(End of the American Dream)—I have been repeatedly telling my readers that we are living in apocalyptic times, and when I first started saying that I think that many people out there thought that I was exaggerating, but now what is happening to us is becoming a lot more obvious. The war in the Middle East has escalated dramatically over the past week, the “Super El Niño” is causing absolutely crazy heatwaves and storms all over the planet, the Ebola outbreak in Africa is totally out of control, and we have been witnessing some very large earthquakes in Venezuela and elsewhere. I have been warning that war, famine, pestilence and natural disasters are in our future, but the truth is that the future is now. Global events have started to spiral out of control, and the chaos that we are experiencing is not going to stop.
Just a little while ago, U.S. Central Command informed the world that for a third night in a row the U.S. has begun conducting an enormous round of airstrikes in Iranian territory…
Moments after President Trump told talk show host Hugh Hewitt the U.S. would be launching more strikes against Iran, U.S. Central Command announced the U.S. began its third consecutive night of strikes.
“At 4:45 p.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command began launching the third consecutive night of strikes against Iran, at the Commander in Chief’s direction,” U.S. Central Command announced on X. “These strikes will continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Massive explosions are being reported in multiple locations even as I write this article.
And President Trump just told Hugh Hewitt that the U.S. is even going to attack “Pickaxe Mountain” at some point…
Speaking to conservative talk host Hugh Hewitt, President Trump said the U.S. will hit Iran hard Monday and Tuesday. The president said the U.S. will “take out” Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried site that analysts believe could be part of Iran’s nuclear program..
“We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain,” he said. “Tell the Iranians to be ready. Let them know we’re coming, okay? There’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”
I have mentioned Pickaxe Mountain multiple times in recent weeks.
Many believe that Iran’s most important nuclear work goes on in that underground facility, and so far the U.S. and Israel have not been able to damage it because it is considered to be “beyond the reach of the most powerful bunker buster bombs”…
Pickaxe Mountain, located near Iran’s heavily damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility, is a heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes that experts assess as beyond the reach of the most powerful bunker buster bombs in the U.S. arsenal.
President Trump is signaling that the U.S. is prepared to take things to a new level.
Of course the Iranians are not just going to sit there and absorb punishment.
They have been striking back every night, and Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf just issued a very ominous warning…
What did he mean by that?
We don’t know.
But what we do know is that the Iranians just hit two UAE tankers with cruise missiles…
The Iranians are simply not going to back down, and so things are going to get insane.
Earlier today, we learned that President Trump has notified Congress that the war with Iran is officially back on…
President Trump formally notified Congress that “military action” against Iran restarted last week, according to a letter obtained by CBS News on Monday, as a monthslong ceasefire comes to an end.
Military action “commenced on July 7,” the president said in a message dated July 10 and addressed to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Senate’s president pro tempore.
The letter was sent after Mr. Trump declared the U.S.-Iran ceasefire “over” and ordered several rounds of strikes on Iranian targets, in response to Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz last week. Iranian authorities have insisted that ships seek permission and use an Iranian-approved route before transiting the strait, and responded to the U.S. strikes by launching missiles and drones at U.S.-allied Gulf states.
Iran War 3 is not going to be like Iran War 1 or Iran War 2.
In my opinion, the coming weeks will be full of shocks and surprises.
Meanwhile, yet another gigantic heat dome produced by the “Super El Niño” is frying large portions of the western half of the United States…
Roughly 100 million people across the United States are facing extreme temperatures this week as a heat dome scorching the western part of the country spreads to the Northeast.
In Billings, Montana, temperatures reached a record high of 111 degrees on Sunday as the dangerous heat was felt across the Great Basin, the Rockies and sections of the desert Southwest.
Temperatures are forecast to be 20 to 30 degrees above average for this time of year, according to CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan. Some locations will see record-breaking temperatures through the week.
It isn’t supposed to get up to 111 degrees in Montana.
But it just did.
This “Super El Niño” is going to do so much damage to crops all over the world, and the World Meteorological Organization is projecting that this could push global food prices higher for years…
Analysts are warning that a powerful El Niño developing in the Pacific Ocean could push up global food prices over the months and years ahead.
