(The Economic Collapse Blog)—We have reached a moment in history that none of us will forget. We are literally standing on the precipice of the unthinkable, and most people don’t even realize it. Of course horrific wars have a way of erupting when most people are not expecting them. Hardly anyone expected a global war to erupt in 1914, but then tens of millions of precious souls died over the next four years. Hardly anyone expected a global war to erupt in 1939, but then tens of millions of precious souls died over the next six years. This time around, what is happening should be glaringly obvious to everyone. Personally, I have been specifically warning about what is taking place right now for more than a decade. If we do not change course, billions of precious souls could die during the nightmarish global wars that are rapidly approaching.
At this moment, most Americans have no idea that a war between the United States and China is coming.
Just a few days ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping boldly talked about “preparation for war” as he was dressed in military fatigues…
On Thursday Chinese Communist Dictator Xi Jinping commanded troops to strengthen their preparedness for war while visiting his People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force following last week’s drills of surrounding the sovereign country of Taiwan.
“Xi said the military should ‘comprehensively strengthen training and preparation for war, (and) ensure troops have solid combat capabilities,’ CCTV reported,” according to the AFP and reported on Barrons Saturday.
Why would China need to prepare for war? Needless to say, nobody is planning to attack China.
The truth is that the only reason that China would need to prepare for war is if it was planning to invade Taiwan.
Because the moment that China invades Taiwan, the U.S. and China will be at war.
In recent days, the Chinese have been getting very aggressive with Taiwan…
On Monday, Beijing had deployed fighter jets, drones, warships and coast guard vessels to encircle Taiwan — its fourth round of large-scale war games around the democratic island in just over two years.
China’s communist leaders have insisted they will not rule out using force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control.
Meanwhile, western leaders continue to publicly discuss sending NATO troops to Ukraine. The latest example of this came from the foreign minister of Lithuania…
The Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said in a statement to Politico on Monday that European Union countries should return to the idea of putting boots-on-the-ground in Ukraine to fight Russia.
The idea comes after French President Emmanuel Macron said in February that sending Western troops to Ukraine is not ‘ruled out’ for the future plans in war against Russia, according to the AP. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz shut down that plan for the time being however.
“If information about Russia’s killing squads being equipped with North Korean ammunition and military personnel is confirmed, we have to get back to ‘boots on the ground’ and other ideas proposed by [French President] Emmanuel Macron,” he said in written comments, Politico reported on Monday.
One of the reasons why this has came up again is because there are reports that soldiers from North Korea are being equipped and sent to fight for Russia on the front lines of eastern Ukraine…
North Korean soldiers have been filmed receiving uniforms and equipment at a training ground in Russia’s far east, appearing to confirm reports from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) that 1,500 soldiers have been shipped over for military training to be deployed in Ukraine.
The North Korean troops are thought to be receiving training before being sent to the front line in Ukraine, in what is thought to be a clear sign of the ever-warming relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.
Both sides just continue to escalate matters.
It appears to be just a matter of time before we find ourselves in a direct conflict with the Russians, and that is a really, really bad idea.
North Korea has been making all sorts of noise lately. In addition to sending troops to fight in Ukraine, the North Koreans are also threatening to invade South Korea…
North Korea has said it had found the remnants of a South Korean military drone and that any further “violation” of its territory would result in a “declaration of war.”
Tensions between the two sides of the peninsula have escalated since May when the North began flying balloons carrying garbage across the border to the South, prompting Seoul to respond by restarting loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts.
This week, North Korea accused South Korea of flying drones over Pyongyang on three occasions this month and threatened to respond with force if it happened again.
The North Korean military is vastly superior to the South Korean military. If North Korea invades, the only way that South Korea will survive is if we intervene.
But right now the U.S. military is focused on the Middle East, because that conflict could spiral completely out of control at any moment.
On Sunday night, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari warned that Israel would soon begin targeting any financial institutions that aid Hezbollah…
“In the past 24 hours, dozens of projectiles have been fired at northern Israel,” he began. “In the next minutes, we will issue an advance evacuation warning to residents of Beirut and other areas in Lebanon to evacuate locations being used to finance Hezbollah’s terror activities. I emphasize here: Anyone located near sites used to fund Hezbollah’s terror activities must move away from these locations immediately.”
“We will strike several targets in the coming hours and additional targets throughout the night.
“In the coming days, we will reveal how Iran funds Hezbollah’s terror activities by using civilian institutions, associations, and NGOs that act as fronts for terrorism.”
And it certainly did not take long for that to start happening.
Last night, branches of Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association Bank were hit by Israeli airstrikes…
Israeli fighter jets struck dozens of targets in Beirut and other areas of southern Lebanon overnight, including branches of a bank accused of holding funds used by Hezbollah.
The military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, had earlier in the night issued several evacuation orders for buildings throughout southern Lebanon he said were in the vicinity of facilities belonging to the U.S.-sanctioned Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association Bank.
Most people in the western world have absolutely no idea how chaotic things have become over there.
It is being reported that there is “widespread panic” in Beirut at this moment…
Jeanine Hennis, the United Nations’ special coordinator for Lebanon, said that after the IDF issued its evacuations, said there was “widespread panic” in Beirut.
“A brief window to escape to safety. Intense blasts reverberate across the night sky. With each day, Lebanon suffers more. But even amid the escalating violence, solutions remain available. If only opportunities would be seized,” she said.
Could the U.S. soon find itself involved in 4 major global wars?
Let’s hope not, because we are not even prepared to fight one…
The US Army’s outgoing top commander in the Pacific region has warned that the US can “ill afford” another war because its military is vastly overstretched.
According to Defense One, Gen. Charles Flynn said that the US’ authoritarian rivals — Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — had been placing increasing pressure on American military resources.
Speaking at the AUSA conference in Washington DC last week, Flynn described the technology and military alliances between the authoritarian states as a “very dangerous combination.”
The U.S. military is not the overwhelming global force that it once was.
While other major powers have been feverishly preparing to fight World War III, our military has been rapidly becoming a politically correct joke.
Now a day of reckoning is upon us, and we are not ready.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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.
