(End of the American Dream)—Should we be alarmed that there has been so much activity along the Pacific Ring of Fire lately? Every time that there is another major event, and that has been occurring quite frequently in recent weeks, the experts rush to tell us that what we are witnessing is perfectly normal.
But is that really true? Late last month, I wrote an article about how volcanoes that have been dormant for ages are suddenly roaring to life all over the globe. I don’t understand how it is “perfectly normal” for multiple volcanoes that have been dormant for hundreds or even thousands of years to all be waking up at the same time. I just don’t see it. Similarly, I don’t understand how it is “perfectly normal” for so much shaking to be taking place all along the Ring of Fire right now.
For example, on Monday a magnitude 7.6 earthquake rattled northern Japan…
A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake shook northeastern Japan late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for about 90,000 residents to evacuate.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said a tsunami as high as 3 metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after the earthquake struck off the coast at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT).
Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and tsunamis from 20 to 70 cm (7 to 27 inches) high were observed at several ports, JMA said.
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake is quite powerful.
The Daily Mail is reporting that buildings and vehicles were “trembling as the ground beneath them shook violently”…
Video footage showed buildings and stationary vehicles trembling as the ground beneath them shook violently.
Another clip showed a terrified man in his home watching lights bounce around amid the earthquake, while a third showed a siren being sounded, warning citizens of the imminent danger.
If this was just an isolated incident, we could probably safely ignore it.
But the truth is that Japan has been hit by a number of severe earthquake swarms in 2025, and that includes a massive swarm of 1,198 earthquakes that stretched from late June to early July…
From June 25 to July 4, a total of 1,198 earthquakes occurred near the Tokara Islands in far southwest Japan. The largest of these, on July 4, was at the lower end of 6 on the Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale (JMA scale).[22] This earthquake swarm was the most intense in the region since 1995.[23] 31 residents requested evacuation to Mainland Japan following several earthquakes of 5+ on the JMA scale, i.e. approximately VII on the Mercalli scale[b][25][26]
I certainly don’t think that was normal.
At the end of July, a magnitude 8.8 megathrust earthquake struck the Pacific Ring of Fire just off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula…
On 30 July 2025, at 11:24:52 PETT (29 July, 23:24:52 UTC), a Mw 8.8 megathrust earthquake struck off the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, 119 km (74 mi) east-southeast of the coastal city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.[3][4] It was the most powerful earthquake recorded worldwide since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake,[5] and is tied with the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia and 2010 Chile earthquakes as the sixth-strongest ever recorded by seismometers.[6]
That quake was part of a global swarm of 494 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater within a 30 day period.
That was about 4 times as many earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater than we usually experience in a typical month. Nobody can claim that was normal.
Here in the United States, the west coast has been getting pummeled by earthquake swarms over and over again.
In fact, there was another earthquake swarm in California on Monday…
A swarm of earthquakes has struck California’s Bay Area, just miles from some of the most populated cities throughout the area.
A magnitude 3.7 earthquake was detected at 12.08pm ET on Monday, less than three miles from the city of San Ramon, followed by a magnitude 2.9 quake at 1.06pm.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has revealed that these were at least the sixth and seventh small earthquake to strike the since 5.33am this morning.
The quakes took place less than 40 miles from San Francisco, and less than 30 miles from major cities such as Oakland, Concord, and San Jose.
One earthquake swarm in California is not a big deal.
But there were three other earthquake swarms in California just last week…
Monday’s swarm was the latest seismic outbreak in the Bay Area, coming just days after residents in the region were shaken by three straight days of earthquake swarms rattling nerves along the state’s Central and Northern Coasts.
The recent swarms have also taken place along several branch faults in the broader San Andreas Fault System, sparking fears the main fault line could be closer to a major rupture that locals refer to as ‘the Big One.’
I have written a lot about “the Big One”.
It is coming.
And it is going to be a lot more destructive than the experts are admitting.
Have you seen the movie San Andreas? When “the Big One” finally hits, it is going to be far worse than that.
If you live in Alaska, you are in danger too.
On Saturday, the state was rattled by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake…
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Alaska during the morning hours Saturday.
The earthquake struck at 11:41 a.m. local time northeast of Yakutat, Alaska, per the USGS.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Yakutat had a population of approximately 657 in 2020, and in 2023, a total of 332 housing units. The USGS interactive map indicates that the community lies more than 300 miles from Anchorage, where the quake was also experienced.
That quake was the first in a series of 164 quakes that rattled the state in less than 24 hours…
Residents as far away as Anchorage and communities across the border in Canada’s Yukon Territory reported feeling the quake.
In the 24 hours following the main quake, seismic networks logged 164 earthquakes in the region. Many were aftershocks, including several registering magnitudes above 5.0. This number of aftershocks is not uncommon after a significant seismic event as the crust readjusts along the fault lines.
The entire southern coastline of Alaska sits directly along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
So does the entire west coast of the United States.
If you choose to live in one of those danger zones, you are taking a huge risk.
We are getting more warning signs on an almost daily basis, but most of those that live in high risk areas will ignore the warning signs until it is too late.
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.