Hi Everyone,
NOTES:
WHAT SHOULD I STORE?
I really like this chart. This is EXACTLY what I have.
I decided to try making my own buttermilk. Instructions said, use 1/4 commercial buttermilk and add enough regular milk to make 1 quart. Then shake, shake, shake and let sit on the counter to “clabber” for 24 hours. Refrigerate. That was three days ago. I noticed in the fridge that it had separated.
I decided to use it today to make waffles. After re-shaking, it looked like really sour milk. Not smooth and thick like buttermilk– instead, watery with little pieces of milk solids. BUT, the waffles were delicious!!!! So, mission accomplished.
GARDEN HAPPENINGS:
Want to test the pH of your soil? Get two samples of soil, in two separate cups or bowls. Now pour 1/2 c. vinegar into one of the cups. If the soil bubbles, its pH is alkaline or above 7. If it doesn’t bubble, add 1/2 c. baking soda and 1/2 c. water and pour in the second sample. If it bubbles, your soil is acidic.
Along the same lines, evidently tomatoes taste sweeter when grown in alkaline soil. So, sprinkle baking soda in the soil around them. (How often? It doesn’t say. Does anyone know this trick?)
I was really excited about the carrots on the right. They are the best I’ve grown. Then there is the one on the left. Pretty difficult to peel, but enjoyable to look at!!!
THIS WEEK’S PURCHASE: vegetables 20 cans
Canned vegetables are back down to $.50 at Winco (except tomatoes). Pick up some corn and beans. These are great ways to extend meals to feed more people. Add corn and beans to canned beef stew for a good meal.
MISC. PURCHASE: Dial soap
A week or so ago I talked about a friend who went to the wound center and they told her to wash her wound with Dial soap. So…I got some. Your turn. Just pick up 4-6 bars of Dial soap and stick it in a cupboard outside.
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES:
Cowboy Monkey Cheese
(don’t ask)
I found this on the website: pantrycookingplus.com
Totally food storage!!
One box Macaroni and Cheese – make as directed
1 can chili – She used Hormel Turkey Chili with no beans
Stir the chili into the prepared mac and cheese.
That’s it!
Picante Chicken
I LOVE to make this dish when I have to feed a lot of people. I just put boneless skinless chicken breasts in the crockpot and pour a jar of picante sauce over the chicken. Set it to low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-6 hours. Then shred the chicken and mix it in with the sauce. THEN, all you need are some flour tortillas, some lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, sour cream, avocados and whatever else you’d like in your tortillas. Everyone makes their own chicken tacos.
In an emergency, you can substitute canned chicken. Just heat it up with the picante sauce.
Some people make and can their own picante sauce. I think it sounds like a lot of work. I just prefer to store 4-6 jars of sauce so that I have some when I want it.
French Pancakes a.k.a. crepes
I LOVE these pancakes. I only make them a couple of times a year (ALWAYS on Christmas morning). I got this from my grandmother who used to make them for us every time we visited. I remember one time that my brothers had a contest to see who could shove an entire crepe into their mouth at one time. Ugh. Boys!
Per person:
In a blender
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 c. milk
Blend. With the blender on, add
- 2 TB sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 c. flour
Blend. Then heat a heavy 10″ skillet, pour a thin layer and tilt the pan to spread it around. Turning the pancakes over is a little bit of a trick. I use a spatula and a spoon, or two spatulas. I like butter and syrup on mine. Put it down the center of the pancake and use a fork to roll up the crepe. My dad used to roll them up, pile strawberries on top and then finish off with whipped cream.
Marti Shelley
In the first minute after a nuclear missile launch, infrared satellites would detect the hot plume from the fired missile. Within 4 minutes after a launch is detected, NORAD teams must report their confidence assessment that an attack is underway. By 9 minutes, the president is notified. Within 10-15 minutes, ground radars detect missiles in mid-flight unless that missile is hypersonic. Within 20 minutes after that first detection, the War Room formats and transmits launch orders. As early as 22 minutes after that first launch detection, ICBMs instantly fire out of silos over a pre-programmed 5-minute fly-out salvo. As early as 27 minutes after launch, enemy missiles begin to detonate over their intended targets. If it is a hypersonic missile fired, depending upon its location when fired, the detonation over the target could be under 15 minutes after launch. Ground radars wouldn’t even detect the missile traveling at a speed close to 11,000 miles per hour in the upper atmosphere. Ground operators will have barely had time to interpret the infrared satellite data. 