In early July, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecast that current El Niño weather conditions would “strengthen rapidly over the coming months,” with a higher likelihood of “heatwaves, droughts, heavy rainfall and other extreme weather events in many parts of the world.” Meanwhile, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week said there was an 81 percent possibility of a “very strong” El Niño between October and December—one it said would rank “among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950.”
Meteorologists and economists, including analysts at the World Bank, warn that such an event—dubbed by some a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño—could disrupt global agriculture and food supply chains through next year while exacerbating the economic pressures facing countries worldwide.
Tens of millions died from starvation during the “Super El Niño” of 1877-1878.
How many will die from starvation this time around?
If health authorities are not able to get the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under control, pestilence could claim a large number of lives during the months ahead as well.
Earlier today, we learned that another American has officially tested positive…
Another US citizen has tested positive for Ebola as part of an ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The American was working for a humanitarian organization and was transferred to Frankfurt University Hospital in Germany on Monday, US officials said.
The CDC announced the positive test on Friday and said it is working with public health authorities and the person’s employer, which was not identified, to identify close contacts and prevent further transmission.
There is no cure for the Bundibugyo strain, and the official numbers that we are being given are going up quite rapidly…
Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya, MD, MPH, said that, as of July 9, 112 healthcare workers have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began, including 35 who died. The outbreak now stands at 1,947 cases, and 704 deaths, with the vast majority of those in the DRC.
As I noted on Friday, many experts are convinced that the official numbers are seriously understating the severity of this outbreak.
I have shared this before, but I am going to share it again. It is being reported that approximately four out of every five new Ebola cases in the DRC “have no known link to existing patients”…
Four out of every five new Ebola cases in parts of Democratic Republic of Congo have no known link to existing patients, a senior World Health Organization official said, warning that the true scale of the outbreak could be two to four times larger than official data suggest.
The figures underscore the challenges facing health workers as they battle to contain the outbreak in the country’s northeast, which has so far infected 1,792 people and killed 625, according to government data released on Thursday.
The vast majority of the new cases that are popping up have no connection to the existing cases that authorities already know about.
That is a major league red flag.
And once someone gets infected, there is a very good chance that they will die.
Lastly, I wanted to point out two very alarming earthquakes that we just witnessed in Southern California…
A second significant earthquake has struck Southern California in two days, along a dangerous fault line that one expert claims has now been ‘unlocked’ and could soon unleash ‘The Big One.’
A magnitude 4.3 quake struck less than 90 miles from Los Angeles at 12.40pm ET (9.40am local) on Monday, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).
It struck less than 24 hours after a magnitude 4.1 tremor erupted along the same fault line that a California geophysicist says is long overdue for a massive and devastating quake – the Garlock Fault.
The ground is shaking.
But are local residents paying attention?
Sunday’s quake happened at a location where the Garlock Fault meets the San Andreas Fault.
According to geophysicist Stefan Burns, this was the largest earthquake at that particular junction in 26 years…
The Garlock is a major east-west fault in Southern California, while the San Andreas is an 800-mile-long fracture running from Southern California north through the Bay Area and into the Pacific Ocean.
Burns warned that the earthquake struck exactly where these two faults meet, in an area that has not seen a quake this strong in more than 26 years.
According to the scientist, this small event at the junction could be an early sign that underground stress is building and the Garlock may play a role in the next major California earthquake – which many call ‘The Big One.’
As I keep pointing out, scientists have repeatedly warned us that “the Big One” is way overdue.
It is just a matter of time before it strikes, and once that day arrives life in Southern California will never be the same again.
Sadly, many will ignore the warnings until it is too late.
Even though so many historic events are happening all around us, I am seeing so much apathy out there right now.
20 years ago we weren’t being hit by crisis after crisis, but that is considered to be “normal” in 2026.
We really are in the midst of a “perfect storm” in which we are being hammered by one problem after another, and this “perfect storm” is only going to intensify in the months ahead.
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.
