(End of the American Dream)—A nuclear war is not going to start because everyone agrees that they want one to happen. Rather, a nuclear war will start because someone decides that the next escalation will still be manageable. At this moment leaders all over the world are engaged in a very foolish game of brinksmanship.
They are all calculating how close to the edge they can go without falling over. In such an environment, it will only take one very stupid mistake to set off a chain of events that nobody will be able to control. We are now closer to nuclear war than we have ever been in our entire history, and that is a very dangerous place to be.
Most Americans do not realize that a military conflict between Russia and our allies in Europe could literally erupt at any time, and recently there have been some very alarming incidents…
In the past few weeks, an Italian Nato fighter has downed a Russian drone over Lithuania, a Russian frigate has fired emergency flares at a Danish military helicopter, and details of an official Lithuanian evacuation plan in the event of full-scale invasion have been reported.
There have also been a number of cyberattacks that have been blamed on the Russians.
Earlier today, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that his nation is “preparing for major hybrid attacks” and that Germany is ready to respond to such attacks “swiftly and very clearly”…
German chancellor Friedrich Merz has said Germany is “preparing for major hybrid attacks, including severe ones,” and would respond “swiftly and very clearly.”
The embattled chancellor said the growing number of incidents came amid Russia’s “growing perplexity” at its “unsuccessful conduct of the war in Ukraine.”
He said it’s “important that we refuse to be intimidated by cyberattacks, drones, and online propaganda.”
So exactly what is Merz saying?
Is he indicating that Germany will respond militarily to future “hybrid attacks” that are blamed on Russia?
The Ukrainians would love that.
They have been trying to drag NATO forces into the war for years.
Of course if our European allies get dragged into the war in Ukraine, we will get dragged into the war in Ukraine as well.
Are you prepared to send family members over to the killing fields in eastern Ukraine?
In a previous article, I discussed the fact that all 18-year-old men in Germany are now being required to report for mandatory military medical exams.
Obviously the Germans are preparing for a potential war with Russia.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that the Russians have no intention of attacking Germany or any of our other European allies.
However, he is also warning that if the Russians are attacked they “will have to respond”…
That certainly sounds rather ominous.
Putin is also warning that if a war with Europe erupts it could easily escalate to “a fatal point of no return”…
“We must understand that the moment when nothing can be changed can come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalation and increasingly harsh retaliatory measures is leading to a fatal point of no return,” Putin said.
Needless to say, he was referring to the use of nuclear weapons.
There should be no doubt about that.
Putin is a strategist.
He realizes that he is outgunned by NATO’s conventional forces, and so if war with NATO erupts Putin says that it could become necessary to use unconventional weapons…
He eventually confirms that “if it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation – in this case we mean Kaliningrad, but may be some other territories as well – of course, naturally, immediately what will be on the agenda is the use … of all weapons that we are the disposal of our country.”
He says that with Nato a potential adversary “exceeding us,” Russia would not have “many means to counter such a threat,” and would need to use its “competitive advantages.”
But Putin says that the risk of using nuclear weapons is only serious if Nato’s threats against Russia are serious.
To me, it is very interesting that Putin mentioned Kaliningrad.
Lately, there have been some experts in the western world that have been suggesting that western forces could either seize or blockade Kaliningrad and use that as leverage to force a settlement of the war in Ukraine.
In response, the Russians have made it exceedingly clear that nuclear weapons could be used in such a scenario…
Russia’s warning that it could resort to nuclear weapons if NATO attempts to isolate Kaliningrad is raising new concerns that the heavily militarized Russian exclave could become a flashpoint between Moscow and the alliance, as experts warn the territory is already being used to pressure Europe through hybrid warfare.
Moscow warned NATO in a diplomatic document that it was prepared to use “the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons” if alliance members attempted to isolate Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Kaliningrad, a Russian territory geographically separated from the Russian mainland, sits on the Baltic Sea between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and hosts significant Russian military assets, including elements of Moscow’s Baltic Fleet.
Of course this threat was not just conveyed by a diplomatic document that the general public did not get to see.
Two days ago, the Russian Embassy in the UK posted the following on X…
Wow.
The Russians are not messing around.
Meanwhile, they continue to bomb the living daylights out of Kyiv…
Russia unleashed a widely anticipated air campaign against Ukraine’s energy grid on Wednesday, hitting power facilities and infrastructure around Kyiv and other regions in the heaviest combined attack on energy sites in months.
The strikes, in which Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed, followed days of intensifying drone barrages primarily on the capital, a prelude to what many Ukrainians expect to be a winter of attacks intended to plunge cities into cold and darkness when Ukraine is short of air defences.
Ukraine’s state power grid operator Ukrenergo said it had imposed emergency power cuts as a result of the attack in Kyiv and three surrounding regions — the first time such a measure had been imposed in the capital since the spring.
It is going to be a really cold winter in Ukraine.
Sadly, there is no end to the war in sight.
Here in the United States, President Trump just told the media that it appears that the terrorist that attempted to hijack a plane that was headed to Tel Aviv has links to Iran…
US President Donald Trump suggests the flydubai pilot who tried to crash a plane full of Israelis may be linked to Iran.
Asked by reporters outside the White House whether the pilot is linked to Iran, Trump responds, “We’re working on it. They’re being very open with us. I would say the answer based on what I’m hearing is yes.”
This could potentially be used as justification for another round of military strikes.
If the terrorist’s links to Iran can be confirmed, Trump is threatening to hit Iran “very hard”…
Trump also warned that if the link is established to Iran, the United States would retaliate.
“Oh they’ll be hit, very hard, don’t worry,” Trump said. “You just ask them. They know what happened. They’ll be hit very hard.”
During his exchange with the press, Trump had something else to say about Iran that was even more foreboding.
Trump declared that the Iranians will “either sign a very fair deal or they won’t exist any longer”.
That isn’t just a threat to attack again.
That is a threat to annihilate.
I truly hope that Trump was exaggerating.
And I truly hope that the Iranians are not taking him seriously.
Unfortunately, the Iranians have indicated that they are prepared to fight a “doomsday war” with the United States.
Needless to say, it takes “doomsday weapons” in order to fight a “doomsday war”.
So does Iran have weapons that they have not told us about yet?
It appears that the apocalyptic phase of World War III could be just around the corner, and that should deeply alarm all of us.
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.