Though a nuclear exchange could happen at any time, it will likely be preceded by several events. Smaller conflicts and clashes will occur. Perhaps NATO and Russian forces will clash on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, or Finland. There may be low-yield tactical nuclear artillery used on the battlefield. There would probably be a complete breakdown of diplomatic discussions. Ambassadors will be expelled from countries, and embassies will be closed. High-level threats and saber rattling will occur. Each of these stages could lower the DEFCON level. DEFCON, short for Defense Readiness Condition or simply Defense Condition, is the U.S. military’s ranking system for defense readiness for a potential nuclear attack.
When the DEFCON level drops, you’ll see an immediate exodus of the rich. They’ll be halting any interviews, canceling any appearances, boarding their private jets or yachts, or attempting to charter a jet or yacht to get out of town. Without missiles even in the air, you will see them disappear away to their private islands, safer countries like New Zealand, or the jungle estates of Costa Rica. Many tech billionaires and elites have purchased properties in New Zealand, which isn’t directly targeted by any known nuclear arsenals. It has become the bugout location of choice, but the super-rich still have to get there. They will use the DEFCON dropping to 2 as their reason to go. They’ll flee to their bunkers and ranches in remote locations inaccessible to the common folk. The sky will be full of helicopters whisking the uber-rich or wealthy to safer places.
Imagine your world with no cell phone reception, internet, or broadcasts of any kind. Unlike in the 1950s, we live in a high-tech world. The conditions and equipment are different, and so are the weapons of war. To gain the upper hand before a possible launch, countries would likely launch a massive cyberattack and satellite attack on adversarial countries. It is now known that Russian-based hackers disrupted at least one satellite internet provider at the same time they were launching an invasion of Ukraine. We also know these viruses are sometimes dormant and simply waiting to be activated. A surprise high-altitude detonation from a secret nuclear warhead on a satellite in space would result in an EMP–electromagnetic pulse. That would wipe out electronics and communications for thousands of miles, frying modern circuit boards and overloading transformers. If that extreme happens, you can assume missiles are in the air somewhere.
If you live anywhere near an Air Force Base, and suddenly it seems like every single plane, helicopter, jet, or bomber is in the air and flying overhead, a launch has likely occurred. Most of the nuclear arsenal is in the hands of the air force. Even if those jets and bombers screaming overhead are not nuclear-armed, the government doesn’t want them sitting ducks at the base. They need to be ready for the counter-offensive. High-ranking officials will be in transit to safe locations.
Not to point out the obvious, but the most assured sign your country is engaged in a nuclear war will be the fact that you can see the missiles being launched. If your country initiated the attack, you have under 20 minutes to get to shelter. If your country is counter-attacking, you have less than 5 minutes. Several brightly lit contrails streaking into the sky can be viewed under proper conditions at a range of up to 200 miles away. If it’s just one white streak of a contrail against the sky, you should ensure you aren’t looking towards Edwards AFB, Cape Canaveral, or some other well-known space launch platform. If you see the contrail over the ocean, it’s a sub-based launch. If it’s not nuclear, it’s just as bad as it could spark a nuclear exchange. Even after the contrail streak has ended, a high-altitude rocket or missile will resemble a brightly moving star until its engines snuff out in space. 
After any significant event, from a nuclear event (whether a nuclear power plant melt down or nuclear missile exchange), to a collapse of the banking system resulting in people making runs on the bank, people will initially feel a notable sense of disbelief. They are often dazed, wandering, or locked in their homes. You or others you know might have experienced some of this same disbelief and uncertainty when COVID spreading across the United States and residents were asked to stay home. You may have asked yourself, why is this is happening or is this really happening? During this event, it became a calculation period for many, as they sought answers as to why their world was thrown into chaos leaving them to wonder what they could do to make it through. For many, this threw them into a panic, and they comforted themselves by panic-buying beans, rice, soup, and toilet paper. They bought way more than they needed in most cases, and this caused snarls, upheavals, and collapses in the supply chain. That caused stores to put limits on purchases or sell out of inventory, exacerbating the problem. For the most part, however, these first 48 hours after a major event are marked with an uncertain and unsettling calm as people assess their situation and what just happened. For the prepared, it is a time of taking inventory and determining your safety at your current location. Do you stay or do you go before the masses make it impossible to do otherwise. If you have to get out of the area, your preparedness will keep you moving through to safer areas while others are still wandering around and scratching their heads in disbelief.
