(End of the American Dream)—We were expecting global events to accelerate in 2026, but what we have witnessed throughout the month of January so far has been quite a shock to the system. Everywhere around us, things are going totally haywire. Gold and silver are skyrocketing in price, we are on the verge of a cataclysmic war with Iran, conflict has erupted on the streets of major U.S. cities, and we just keep getting hammered by natural disaster after natural disaster.
So many things are happening that I couldn’t pick just one to write about, and so I am throwing a whole bunch of stuff into this article. The following are 10 ways that global events just went completely bonkers…
#1 The price of silver just hit 117 dollars an ounce and the price of gold just hit 5,400 dollars an ounce. In a desperate attempt to get precious metals prices under control, CME Group just hiked margin requirements again…
Following a record surge in silver prices, the CME Group has increased margin requirements for COMEX silver futures. The exchange announced that margin for non-high-risk accounts will rise from 9% to 11%, while high-risk accounts will see an increase from 9.9% to 12.1%. Additionally, margin requirements for platinum and palladium futures will also be adjusted.
The CME Group stated that this adjustment, effective after the market close, is part of a routine assessment of market volatility to ensure sufficient collateral coverage. Earlier this month, the exchange shifted from fixed to percentage-based margin requirements for precious metal futures.
#2 Amid reports that President Trump is considering a naval blockade of Iranian oil, a top Iranian official has issued a “thinly veiled threat” to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz…
An Iranian military official said the country can control which ships can pass through the crucial Strait of Hormuz as US President Donald Trump ramped up military threats.
The thinly veiled threat to halt some traffic on the Hormuz came as a US aircraft carrier arrived in the region, leading Trump to demand negotiations with threats of “violence”.
Mohammad Akbarzadeh, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, said in a Fars News Agency report that Iran has “complete control” over the strait, a bottleneck for oil exports from the Middle East Gulf.
Let’s hope that the Iranians do not decide to do this.
We are being warned that if the Strait of Hormuz is shut down, it could instantly cause “a global oil and gas crisis”…
Industry experts cautioned that a military confrontation could provoke Iran to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that that connects the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea and through which nearly a third of the world’s seaborne crude flows.
“A disruption through the Strait of Hormuz could cause a global oil and gas crisis” especially when considering the “desperate and ill advised lengths the current Iranian regime may go to” should they find themselves increasingly backed into a corner with their power and lives at stake, said Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee.
About 13 million barrels per day of crude oil transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, accounting for roughly 31% of global seaborne crude flows, data provided by market intelligence firm Kpler showed.
#3 Marco Rubio just told the U.S. Senate that we may have to “preemptively prevent” the Iranians from attacking U.S. forces in the Middle East…
Rubio said during the Wednesday Senate Foreign Relations Hearing focused on Venezuela, “And so I think it’s wise and prudent to have a force posture within the region that could respond and potentially, not necessarily what’s going to happen, but if necessary, preemptively prevent the attack against 1000s of American servicemen and other facilities in the region. And our allies.” But ironically this is just after admitting the US ordered additional assets to the region in the first place, which are the same assets now supposedly under threat by Tehran.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but that’s I think what you’re seeing now is the ability to posture assets in the region to defend against what could be an Iranian threat against our personnel,” the secretary of state said.
Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei is warning that if the Iranians are attacked they will strike Tel Aviv in response…
Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned that any US military action would be met with a harsh response, including strikes on Tel Aviv, in a Hebrew post on X/Twitter on Wednesday.
Shamkhani wrote that a “limited strike is an illusion,” adding that any US military move, “from any source and at any level,” would be treated as an act of war.
He cautioned that Iran’s response would be “immediate and unprecedented,” aimed at “the aggressor, the heart of Tel Aviv, and all supporters of the aggressor.”
#4 Giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would put us right on the brink of nuclear war with Russia, but apparently such a move is being strongly considered anyway…
Behind closed doors in Washington, a discreet but intensifying effort is underway to push the United States toward supplying Ukraine with its most far-reaching conventional strike capability yet: ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to Kyiv Post. The campaign, described by those involved as deliberate and methodical rather than public or confrontational, is being driven by a familiar figure in U.S.–Ukraine defense diplomacy — Dan Rice.
Rice, the president of the American University in Kyiv and a former special adviser to Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has emerged once again as a central intermediary between Kyiv’s strategic needs and Washington’s internal debates. His latest push comes as the war enters a phase defined by deep-strike warfare, long-range attrition, and growing questions about escalation, deterrence, and end-state leverage.
There is a lot of pressure to do something to shake things up in Ukraine.
