crash). But I do want to cover the inevitable EU response.
European governments are now racing to implement the only policies they understand: Stimulus policies.
The UK and the EU are announcing plans to artificially subsidize energy providers and pay a percentage of electric bills for households and businesses. Of course, one has to ask, if it’s that easy for governments to simply print money and feed it to energy providers, then why don’t they just pay for everyone’s electric bills all the time?
Because price controls never work, that’s why.
What the EU is planning is essentially a form of price controls using inflated fiat as a means to placate energy producers for as long as they can. Most oil and gas on the global market is purchased using the US dollar, not the Euro, so it is unclear if Europe will be printing euros to buy dollars or attempting to buy oil, gas, and coal directly. In any case, this will greatly reduce the Euro’s value on the energy market and prices will continue to rise for the EU anyway.
The EU and UK are seeking to cap prices and pay the remainder, but if prices keep climbing, how much are they willing to subsidize and how much are they willing to devalue the Euro (or the Pound) in the process? Are they willing to go into complete currency implosion and hyperinflation to pay for energy?
All of the debate over government stimulus and the effects will be meaningless, though, if the issue of supply is not taken into account. The EU can print as much money as they want, but this doesn’t help them if they can’t acquire enough energy resources to provide the heating and power the public needs. There is ZERO chance that they will be able to fill the void left behind by Russian gas and oil, so a certain percentage of the European population is going to suffer regardless.
Here are the developments Europe will see in the near term:
- Rolling Blackouts
- Further Price Inflation In Energy
- Business Shutdowns Due To Operating Costs
- Energy Fascism – Informants And Government Monitoring Of Usage
- Further Price Inflation In General Goods Including Food
- More Government Price Controls
- Governments Pushing The Idea Of Universal Basic Income
- Rationing Of All Necessities
- Severe Economic Decline And Job Losses
- Large Numbers Of People Freezing In The Winter
- Civil Unrest
I could continue on with this list but I think you get the idea. It’s not going to be pretty. For those of us in the US this seems like a scenario out of sight and out of mind, but this will not be the case. Europe is going to be scouring markets for energy supplies, anywhere they can find them. Keep in mind, the US is ALREADY sending 75% of its liquid natural gas exports to Europe. There is very little resource backstop for the EU to dip into.
This means less oil, less gas, less coal, less of everything for purchase in America. Sure, we could be producing most of these resources in-house and cut exports to the EU, but the Biden Administration will never allow that to happen.
At the very least, prices are going to rise everywhere on the majority of goods. I continue to predict that US gas prices at the pump will climb to around $7 a gallon on average. Propane and other heating commodities will rocket beyond previous highs.
Supply chains will be weakened. European manufacturing will take a massive hit and many of these businesses will not be able to operate at normal capacity. Most of them will have to reduce production and institute layoffs. This means that European goods will be exported less frequently and prices on the remaining goods will spike in the US.
European agriculture will also be hit hard. Food production will fall as energy supplies and fertilizer supplies falter. This means they will be buying up more grains and foods from other nations, causing prices to jump for everyone else including the US.
Civil unrest in Europe is assured. Similar conditions are already brewing in the states, but it’s hard to say if Europe’s problems will trigger public anger here. More price inflation might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but this is unlikely until mass layoffs start later this year and into 2023. It takes time for the public to realize things are not going to return to normal.
Overall, the US economy will continue its path towards destabilization, though it seems that Europe will see the worst of the global crisis over the next several months. Unfortunately, the interdependency created by globalism has left every country in the world overly reliant on the others. If any one link in the chain breaks, the entire system breaks. This is why decentralization is so important – It creates redundancies and protects each individual nation from a potentially disastrous domino effect.
Article cross-posted from Alt-Market.
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.