For the unprepared, after the initial event has ended, they assume help will soon come. When they realize that help may not be coming, things can turn on a dime. This is where you have to be wise with your next steps. If you’re wanting to run to the store to top off your preps, the risk involved may outweigh any benefit achieved. If you have been preparing, your best strategy is to not venture out. We would never suggest attempting a run to the grocery store or gas station if things are deteriorating rapidly. It’s just not worth it unless there’s a very compelling reason particular to your situation. You do not want to surround yourself with the frighten and unpredictable masses. Knowing that things will move out of this somewhat calm phase to the next more chaotic phase in the aftermath, the momentary relative peace after the disaster may be to get to your location and hunker down because the first week might be even worse than the initial disaster.
This panic buying activity is really when people emerge from their initial shock from the onset of the event in question. They are emerging from an information and resource-gathering phase of their post-crisis experience. After 9/11, people were buying plastic sheeting and duct tape for windows as they feared a biological or dirty bomb terrorist attack. The shock and awe are replaced by a very self-centered compulsion to get what you need before it’s all gone. When people realize services like utilities, medical, police, and fire are offline and may not return online in the foreseeable future, their panic level will increase dramatically. So too, increases the level of crime and vigilantism. Social order is really an agreement between people under the threat of prosecution. We all agree to stop at a red light because we know failing to do so will have consequences, either by hitting someone else who has agreed to the order or getting a ticket and fine. But what happened when the police refused to go to work after Katrina? What happens when the government can merely make threats of enforcement and future prosecution from safer zones miles away? What happens when mass looting in multiple locations cannot be contained?
You need to evaluate this rule at every phase– the lead-up, disaster, and aftermath. Even before an anticipated disaster strikes, you must determine if evacuation is possible and doable. You may need to leave in the aftermath, but roads may be impassable. You must consider this rule the days before the disaster (if it’s an event such as a hurricane you can see coming), during the disaster, and after the disaster.
In small-scale disasters that are manageable, order at some level will be re-established. Maybe the lights will come back on, and some services will be restored along with a schedule and timeline for further restoration of services. Perhaps a curfew and citizen-assisted patrols will re-establish a livable calm. Maybe the disaster zone is cleared, and most everyone has migrated to a safer location. In most cases, that’s what happens. In most disasters, you can get to this point– a restoration of order– when there is the hope of recovery and restoration. 
If you’re a month into a disaster and no help has arrived, the amount of attention you give to rationing your supplies will be even more crucial. But let me emphasize that you must be doing this from the first day. Water usage, counting calories, and just being aware of your overall usage of your inventory will matter more than ever if you’re this far into a post-collapse situation. If you aren’t cutting down trees, moving rubble, or struggling to travel across the landscape but are tucked away and hidden in your home, realize that your caloric intake does not need to be as great. If you are engaged in one of those high-energy endeavors, realize your caloric needs will be greater than the minimal baseline to avoid starvation of 1,200 a day for women and 1,500 a day for men. 
If you make it this far but are still deep in the aftermath with no sign of recovery, you can give up on any recovery coming your way. A disaster of this length is commonly referred to in this community as an SHTF event. That means the government likely will not be re-established. Norms and social order will likely not be re-established. Food and resource supply chains will likely not be re-established. You have to accept that you will be going it alone, rebuilding on your own, and relying upon whatever community you built before, during, or after the initial disaster. Were you part of a social club like a scouting group, a church, a hobbyist group, mutual assistance group, or a club? They may have organically come together to help each other. If you were part of a mutual assistance group, you are in a better situation than most because your group will already have 2 of the P’s– Preps and Plans. 