Western leaders are becoming increasingly desperate, because negotiations with the Russians are going nowhere, and Russian forces are steadily gobbling up even more territory…
During an inspection of the Zapad group of forces, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov summarized the interim results of offensive operations in the special military operation zone, noting significant territorial gains since the beginning of this year. According to the head of the military department, 17 settlements have come under Russian control, and the total area of liberated territories amounts to more than 50 square kilometers. A key achievement on this section of the front was the capture of the strategically important Kupyansk-Uzlovaya junction, where the clearing of city blocks is currently being completed. Meanwhile, the situation of Ukrainian forces near Kupyansk itself is assessed as critical: approximately 800 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers are trapped, effectively encircled, as a result of the rapid maneuver of Russian units.
#5 We have been told how “peaceful” Alex Pretti was over and over again. But now video evidence has emerged that reportedly shows that he has a history of anti-ICE violence…
A protester believed to be Alex Pretti was filmed spitting at a federal SUV, smashing its tail light and fighting with cops 11 days before the shooting that shocked America.
The News Movement said facial analysis of their new video gave a 97 percent probability that the man in their report is Alex Pretti.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was killed on January 24 after being shot 10 times by Department of Homeland Security officers.
#6 It looks like we are about to have another government shutdown. At this moment, the Democrats are making three major demands that the Trump administration will consider to be quite unacceptable…
With an increasingly likely partial government shutdown only days away, Senate Democrats outlined three main demands for reforming the Department of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in the wake of Alex Pretti’s killing.
First, they want President Donald Trump to end sweeping immigration checks known as “roving patrols.” They also demand more accountability for ICE and Border Patrol, including independent investigations and stricter use-of-force standards. Lastly, they want “masks off” officers – and “body cameras on.”
#7 What is the FBI searching for in Georgia? On Wednesday, it was being reported that the FBI had just conducted a search of the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center…
FBI agents were seen Wednesday carrying out a search at an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, a location that became ground zero for concerns and complaints about voter fraud beginning in 2020.
Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a new facility that state officials opened in 2023 that was designed to streamline their election processes.
It was not immediately clear what the FBI agents were investigating, but Fox News Digital is told the probe is related to the 2020 election.
#8 Have you read the novel “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley? Sadly, our society is embracing eugenics a little bit more with each passing day. For example, one company is now giving parents the chance to select their new baby from a “menu” of embryos that have been conceived through IVF…
“Pick your baby.” The invitation is now not just for little girls choosing their baby doll or for “Sims” gamers. It is the draw for real-life couples trying to conceive a baby through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to the company Nucleus IVF+, which has chosen that unsettling invitation for their marketing campaign and URL: www.pickyourbaby.com.
Couples who sign up with Nucleus IVF+ are presented with an electronic “menu” of up to 20 embryos they have conceived, allowing them to view the sex of each baby, their anticipated hair and eye color, and predictions about the height and IQ of each as well as their risk for various diseases. The company notes that all these characteristics are only framed in terms of probabilities — they cannot make any guarantees.
#9 The historic winter storm that more than 200 million Americans just experienced turned out to be a real nightmare. Daniel Holdings is telling us that at his home in Kentucky trees were literally exploding all around him…
That ice coated the trees and, as we used to say in the Air Force, made the ground as “slick as snail snot.” After the ice, the precipitation turned to sleet and that’s when things went bad.
I read an article a couple of days before that talked about exploding trees in Wisconsin, I think. I thought to myself, “Come on, there’s no such thing! That has to be clickbait!”
But shortly after 9 am Sunday, trees started exploding all over our hill community. It was some sight to see. The tops of trees were ripping themselves off of their trunks and raining down to the ground. Big pines were also falling to the ground. In a span of about 15 minutes, all over the neighborhood you heard a frightening succession of whomp, whomp, whomp! It was so surreal.
The lots on either side of our house are filled with huge pines, so yes, we were not spared from this tree terror. One particular tree exploded and it took out our power line and internet cable. Thank the Lord that not one of those trees hit our house or car, but the damage was done.
#10 Should we be concerned by what is happening at Yellowstone? Apparently a “Chicago-sized bulge” is rising right now…
There’s a Chicago-sized bulge in Yellowstone National Park, and it’s still rising.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem remains one of the most dynamic places on the planet. This is largely due to the ongoing volcanic, geothermal, and hydrothermal activity that keeps the park’s geysers erupting and hot springs bubbling.
Mike Poland, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, and other scientists are monitoring an area of ongoing uplift on the northern rim of the Yellowstone Caldera, near Gibbon Falls.
I told you that there was a lot to talk about today.
So much is happening in our world at this moment that it really is exceedingly difficult to keep up with it all.
These are such challenging times, but they are also such exciting times.
As for me, I can’t wait to see what is going to happen tomorrow, because it feels like global events are about to hit some sort of a major crescendo.
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.
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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.