Editor’s Note: This is not a sponsored post, but it makes a strong argument for Americans to consider moving portions of their wealth or retirement to physical precious metals. This is why we recommend reading our sponsor’s Digital Dollar Defense Guide.
(The Epoch Times)—Who doesn’t know them: the blood-sucking vampires, the eerie undead, immortalized in countless films, and inspired primarily by Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897). Just think of iconic movies like the silent film “Nosferatu—A Symphony of Horror” (1922), “Dracula” (1958) with Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski’s parody “The Fearless Vampire Killers” (1967), or “Nosferatu—Phantom of the Night” (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula.
Vampires are demons who rise from their graves at night, seeking to drain the blood of innocent victims. Not only do they steal the life force that sustains them, but they also spread their curse. Many victims, bitten by vampires, are “turned,” becoming undead themselves, thus joining the vampire’s dark domain.
The enemies and hunters of vampires face a formidable challenge: vampires can disguise themselves, transforming into creatures like wolves or bats, and often display immense, superhuman strength. They can only be repelled by traditional defenses—garlic cloves, rosaries, holy water, or the Christian cross. But truly destroying a vampire requires decapitation, driving a wooden stake through its heart, or bright sunlight that turns them to dust.
The vampire is an ancient and widespread myth. The image of a blood-sucking undead creature, or similar concepts, has existed across many cultures. This demon embodies superstition—acting as a projection of primal fears, the inexplicable, and evil as the counterpart to good. The notion of a creature that emerges at night, drains its victims’ blood, and draws them from light into darkness is undoubtedly a profoundly threatening one.
When you reflect a little longer on the horror story of the vampire demon, you will inevitably begin to see parallels (or at least points of contact) with the fiat money system that exists worldwide today.
Under Cover of Darkness
It takes place under the cover of darkness: It is fair to say that the vast majority of people are unaware of how today’s fiat money system is structured, how it operates, or what its effects are. Students in schools and universities are, for the most part, left in the dark about it, and the consequences of the fiat money system, therefore, take most people by surprise—unprepared and relentless. Indeed, how many people know that our current fiat money system is a system in which the state’s central bank holds a coercive monopoly on the creation of fiat central bank money, while commercial banks issue their own fiat commercial bank money based on central bank fiat money.
Who knows that fiat money is literally created out of thin air, representing a form of money creation that has no connection whatsoever to “real savings”? And who explains to people that, from an economic perspective, expanding the fiat money supply is inflationary, leading to uneven higher prices for goods and services compared to a situation where the money supply had not been increased? It is also unknown to many that the issuance of fiat money via the credit market causes a misallocation of capital, initially triggering a boom, only to be followed by a bust; that it drives economies into excessive debt; and that it allows the state to grow ever larger at the expense of the freedoms of citizens and entrepreneurs.
In short, for most people, the damage caused by fiat money is unknown; it creeps upon them under the cover of darkness, like a vampire.
Vulnerable Victims and Life Sucked Away
The victims are often helpless and unaware, with the fruits of their labor effectively being siphoned away. Fiat money has something vampire-like about it, enabling one group (those allowed to create fiat money) to live at the expense of others (those forced to use the monopolized money). The first recipients of newly-created fiat money are the beneficiaries. They can use the new money to purchase goods and services whose prices have not yet risen, making them wealthier.
As the money changes hands, it increases demand, and prices of goods rise accordingly. As a result, the late recipients of the new money can only buy goods at higher prices, leaving them at a disadvantage. The first recipients improve their position at the expense of the late recipients. The most severely affected are those who receive nothing from the newly-created money supply—they are, in effect, the ones “sucked dry.”
The vampire-like redistributive effect of fiat money, which operates in the shadows, particularly benefits commercial banks that create fiat commercial bank money, as well as those in a position to take out new bank loans in fiat money.
First and foremost, it is the state and those who benefit from it who are among the biggest winners of the vampire fiat money system. The state finances a significant portion of its expenditure with newly-created fiat money, using it to pay its representatives, employees, and their pensions, as well as the companies from which it purchases goods and services. The state and its beneficiaries are among the early recipients of the newly-created fiat money, making them the primary beneficiaries at the expense of the many who are not closely connected to the state.
One might argue that a redistribution of income and wealth, brought about by the increase in fiat money, would also occur in a commodity or precious metal money system. This is true in principle, but the increase in, say, a gold money system, would be less pronounced than in a fiat money system. The fact is that the latter was deliberately chosen for its vampire-like nature. It benefits the state, banks, and big business at the expense of the general population, keeping them below their economic potential.
Creating Minions
Like a vampire, fiat money infects its victims, turning them into accomplices of the fiat money system. Fiat money quite literally enslaves its users, making them dependent. For instance, fiat money incentivises firms and private households to incur debt and live beyond their means, made possible through artificially low interest rates. People are also encouraged to invest in assets (such as houses and companies) because the chronic inflationary nature of fiat money ensures a continual rise in asset prices. Once people are lured into exposure to fiat money, their economic and financial well-being becomes dependent on the continuation of the inflationary fiat money system and on it being “rescued” by the state and its central bank during times of crisis—even at the expense of those who do not benefit from the system, or benefit much less.
Politicians, bureaucrats, bank employees, and companies that receive government contracts all develop a vested interest in ensuring that the fiat money system is maintained. In this sense, they become fiat money vampire thralls, feeding off the lifeblood of those engaged in productive work by claiming a share of their income.
Moreover, holders of fiat money are the ones who lose out, as fiat money continually loses its purchasing power. In a fiat money system, the central bank ensures that interest rates are kept artificially low—often negative after accounting for inflation—so that savings in time deposits, savings accounts, and bonds are effectively eroded.
Aversion to Light
The vampire and the fiat money system cannot withstand the bright light of day; both will crumble to dust when exposed to sunlight. If people truly understood the negative effects of fiat money and the damage it causes to the world, they would likely reject it—along with the production and employment structures it creates. This is likely why so little is taught about fiat money in schools and universities. Its darker aspects are concealed, with the statist education system as particeps criminis ensuring the bright light of knowledge does not shine on the fiat money system.
Remember that central bank councils are typically referred to as “the guardians of the currency,” and it is said that they “fight” inflation. Nothing could be further from the truth—much like a vampire who welcomes his guests and engages in witty conversation without revealing his true nature. Just as sunlight kills a vampire, sound economic knowledge would destroy the fiat money system, especially when coupled with a simple, well-understood ethic like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Until that day comes, investors should be aware of the serious economic and ethical flaws of fiat money. The uncomfortable truth is that long-term prosperity and peace cannot be sustained under a fiat money system. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest for the bright light of truth to expose and thus end the fiat money system. But how can this be achieved?
By proactively and honestly informing people about the evils of fiat money; by advising them to reduce their dependence on it, both in their lives and their savings; and by promoting a free market for money, while encouraging technological innovations in the monetary sphere that lie beyond the state’s control. Together, these efforts will act like a ray of sunlight striking the vampire-like fiat money system—ultimately causing it to crumble to dust.
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.