What are the most likely threats in your area? Have you given that much thought before? Do you live next to a large industrial or manufacturing facility? Do you know what chemicals they likely use? Are they consistently being cited for safety concerns? If you don’t know these things, try to find out. Do you live next to a train track that regularly carries hazardous chemicals? The residents in East Palestine just learned that painful lesson. Does your area have a history of earthquakes, tornadoes, or other natural disasters? What’s the worst event of this type in the historical record? We did a video on the channel providing a detailed risk assessment tool to help you in your research when evaluating the most likely threats in your area which we’ll link to in the description section below.
If you make it beyond the 3-month mark and are in the rebuilding phase or still getting to that phase, understand that your world will likely never return to any semblance of the way it was before. Understand, too, that whatever plans you had that got you to this point may not be tenable in the future. After the three months of what you need to survive is used up, your world may be so significantly changed that it’s a very different prep you must rely upon. That prep is your accumulation of skills and knowledge. Your skills and knowledge are the known, whereas the future is your unknown. Here we suggest that after this blog, you review our video on 3 Months Is All You Need As A Prepper, which we will link to at the end. In that blog, we go into much greater detail about what you need to survive the first 3 months after a disaster and why after 90 days, it will entirely depend upon your skills and knowledge.
Being informed is gathering the information you need to make 3P decisions (Proximity, Preps, and Plans). This is done through observation, communications like radios, Internet, broadcasts, or other electronic-dependent sources. The second part of rule number 5 is knowing what you need to know. If you depend solely on YouTube videos or the internet to learn the skills you need to know, you will be in trouble. Develop skills as a core prep, but also have physical manuals, maps, guides, and printed materials to learn from and continually inform your decisions. Do you know how to forage for food from the wild while others depend solely on canned and mylar packaged food? Do you know how to garden and have seeds to do so? Can you build a precipitation collection system or a solar water distiller? You might not have all the prepping equipment you need. You might not have the space for what you’ll need for the full range of possible disasters, but if you have tools and some know-how or resources to learn from, what you know and can know will get you through the unknowns of the future. What you know before disaster strikes will allow you to pivot in uncertain and unknown times. For instance, you should have paper maps and understand evacuation routes, areas of safety and resources, and the like, but disasters can dramatically alter landscapes. Maps can be rendered almost entirely useless if you don’t also know how to read maps, navigate with a compass, and travel without vehicles. Know what you need to know before disaster strikes, and know how to keep informed after it has.
In your typical drought, water is allocated to farmers and manufacturing, people are asked to reduce consumption, and prices increase. In these prolonged droughts that turn into megadroughts that we’re beginning to see, rolling blackouts are possible. The Glen Canyon 1,320-megawatt dam is 11 meters from its minimal operable water level, referred to as minimum power pool (MPP). That’s bad news for Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming customers. Dams throughout the southwest region are operating at a diminished capacity of 25-50% of maximum output to retain MPP. Hoover Dam, fed by Lake Mead, produces 4.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year. The problem, though, is levels at Lake Mead continue to drop as it dries up. (http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp) Hoover Dam stops operating when Lake Mead gets to 289.56 meters. It’s currently just 31 meters from that depth. At the current rate of decline adjusted for historical season average rates of decline, it’s possible we could see a Las Vegas desperate for power by the end of Summer.
Just 3 of the states we mentioned earlier account for 25% of all the agriculture produced in the United States. That is an incredible 92.8 Billion dollars of agricultural product per year. Something you ate yesterday and something you will try and eat today was likely grown or raised in one of just three states, all of which are currently experiencing extreme drought conditions. When you add all of the states we mentioned in, easily a third of the country’s food supply is produced in these areas suffering from a drought right now.
Flooding depends significantly on the moisture content and compaction of the soil. When rain does fall, does it have time and the appropriate space to be absorbed into the ground, trickle into the aquafers, and remain available for generations to come? Or is the dry and compacted soil too solid to allow for absorption? Or, is the soil already too saturated from the abundance of rain skipping the southwest United States and saturating the northeast? The science of dramatic drought is still being studied, but we know that the drought in one area of the country can result in more extreme weather events in other parts of the country. The drought in the southwest is due to an extreme high-pressure system and warmer temperatures. Ironically, these warmer temperatures increase evaporation and the moisture content of the atmosphere. When that moisture finally does come down in the form of rain, it is less likely to be a light sprinkle over several days, giving the ground a nice slow soak. It’s more likely to be a deluge that can’t absorb into the ground and causes flooding. It does little good to drought areas unless it can be effectively collected, channeled, and contained.
