(End of the American Dream)—A lot sooner than most people think, an absolutely cataclysmic earthquake will permanently alter the geography of the California coast. Land on the western side of the fault line that is shaken by that great quake will suddenly sink by several feet, and that will allow the Pacific Ocean to come pouring in. The magnitude 5.2 earthquake that just hit southern California is yet another reminder that this cataclysmic event is coming.
I will continue to sound the alarm about this cataclysmic event until the day that it happens. In fact, this cataclysmic event is one of the things that I discuss in the secret new project that I have been working on. There was a Hollywood blockbuster about a cataclysmic earthquake along the San Andreas fault that came out ten years ago. What the region will eventually experience will be far, far worse than anything in that film. So please help me sound the alarm, because those that get out in time will literally be saving their lives.
In recent months, the California coastline has been shaken over and over again by sizable quakes.
The magnitude 5.2 earthquake that just shook the San Diego area is the latest example…
A magnitude-5.2 earthquake near Julian rattled much of Southern California just after 10 a.m. Monday, prompting brief evacuations in downtown San Diego and shaking cities as far away as Oxnard and Palm Springs.
The temblor, with an epicenter 3 miles south of Julian, caused especially hard shaking there and in Ramona, San Diego Country Estates, Pine Valley and Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Originally, it was being reported that this earthquake was much larger.
So we should be thankful that we dodged a bullet.
But it still really shook people up. The following comes from a Daily Mail article entitled “San Diego rocked by monster earthquake”…
One man told the local news station he was inside Mountain Spirits Liquor in Julian when the quake hit and bottles started flying off the shelves.
‘I just hear like consecutive three to four different bursts and pops of different bottles,’ he said.
We are being told that this quake was so powerful that it could even be felt in northern Mexico…
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck near San Diego at 10:08 a.m. Monday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake’s epicenter was recorded 2.49 miles south of Julian, in San Diego County.
According to the USGS map, the quake was felt widely across Southern California and into Mexico.
The epicenter of the earthquake was approximately 130 miles away from downtown Los Angeles, but people all over the Los Angeles metropolitan area clearly felt shaking…
Shaking was reported in parts of Los Angeles Monday morning from a magnitude-5.2 earthquake more than 100 miles away in San Diego County.
The quake at about 10:10 a.m. was in the Julian area in east San Diego County, about 130 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Shaking was reported in parts of LA, Grand Terrace, the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Downey, Cypress, San Pedro, Long Beach, Seal Beach, Pasadena, Corona in Riverside County and other areas.
I believe that this was another warning.
But just like all of the others, this one will soon be forgotten too.
It is being estimated that over 25 million people felt the ground moving…
According to United States Geological Survey modeling on the quake, those living closest to the epicenter felt “moderate shaking,” and more than 25 million people experienced “weak to light shaking.”
When I learned that this had happened, I knew that I had to write about it today.
According to Dr. Lucy Jones, it appears that this earthquake occurred along the Elsinore Fault…
Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones said the earthquake at a depth of 8.9 miles was most likely associated with the Elsinore Fault, which runs parallel to the San Andreas Fault.
“We do have a way of guessing at what the fault would be. We can’t actually confirm it’s on a particular fault without it coming up to the surface,” Jones said.
Interestingly, some people received emergency notifications on their phones even before they could feel the ground shaking…
Locals took to social media to share advice and comment on the new use of text alerts. Marty Caswell from San Diego wrote on X: “I can’t recall ever getting a text alert before an earthquake. Came in 5 seconds before apartment started swaying.” Another text sent to @AGraceMorgan63 read: “Earthquake detected! Drop, Cover, Hold On. Protect Yourself.” The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said it received no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The earthquake swung light fittings and rattled shelves in the city. It was felt as far away as Los Angeles, a distance of 120 miles.
Following the initial quake, there have been at least nine major aftershocks…
- 10:10:17 a.m.: 2.9-magnitude, 3 km SSW of Julian
- 10:10:21 a.m.: 2.8-magnitude, 5 km SE of Julian
- 10:10:54 a.m.: 2.9-magnitude, 4 km SSE of Julian
- 10:11:30 a.m.: 2.7-magnitude, 5 km SSE of Julian
- 10:12:08 a.m.: 2.6-magnitude, 4 km S of Julian
- 10:13:08 a.m.: 3.0-magnitude, 4 km S of Julian
- 10:14:03 a.m.: 2.5-magnitude, 4 km S of Julian
- 11:23:42 a.m.: 4.0-magnitude, 4 km SSE of Julian
- 12:34:30 p.m.: 2.9-magnitude, 5 km S of Julian
Of course this is not just an isolated incident.
Sizable earthquakes have been repeatedly rattling the state for months.
Just a few days ago, California was hit by a swarm of four notable quakes…
California has experienced four earthquakes in less than 12 hours.
The seismic activity began around 9pm ET when a 3.5 magnitude hit outside of Little Lake.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) detected the most recent quake, a 2.8 magnitude, around 4:30am near Petrolia in the northern region of the state.
Overall, there have been 1,165 earthquakes in California and Nevada over the last 7 days.
Unfortunately, some people will not understand what is happening until it is too late.
Of course the same thing will be true for many living in the middle of the country.
It is being reported that a magnitude 2.2 earthquake just struck “the heart of the New Madrid Seismic Zone”…
USGS reports that the strongest earthquake of the last 7 days struck Tennessee near the heart of the New Madrid Seismic Zone today at 7:26 am. The relatively weak magnitude 2.2 event, which struck from a depth of 8.3 km, serves as a reminder of how active the region is for quakes. Today’s earthquake was the 23rd to strike the region over the last 30 days and was the 5th to strike over the last week. The epicenter of today’s earthquake was in Ridgely which has been home to most of the recent earthquakes in the New Madid Seismic Zone recently.
One of these days, an absolutely cataclysmic earthquake will rip the New Madrid Seismic Zone wide open. This is something that I discuss in my secret new project as well.
We have been warned over and over again that these things are coming.
But most people don’t want to listen.
Most people that are currently living in the danger zones will just keep on doing what they are doing until time suddenly runs out.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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.