(End of the American Dream)—Remember these days, because these are the days when global leaders could have reversed course before it was too late. 2025 has certainly been a year of war, and it appears that things are poised to go to an entirely new level in the months ahead. If we do not choose to step back from the brink, eventually we will be pushed over the edge. Sadly, we just continue to see escalation after escalation as we tumble toward the unthinkable.
Meanwhile, ominous signs continue to appear in the heavens.
On Sunday night, a “blood moon” eclipse will be visible in both the Middle East and Ukraine. In fact, it will be clearly visible over very large portions of Europe, Africa and Asia…
Stargazers, including in Israel, will have a chance to see a “Blood Moon” on Sunday night during a total lunar eclipse visible across Asia and swaths of Europe, Australia and Africa.
When the Sun, Earth and Moon line up, the shadow cast by the planet on its satellite makes the latter appear an eerie, deep red color that has astounded humans for millennia.
People in Asia, including India and China, will be best placed to see Sunday’s total eclipse, which will also be visible on the eastern edge of Africa as well as in western Australia.
I have written much about the unprecedented series of blood moons that we have been witnessing in recent years.
But most of the population still doesn’t seem to be getting the message.
We really are living at a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and the fate of our society really is hanging in the balance.
Just days after sending a massive barrage of more than 500 drones into Ukraine, Russia just conducted “the largest aerial attack” of the war in Ukraine so far…
Russia attacked Ukraine with 810 drones and decoys – the largest aerial attack on the country since the war began, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy would have started long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelenskyy said in a statement online. He called for sanctions and for strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses.
Up until now, the Russians have avoided attacking government buildings in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, that era of restraint is apparently over…
The government facility that appeared to be struck in the attack was the Cabinet of Ministers building. Russian forces have previously refrained from targeting government buildings in Ukraine’s capital.
The building is the home of Ukraine’s Cabinet, housing the offices of its ministers. Police blocked access to the building as fire trucks and ambulances arrived.
“For the first time, the government building was damaged by an enemy attack, including the roof and upper floors,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said in a statement. “We will restore the buildings, but lost lives cannot be returned.”
This attack deeply alarmed me, because this was definitely a major escalation.
We are being told that so much damage was done to the Cabinet of Ministers building that helicopters had to come in to drop water on the flames…
AFP has said that one of its correspondents witnessed flames engulfing the roof of the cabinet building, verified in emerging photos, with thick smoke rising above the center part of the capital. Several high-rise apartment buildings also were reportedly struck and suffered damage.
The same report noted that for the first time of the conflict, emergency crews are battling blazes at a central government complex, with helicopters seen overhead doing water-drop runs. This government area of the city is typically well-guarded by anti-air defenses, and it looks like the Russians overwhelmed these systems.
The Russians had to know that this attack would enrage western leaders. And that is precisely what happened.
In fact, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is saying that it is time for the U.S. and Europe to “force Russia into an immediate ceasefire”…
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said efforts to appease Vladimir Putin are pointless.
“Russia’s attack on government buildings in Kyiv is yet another reminder that further delays in giving Putin a firm response and attempts to appease him are senseless,” Tusk wrote.
According to him, the United States and Europe must “jointly force Russia into an immediate ceasefire.” He emphasized: “We have all the tools we need.”
Exactly what did he mean by that?
Is he talking about hitting Russia with more sanctions, or is he suggesting that NATO should take direct military action?
Hopefully he is not talking about direct military action by NATO, because that would put us just one step away from nuclear war.
Vladimir Putin has once again warned that if western troops are deployed in Ukraine at any point they will be “legitimate targets” for the Russian military…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that any Western troops in Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets for defeat,” a day after it was announced that dozens of Western countries have pledged to contribute to a potential peacekeeping force there if a ceasefire deal is agreed.
“This is one of the root causes (of the war): trying to involve Ukraine in NATO,” Putin said, speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s Far East on Friday. “So if any troops appear there, especially during the ongoing hostilities, we assume they will be legitimate targets for defeat.”
For now, I think that it is likely that we will see western leaders impose another round of sanctions on Russia.
On Sunday, President Trump told the press that he is ready to take action in that regard…
President Donald Trump signaled on Sunday that his administration is ready to move to the second phase of sanctions against Russia.
“Are you ready to move to the second phase of sanctions against Russia?” a reporter asked the president as he left the White House to head to the US Open in New York.
“Yeah, I am,” the president responded.
Of course imposing more sanctions will not help anything.
We have been imposing sanctions on Russia for more than three years and that has not caused the Russians to back down one bit.
What we really need is for the Ukrainians to accept that they have lost the war and to agree to a fair deal with the Russians. But that is never going to happen.
The Ukrainians still appear to be convinced that they will ultimately be successful in dragging NATO into the conflict, and if that happens nothing will ever be the same again.
As the war in Ukraine escalates, so does the war in the Middle East.
The IDF has initiated an operation that is designed to take full control of Gaza City, and so far they have taken control of 40 percent of it…
Israel has 40% control of Gaza City as the Israel Defense Forces are now preparing to seize the entire area, an Israeli military spokesperson confirmed Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters at a news briefing that his forces had already secured large neighborhoods in its latest offensive.
Israel really does intend for this to be a final showdown with Hamas, and the IDF is not holding anything back.
In fact, for the second day in a row a high-rise tower in Gaza City has been completely leveled by airstrikes…
The Israeli military has destroyed a second major high-rise tower in Gaza City in as many days, after Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces warned people to flee south ahead of a planned offensive to capture the area.
Residents of Sousi Tower, a 15-storey building and well-known landmark, said they were given just 20 minutes to pack what they could and evacuate before warplanes reduced the tower to rubble.
Hamas is being so foolish.
There is no way that they can win this fight.
But they would rather see everything destroyed rather than surrender to Israel.
President Trump has been trying very hard to broker a deal, but so far Hamas does not seem to be inclined to accept what Trump is offering, and now time is running out.
In fact, Trump just posted his “last warning” to Hamas on Truth Social…
Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end! The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Meanwhile, Iranian forces have been placed on a heightened state of alert because apparently they believe that there is a very strong possibility that war with Israel could erupt again very soon…
Iranian officials have warned that their armed forces are on heightened alert and have prepared a significantly strengthened military posture, emphasizing that the likelihood of a conflict with Israel is very high.
Newsweek has reached out to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) for comment.
Why do I write about war so much? There are some people that feel that I am being too “negative” by focusing on the horrifying death and destruction that we have been witnessing.
But that is not the case at all. I am actually trying to save lives. We live in a world that is absolutely teeming with nuclear weapons, and if they are actually used billions of people could die.
People that you know could die. People that you love could die. Over the past year, global events have taken us closer to nuclear war than we have ever been before.
Our window of opportunity to avoid the unthinkable is steadily closing, and we desperately need millions upon millions of voices to demand peace from our leaders before things get completely out of control.
Sadly, most of the population seems to think that this is a great time to party as our leaders continue to drag us in a direction that we should not want to go.
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.