The biggies of agriculture, water rationing, increased natural disasters, the threat of rolling blackouts, and price increases result from the megadrought much of the lower 48 states are suffering through. There isn’t much you can do about that, but you can make a difference and create more stability in your own life in small ways. The easiest way to create greater stability in your own life is to reduce consumption, thereby reducing dependence. Wherever you live, seek ways to become more energy efficient. If that means home battery systems, solar, or just using less energy and installing energy-efficient bulbs, do what works for you. Also, be prepared for the power to go out. Assess your emergency power needs and then implement a plan to get those needs met. It isn’t a question of will the power go out; it’s a question of when, so you have the opportunity to be ready.
Do you have a first aid kit that you can throw in the car at a moment’s notice? Just think about what you would want. At a youth camp, the things we used most were: tweezers for splinters, moleskin for blisters, bandaids, aspirin, aloe vera gel for sunburns, and chapstick (or Mentholatum). This is a good start. Find a “fanny pack” or small backpack, or another small container for your kit, and just start gathering what you probably already have. I have first aid kits in each of my 72-hour kits. These FAKs fit into a quart-size zip lock bag, yet are quite comprehensive. At any craft store, you can get very small baggies (2″ X 2″ or any size you want). I used these small bags to pack a “few” aspirin, Tylenol, Benadryl, tums, Pepto Bismol tablets, and whatever else I wanted. You don’t need a year’s supply of Tylenol. You just want something you might need if you are away from home or stuck someplace unexpectedly. 
a season or two before those tarps are falling apart! In an emergency situation, your tarp could be used as part of a make-shift shelter, or to put UNDER your tent, or as a protector to keep the sun off your tent. We use tarps year round. The next time you go to Lowes, or Home Depot, just pick up one or two and tuck them away in the garage someplace. 50′ of rope will let you tie that tarp to a couple of trees or to another sturdy object.
From Ina Garten on the Food Network
Taken from “There’s A Cow In the Kitchen” by Virginia D. Nelson
At the time of writing this blog, there have been two reported cases of monkeypox in the United States. 22 cases have been confirmed in Canada. Worldwide, there have been 145 reported cases. Monkeypox isn’t a new disease. The first confirmed human case was in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Most of the cases since then have been centered around the same area.
Health officials are worried the virus may currently be spreading undetected through community transmission, possibly through a new mechanism or route. Where and how infections are occurring are still under investigation. Symptoms usually don’t appear until one to two weeks after infection. While the virus is incubating in the body of its host, it is not currently spreading. Its infectious state is after the host shows outward signs of infection in the form of lesions.
If the weather experts are even partially right about their forecasts for the summer months of this year, the crisis we currently find ourselves teetering on the edge of will get substantially worse. Meteorologists, scientists, and even the Farmer’s Almanac all indicate that this Summer will bring record-breaking, searing heat to the United States and parts of Europe. Are you prepared for power and water outages or rationing? Are you prepared for heatwaves and failing harvests? The drought and record high temperatures are projected through this year and as far into the future as we can currently see. Some communities are already feeling the impact. Some states will soon suffer from a lack of electricity and even water, even though it may have just rained where you live on the east coast or the great lakes. Balancing the national grid and maintaining a nationwide food supply will bring these problems to your doorstep. In this video, we will look at the forecast, the known impact it will have on us, and what you should be doing right now to lessen the impact of the disaster we are facing.
An incredible 53 percent of the lower 48 states are currently experiencing some level of drought. 
Let us start off by addressing what may be on many readers minds when reading this blog: it won’t impact me in my part of the country because we don’t live in the Southwest. The reality is that you don’t have to live in a Western state to suffer the consequences. If you already see the price increases at the grocery store, you can expect them to go up even further. If you are accustomed to stocked shelves with a large selection, you may one day be surprised to realize how many of your products are grown or manufactured from resources in Western states. You may pay mere pennies for your water and electricity now, but when water and energy are rerouted, you can expect those costs to rise. The North Electric Reliability Corporation has already warned blackouts could hit much of America’s Midwest. The minor problems of droughts and heatwaves are compounded by extreme weather and infrastructure in disrepair with parts that are unavailable because of supply chain failures. This is another perfect storm of disasters. Throwing more coal in the fire, adding more renewables, and even building a nuclear reactor at this point may help in the short term but will have no effect on the inevitable.
