(End of the American Dream)—We were warned that our planet was becoming increasingly unstable. Perhaps now more people will start listening. We were warned that there would be enormous earthquakes, we were warned that more volcanoes would start erupting, and we were warned that this would be a historic year for wildfires.
Almost every day now we are hearing about some new major natural disaster that has happened somewhere in the world. What we are witnessing is not even close to normal, and many believe that what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.
On Monday, Colombia was shaken by the largest earthquake ever to hit that nation…
A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck western Colombia on Monday, killing more than 100 people, injuring dozens and causing major damage across the region. It was the largest quake to hit the South American country on record.
The epicenter was in San José del Palmar, a community in the rural Chocó province about 250 miles west of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, the U.S. Geological Survey and its counterpart in Colombia reported. The quake hit at about 8:34 a.m. ET and was followed by a 5.0 magnitude aftershock less than an hour later, USGS reported.
At least 111 people were killed and at least 87 were injured, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella said. He declared an emergency to expedite funding for the quake recovery.
What in the world is happening to South America?
Less than two months ago, Venezuela was shaken by the largest earthquakes to hit that country in more than 100 years.
Now tragedy has struck once again.
The magnitude 7.4 earthquake that just pummeled Columbia was so powerful that it could be felt as far away as Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela…
Harrowing footage taken from across the country showed the façades of buildings crumbling and people huddling in the street, unable to stand up straight as the ground beneath them rocked violently.
In one particularly shocking video, a church’s spire was seen falling off and crumbling into rubble in front of a terrified crowd of onlookers.
Families were held back from the scene by local police as a cloud of dust filled the air.
The quake was felt as far away as Ecuador, Panama to the north, and Venezuela – which was struck by a pair of devastating tremors just a few months ago – and prompted building evacuations in Bogota.
An earthquake of this magnitude is not supposed to happen in Columbia.
As South America is repeatedly shaken, many of those that are living on the west coast of the United States are wondering if they are next.
Meanwhile, within the past couple of days there has been an alarming level of volcanic activity around the globe…
These eruptions are not just limited to one geographic area.
They are literally occurring all over the world.
On Saturday, volcanic ash from an eruption of Mt. Sakurajima turned the sky dark “within minutes”…
An eruption occurred on Sakurajima volcano in Kagoshima Saturday evening, August 8, sending an ash plume up to 2,200 meters into the air. The eruption sent a moderate amount of ash drifting toward Kagoshima city, turning the sky dark within minutes.
Personally, the volcano that I am the most concerned about in Japan is Mt. Fuji.
When it finally blows, I wouldn’t want to be located anywhere in the Tokyo area.
On the other side of the planet, Mt. Etna is suddenly going absolutely nuts…
Mount Etna continued intense explosive and effusive activity on August 10, 2026, with abundant ash from Voragine and multiple active lava flows. Catania Airport suspended arrivals until 17:00 LT (15:00 UTC) as volcanic ash affected operations, while Toulouse VAAC maintained Etna’s Aviation Color Code at Red.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), Etna Observatory, reported at 10:16 LT (08:16 UTC) on August 10 that surveillance cameras showed intense and continuous explosive activity at Voragine crater. Volcanic bombs were falling in the summit area, while abundant ash was dispersing toward the south-southwest.
Two active vents at approximately 2 750 m (9 020 feet) and 2 360 m (7 740 feet) elevation were feeding several lava flows that formed complex lava fields. The most advanced active fronts are near 1 500 m (4 920 feet) elevation at the base of the northern wall of Valle del Bove, in the Monte Rinatu area, INGV specialists said.
An eruption of Mt. Etna can be mesmerizing.
But it also a symptom of a very real geological reality.
Volcanoes throughout the world are becoming more active, and I believe that this will be a really big story in the months ahead.
At the same time, global weather patterns have gone completely nuts.
In fact, last month was the hottest July in the entire history of the continental United States…
The contiguous United States set a record for its hottest month ever in July, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Last month averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl’s July 1936 by an eighth of a degree.
Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter than normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains and Southeast.
When things are this hot and this dry, it is inevitable that there will be wildfires.
And this has certainly been a wildfire season that we will never forget.
In Oregon, more than 2 million acres have already burned to the ground.
If you can believe it, at this stage one wildfire has accounted for 442,000 acres all by itself…
The new wildfires are the Woodrat Mountain and Wrights Spring fires in southern Oregon and the Cottonwood fire in central Oregon. More than 30 wildfires continue to burn 2 million acres across the state.
In southeast Malheur County, the Big Grass fire ballooned overnight to 442,000 acres, making it now one of the five largest wildfires in Oregon history.
Next door in Washington, firefighters are still trying to control three large wildfires that have devastated large portions of the Spokane area…
In eastern Washington, firefighters are continuing to battle a complex of three major wildfires near Spokane—the Old Trails Fire, Autumn Lane Fire, and Fairview Fire—though containment was improving.
But, as of the latest Incident Command report on Sunday, the Autumn Lane fire was 61 percent contained, Old Trails was 43 percent contained, and Fairview was 43 percent contained.
According to the latest update from AllFirefighter on Friday, the Spokane Complex Fire has burned over 10,200 acres combined, damaging or destroying around 921 structures, and forcing 65,000 evacuations.
Authorities are telling us that this is the worst disaster in the entire history of Spokane.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Across the border, a wildfire that erupted “like a bomb” over the weekend has already consumed 53 square miles…
A raging wildfire that erupted ‘like a bomb’ has forced tens of thousands of Canadians to evacuate their homes.
Dozens of residents were rescued by aircraft while thousands of others took to traffic-jammed roads in an effort to escape the devastating Bald Range fire.
The blaze has ravaged at least 53 square miles across British Columbia since it erupted Friday.
We have never seen a wildfire season quite like this.
Even if you do not live in an area where wildfires are raging, there is still a very good chance that you are being seriously affected by the smoke…
Wildfire smoke is once again pouring across the United States following a weekend of new blazes across Canada’s British Columbia.
A total of 11 new fires were reported across that province, where a state of emergency was declared on Saturday, with thousands forced to evacuate near Summerland, located about 40 miles north of the British Columbia-Washington state border.
Wildfire smoke is going to continue to pour across much of the continental United States for weeks.
It has even been detected as far south as Florida.
This is the world that we live in now.
Chaos has just become a normal part of our lives.
Unfortunately, a lot more chaos is on the way, and the vast majority of the population is totally unprepared for what is coming.
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.
