Food, water, shelter, medicine, and ammunition/firearms are five things that are essential for survival in a societal collapse. As the possibility of such a collapse increases seemingly every day, more people have been signing up my Late Prepper Substack. It’s telling that just a few weeks ago we struggled to get free subscriptions, but today they come in even if we don’t publish anything for several days.
I’ve neglected to post things here lately simply because I’ve been busy prepping myself. But a task I’ve been working on this week prompted me to take the list I made and share it with others. These are the “non-essential” items we’re stocking up on now. By putting “non-essential” in quotes, I’m suggesting that yes, we can technically survive without them, but it’s a lot easier if you have a good supply of these items.
This is not a comprehensive list by any means. It’s just the things that I’ve logged as items we’re stocking up on to make sure we’re not caught flatfooted if the crap hits the fan. I made this list based on two criteria — usability and barter value. Some items we can buy cheaply today will be like gold in an end-times scenario.
One does not need to be a “doomsday prepper” living off-grid on a homestead in Montana to recognize the need for these items. Even city- and suburb-dwellers may lose access to such supplies if the system fails. Being ready is extraordinarily important, especially when we look at the trajectory of the nation and the world.
1. Bleach
Unscented bleach can literally be a lifesaver as it pertains to making water potable. While we recommend the Alexapure Water Filtration System, a little bit of bleach will do the trick as well. There are many other uses, of course, and perhaps most importantly it’s very cheap… for now.
2. Batteries, Chargers
Batteries generally have a 10-year shelf life when unopened. We like rechargeable batteries, especially if you have a solar generator or other sustainable electricity supply.
3. Lighters, Matches, Alternative Fire-Starters
Fire can be the key to survival. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to produce for most people. Learning how to start and build a fire in a pinch is important, but I’m a big fan of stocking up on things that make it easier.
4. Contact Lenses, Glasses
Depending on optical and financial situation, it may behoove you to have a long-term supply of contact lenses. Have multiple glasses is definitely a best-practice. As for bartering and use, having a nice supply of inexpensive reading glasses could come in handy as well.
5. Super Glue
In a crap-hits-the-fan scenario, being able to fix things as they break is going to be extremely important. Glue is helpful.
6. Duct Tape
Like super glue, but for different purposes. I have ongoing shipments of six-packs of duct tape heading to my home every month.
7. Vaseline
As a lubricant and accelerant, few things are more useful than Vaseline, even without considering the medical benefits. A little Vaseline, a cotton ball, and a stick can make a little torch.
8. Insect Repellent
Call me paranoid, but I’m very concerned about mosquitos and other insects in a post-apocalyptic world. Heck, I’m not crazy about them now. As anyone who has been to Africa knows, mosquito bites can be deadly.
9. Soap, Toothpaste, Deodorant, Hygiene Items
They last a long time (indefinitely?), are extremely important for you health and wellbeing, and can be excellent barter currency if you have enough available. Besides, if things get better it’s not like you won’t go through your supply eventually.
10. Hand Sanitizer
Personally, I’m not a fan of hand sanitizer. But every list mentions them so I suppose a lot of people like it. Call me old-fashioned by I like soap and water.
11. Tools and Backups, Nails, Screws
Considering we may have to build or repair things in the long term if the crap hits the fan, making sure you have everything you need to accomplish your tasks makes sense. This should NOT be considered a barter item.
12. Knives and Saws
Unlike most other tools, sharp necessary items like knives and saws wear down rapidly with regular use. It behooves many of us to have plenty of high-quality sharps available.
13. Flashlights, Candles, Lanterns
I’m fan of variety over quality when it comes to lighting. I know many swear by the high-dollar versions of these items, but I’ll take cheap and good enough quality in bulk for the same price. Some flashlights you keep should not need batteries; hand-cranked or solar flashlights can be hugely beneficial.
14. Paper, Pens, Pencils
So many uses, plus tons of regret if you don’t have enough paper and writing instruments.
15. Toilet Paper, Paper Towels, and Rags
I was extremely annoyed during the Spring of 2020 when stores kept running out of toilet paper. I railed against people who bought two-year supplies of toilet paper. Today, I have a two-year supply of toilet paper. One important note: I’m a big fan of reusable rags and towels. Having disposable items is fine but require disposal and are obviously finite. Having rags you can use, clean, and reuse will be important.
16. Bungie Cord, Ropes, String, Zip Ties
Repairing an building will likely be required if the crap hits the fan and stays bad for a long time. Bungie cords, ropes, string, and zip ties have unlimited uses.
17. Seeds
This is a food items, but it’s one that falls outside of the realm of straight food because it doesn’t take up much space and can be stored away to be used in the distant future. If you have plenty of seeds, you may never use them, but if you don’t have them you’ll probably need them.
18. Tarps
Cheap and useful.
19. Plastic Bags
Cheap and useful, too.
20. Kids’ Needs
Don’t forget the kids, especially babies! Diapers, baby wipes, powders… we’ve seen in our current situation how hard it is to keep baby formula on the shelves. Imagine if the crap hits the fan how other items will also be hard to acquire.
21. Baking Soda
Unlimited uses, and not just for cooking.
22. Fire Extinguishers
If things continue to go south, it’s not inconceivable that basic emergency services will be hard or even impossible to call. One does not want to lose everything over an accident that could have been easily suppressed.
Side Note
The most important thing to stock up on is hope. Read your Bible. Pray. Keep fighting the good fight. Doom and gloom is everywhere and spreading, but it’s not hopeless. Not by a long shot.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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.