In many western states, water rationing, fines, and even flow restriction devices are inevitable and, in some places, already being implemented. We have already seen flow restrictions regarding electricity, as electricity providers have asked some areas of Texas to avoid charging electric vehicles during peak hours. In the coming months, it is a high probability that several hydroelectric facilities will need to go offline. Energy from other grids will need to be siphoned off to meet demand. All the while, a scorching Summer sun will result in higher demand. Natural gas could help offset the hydroelectric demand. Still, with it more profitable to ship American natural gas to Europe and the high costs and demand for liquid natural gas, it isn’t much of a solution to the overall disequilibrium of the power structure. Natural gas will flow to the highest bidding country, which isn’t necessarily the same country from which it was initially extracted. Finally, the higher temperatures result in drier and windier conditions. That results in a higher probability of devastating fires. Those fires often result from high winds. These fires can easily take out electrical networks. So, people can expect rolling blackouts, high rates, and even periods of extended outages are probable.
First, ensure that your food, water, and energy preps are in order. Having a supply of water, food, and backup energy will make you less susceptible to suffering from either outages or food scarcity. Planting a drought-tolerant vegetable garden will offset some of the food scarcities that may be coming and higher prices that are guaranteed. Replacing sprinklers with drip lines can also benefit you. Before this is over, some communities will rule that you should let your lawn die off or face fines. 
Without stating the obvious, the next 5 to 10 years appear to be filled with challenges. That’s quite the understatement we suppose. Even politicians and world leaders admit that food shortages, supply chain failures, power outages, and weather anomalies will increase in frequency. When creating these types of blogs, our main intent is not to scare people, but rather hopefully bring enough insight to my community to spur you to prepare. We personally see prepping as trying to gather reliable information, making an informed decision, and then pivoting and altering my course. Over the last 15 years we’ve built a couple of businesses from the ground up and one skill that has served us well is trying to look as far as possible to the horizon to see what’s coming and adjust accordingly to put our business and our team in the best position possible. It’s a skill that has served us well. And here’s the thing: it’s not about living in fear when we see challenges coming, but rather acknowledging what we must face. We think that is what separates doomers from preppers. It would be easy to simply discuss how bad things are getting, but rather we want to provide you with actionable solutions that you can implement.
In the last couple of years, we have seen significant catastrophes brewing in our food supply. After the Green Revolution, we realized larger harvests through fertilizers, pesticides, and select varietals. Consolidating smaller farms into large corporate monoculture farms produced more than we could eat. It also puts all our eggs in one basket, as they say. We relied on other countries and growing zones to keep us supplied with what we couldn’t or wouldn’t grow. Receiving those exports depended upon a supply chain that was functioning. This year, the prices for raw materials that constitute the fertilizer market — ammonia, nitrogen, nitrates, phosphates, potash, and sulfates — have tripled. The jet streams that push the weather and distribute the rains have, for the most part, stalled. The Western United States and parts of Europe are entering successive years of the worst drought in their recorded history. The heat and dry weather decimate crops, creating an environment conducive to high winds and wildfires. Farmers have to choose, even while food demand is high and prices are equally high, whether bringing a crop to harvest or a herd to market is economically feasible. Finally, a war in Europe’s bread basket has stopped the flow of 29% of the world’s wheat alone, but also sunflowers, corn, cooking oil, natural gas from which fertilizers are made, and more. Countries have responded by hoarding food and stopping exporting food and other resources.
We have already touched upon the megadrought, but the weather really needs its own category. When the water levels drop too low, hydroelectric dams have to reduce capacity or go offline altogether. This strains the national grid as loads are balanced to compensate for the reduced generation. Demand rises with the extreme heatwaves and extreme freezing during winter. We saw what these weather extremes can do with California’s rolling blackouts and the power outage in Winter in Texas. Expect to see community cooling and heating centers as people struggle to maintain a livable environment despite the extreme highs or lows of the mercury. Expect to see deserts in the middle of cities and towns where the water no longer flows but is trucked in and distributed. As in the late 1970s, expect states to ban the use of landscape irrigation systems. People will be asked to let their lawns die off as water is channeled to corporations for bottling, manufacturing, and critical agricultural needs.
