One of the best parts about having a site dedicated to the economy in general and precious metals in particular is that we get to see what draws people to the site. Spikes in traffic follow bad economic news, but the mid-term trends are what we really find interesting. Over the last couple of months, even when there are no new updates on the economy, traffic has been steadily rising.
Much of the interest we’re seeing is coming from “preppers.” Unlike times of old, modern-day “preppers” aren’t just the people living off the grid who can grow their own food, field dress a deer, and power their house with solar panels, wind turbines, and grain alcohol. Many people in cities and suburbs are storing food and preparing for economic collapse. One of the best ways to do that is to secure physical precious metals.
Invariably whenever I mention precious metals as a component of prepping, someone hops in the comments and notes that you can’t eat silver coins. They’re right. They often also note that in a complete societal collapse, it will be easier to barter with useful items than with precious metals. This may also be true. But there are three important reasons to consider adding more physical precious metals to the list of items you store at home.
Before I discuss that, I have to mention our sponsors. As my long-time readers and listeners know, I do NOT pick sponsors based on how much they pay. Some of my sponsors are actually quite stingy with their payouts, but I keep them because I believe in their products. Conversely, I’ve dropped sponsors who pay fabulously but whose products I cannot rightly endorse. This is why the precious metals companies we endorse had to go through a lot of vetting before I ever considering putting my name behind them.
We currently recommend two precious metals companies. This comes after over a year of being courted by nearly two dozen companies and individuals. After all, our audience is generally conservative and often has cash or retirement they’d like to use towards precious metals, so it makes sense that I get calls or emails on a weekly basis.
I chose one company to start. Our Gold Guy is operated by an America First patriot who knows the industry inside and out and is willing to make personal contact with those who are interested in purchasing precious metals. We recently added GoldCo, which is also a patriotic company. The reason we have two now is because they offer a wide range of products. As a bigger company, they may not give the personal customer service that my readers and listeners will get from Our Gold Guy, but sometimes people just want as many options as possible. Whether you go with Our Gold Guy or GoldCo, you’ll be very pleased with your purchase.
The first reason to consider precious metals as a “prepper” item is because we may not be facing a full-blown societal collapse. If what we’re seeing today leads to a major economic downturn or depression but not the apocalypse, then it behooves people to protect their wealth and property with precious metals. Gold and silver are generally considered to be the perfect hedges in a volatile market. Currently the chances of economic stability in the near future are slim. The chances of the economy rebounding before experiencing major changes in the long-term market are practically zero.
If the crap hits the fan in a hard way and we DO experience complete economic and even societal collapse in America, then it won’t matter if your investments are in gold, silver, stocks, cryptocurrency, or anything else. Just as you can’t eat gold, you can’t eat your shares of Chick-fil-A. Those who argue that you shouldn’t buy anything that can’t have tangible value in a post-apocalyptic society aren’t considering the other levels of downturn or depression that we may be facing instead.
Second, the dollar seems to be preparing to head in the wrong direction very soon. With the greatest potential in most of our lifetimes of the dollar no longer being the world reserve currency or driving oil purchases through the petrodollar, it is becoming increasingly possible that it could truly crash. Some will point to cryptocurrencies as the way to go in that scenario, and I’m not completely against that notion. But the push for regulations and central bank digital currencies make cryptocurrencies inherently risky. Then, there’s the necessary attachment to technology that reduces their tangible value, possibly to nil. Having gold or silver coins in the safe is a much more prudent bet.
The last reason precious metals are great for wealth protection for many, preppers or not, is the scenario in which the crap does NOT hit the fan. It may seem unlikely to many of us now that things can get better before they get much worse, but the world can change rapidly. While it’s definitely a good idea to stock up on food, water, medical supplies, and ammunition first, having some gold or silver handy during a recovery will actually put people in better situations. While I have nothing against those who stockpile hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition just in case, there’s no easy way to swap that investment for another if things go back to normal.
As I’ve said dozens of times and will likely say dozens of times more in the future, precious metals are NOT a primary need. Like they say, you can’t eat it. You may not be able to barter with it very easily in a societal collapse. But for those who want to protect their wealth, it’s a good direction to head AFTER you have your food, water, ammunition, bug out plan, medical needs, and other preparations made.
If that’s you, then check out Our Gold Guy, GoldCo, or both.
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.