The super-rich have been buying up water rights for the last several years. We warned about this in many videos. What do they know that you will soon discover? Water is a commodity. On a blue planet, just a tiny fraction of the water is drinkable. Just a small fraction of the water can be used to grow food. Megadroughts have revealed how precarious access to water is. While some areas of the world are experiencing multi-year mega-droughts, other parts of the world are experiencing deluges of rain and flooding. The jetstreams are slowing, and weather patterns are slowing. So to, the distribution of water is slowed and unequal. Access to water in the next 5-years will become a crisis. Rationing and water theft are just the beginning. As this megadrought extends further into the next five years, expect a significant shift in population density away from dry regions to wetter climates. Also, expect once fertile farming areas to become too dry for agricultural endeavors. There is a real possibility that we will see another Dust Bowl in the next 5 to 10 years.
Mass migrations result from terrible weather, energy and food instability, lack of water or too much water, and war. When there is no food or water or means to regulate your environment, moving to a better location is essential to survival. This exposes people to more potential zoonotic illnesses as ecosystems crash into each other. As more and more wild animals are driven into exposure to domestic animals and people, the potential for another fatal zoonotic disease increases exponentially. Expect governments to try and contain mass migrations at their borders. Tempers will flare. In some countries, governments will collapse completely. Geo-political instability will be a reality for many.
Again, we are not here to simply point out the doom and gloom we forecast in our collective future. While there isn’t a way for you or me to prevent another Carrington Event, flood, megadrought, power outage, war, financial collapse, or whatever, prepping in the right way provides us with a means to dampen the effects of these events. Prepping provides us with some insurance against the worst that life can throw at us. You can work from a plan by taking the FREE Risk Assessment we will make available in the comments below to understand your most pressing threats and how to protect yourself against them. Or, you can sign up for our free Prepper’s Starter Guide which we’ll provide below. 
We can just examine the wheat problem to understand the greater agricultural problem we are facing. Wheat is part of the grass family of plants, including all the major cereals, maize, rice, barley, oats, rye, millet, and more. It’s easier to grow than fruits and vegetables. It simply requires about 8 hours of sunlight per day, consistent watering of 12 to 15 inches over a growing season, and nutrient-rich soil. Add to this that you need individual, or corporate farmers growing enough, unfettered supply lines, steady demand, and the known requirements for a good harvest are all established. A good harvest resulting from the successful fulfillment of all those requirements means your country has enough for its people and can then selloff and send wheat to countries deficient in one or more of those requirements but high in demand.
Being able to secure water must be a top prep in your inventory. It is also one of the biggest global problems right now. As one of my earlier videos pointed out, shifting weather patterns and severe droughts in the western United States and parts of Europe are beginning to result in severe problems. Not only is agriculture impacted, but the hydroelectric industry is having to throttle back or cease the operation of some power generating plants. At the same time, higher temperatures increase electrical cooling demands. Higher winds because of the higher temperatures result in downed powerlines, and the cost of energy goes up, brownouts, rolling blackouts, and blackouts become a reality for many. Here too, there isn’t good news on the horizon. We are are in for a potentially challenging summer as high heat and drought remain the norm.
Russia was still managing to sell some of its grain, despite added costs and risks for shippers, but in March, with the war continuing to escalate on physical and economic fronts, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation signed decree 362 providing for the temporary ban of exports of wheat, meslin, rye, barley and maize to the countries within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), notably exempting Belarus. Ukrainian silos, undamaged by the fighting, are full of corn and barley that isn’t getting to markets. Farmers have nowhere to store their next harvest, due in late June, which might then rot. They also lack the fuel and labor to plant successive crops. Russia is blocking exports from Ukraine out of the port of Odessa, and Russia is likely feeling the lack of some supplies it requires, like seeds and pesticides that it usually purchases from the EU. As this war drags on into its fourth month, hundreds of millions of people globally will fall into poverty, food scarcity, and famine. The political ramifications, societal upheaval, and discord will create further global instability and complicate the supply chain problems everyone is feeling.
You don’t have to agree with your neighbor’s opinion of who is to blame to recognize the problem exists. You don’t have to agree with any expert opinion, pundit, politician, or scientist to acknowledge that we are seeing several issues converge into an even more enormous singular challenge to our survival and way of life. History is filled with examples of people who accurately heeded the signs and prepared when those around them did not do the same. The parallels to what is happening in the world right now and the extreme impact it will have on your way of life are pretty obvious once you remove the obfuscations of rhetoric and the blame game. Not seeing these imminent threats at this point borders on willful omission and extreme denial. In fairness, though, it is hard for many to see the danger of a multi-year megadrought when your area has plenty of water. It is difficult to see how conflicts and shortages around the world could possibly impact us in our small community far removed from the global stage. Yet, these disasters are stacking right up next to each other. They will compound any natural disasters we continue to face annually. The need for greater preparedness is very, very real.
Workforce and employment numbers are an often overlooked side effect of higher gas prices. Precisely when economies are struggling to regain their footing and recover from the pandemic lockdowns and repeated supply chain disruptions, millions are determining whether employment in a job that doesn’t make ends meet is tenable for the future. This will increase the ranks of the unemployed while also pumping the breaks on the economy. Put your hopes for an economic recovery off for the next year or two at the very best.
When fuel prices go up, the cost of production goes up. Whether you are mining silver or growing corn, it doesn’t matter. Raw materials require low-cost fuel to remain profitable. When the cost of generating the raw materials and getting those materials to manufacturers and consumers outweighs profit, farmers opt not to grow, and companies scale back production even as demand remains high. High demand and lower output results in price increases and even outright shortages.
Even if that farmer grows corn for feed grain and gets it to the rancher and the local factories, fuel-related costs are associated with the next phase- manufacturing. The manufacturers have to process these raw materials into usable consumer products. Low-cost fuel is required to get the materials to the plant, process them, and distribute the final product to stores and retailers. High-priced fuel results in scaling back operations or raising prices, or both– even as consumer demand remains high or increases.
When production, manufacturing, and distribution costs increase for every imaginable product or service, you can imagine that retail prices on everything go up to maintain profits. Nobody retails anything at cost, or there wouldn’t be any value in selling anything. Markups range from 1% to 1000% or more, but there is always a markup. The cost of producing the oil, paying workers, taxing the oil, supplying manufacturers, manufacturing usable products, and getting those products to markets and consumers get passed on to the consumer. This can result in supply failures, shortages, panic buying, and lopsided supply and demand models. In a nutshell, the cost of every single thing in an oil-driven and oil-dependent economy goes up and up and up.
When manufacturers scale production on chemicals essential for water treatment, municipal water prices go up. When the fossil fuel price goes up, utility prices go up. With peaking demand and reduced supply, the chance of grid failure is more significant. The parts needed to maintain a healthy power grid are often sourced overseas. With supply chains continuing to struggle, it is only a matter of time when the components required for a healthy grid are no longer available. Fossil fuels are non-renewable and required for all the other fundamental utilities and services you and everyone else have become dependent upon since the first three-phase alternating current power transmission at 110 kV took place in 1907 between Croton and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The short answer is no. As we mentioned, there isn’t a solution to fossil fuel addiction. As we mentioned at the beginning of the blog, things are about to get a whole lot worse than it already is and far worse than they are currently predicting. Profits will be maintained by scaling production to always maintain a demand imbalance. After all, what can you do about it? Go solar or buy an electric vehicle? Those panels require fossil fuels, mining, manufacturing, and distribution to create. The same is true for the electric car, but it also requires fossil fuels to get its charge. The world has realized a heyday of manufacturing and distribution, but that’s all changing in real-time. So, what can we expect over the next several years when it is clear that we will not see costs coming down?
So we have to tell you that no single policy or plan, no pundit or political party change, no increase in drilling or ramped up production is enough to dig our ways out of this one. When world leaders are coming out and acknowledging the possibilities of food and power shortages, there’s a problem far worse than that rounding the corner. So we cannot accurately tell what will be the catalyst to change our trajectory or how far in the future that change will come, but that doesn’t leave us entirely without a plan. In fact, it presents us with specific opportunities.