(End of the American Dream)—Have you noticed that the state of California has been getting absolutely monkey-hammered by earthquakes lately? According to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center, California and Nevada have been hit by a total of 945 earthquakes within the last seven days. That is a whole lot of shaking! As you can see from this map, southern California has been getting pummeled more than anywhere else.
Could it be possible that the trillions of gallons of rain that were dumped on the region earlier this month have something to do with all of this? As I have discussed previously, scientists have determined that flooding can put an enormous amount of stress on fault lines. And without a doubt we have seen an unusual level of activity along California’s fault lines in recent days.
13 significant earthquakes, including one measuring magnitude 4.8, shook the state very early on Monday morning in a span of just 25 minutes…
Parts of California were hit by more than a dozen earthquakes overnight, with 13 shaking the state during a span of just 25 minutes.
“Good morning Southern California! Did you feel the magnitude 4.8 earthquake about two miles north-west of El Centro at 12.36am? The #ShakeAlert system was activated,” the United States Geological Survey Shake Alert account posted on X.
The good news is that none of the earthquakes were large enough to do much damage. But the magnitude 4.8 quake was keenly felt by some local residents…
Although some near the area said they hadn’t felt the tremors, one X user wrote: “Definitely felt much stronger than a 4.8.” Another added: “Earthquake swarms just as I was about to go to bed. strong enough for things to fall and break. sadly, a few broken decorations.”
When people hear about earthquakes in California, most immediately think of the San Andreas fault system, but it was actually the San Jacinto fault system that caused most of the problems early on Monday…
The quakes appear to have been caused by the San Jacinto fault system, meteorologists have said. It is one of the most active faults in southern California.
Overall, the USGS says that there have been 27 significant quakes of at least magnitude 2.5 that have hit the state within the past 24 hours.
That certainly isn’t anything to freak out about, but it is definitely noteworthy.
And all of this activity comes just a few days after a magnitude 4.6 earthquake shook up the wealthy residents of Malibu…
A magnitude 4.6 earthquake struck about 8 miles northwest of Malibu on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The earthquake was reported at 1:47 p.m., the USGS website said. It occurred at a geological depth of 13.9 kilometers, or nearly 9 miles.
The USGS is reporting at least a dozen aftershocks, with the largest measuring at a magnitude of 3.0.
We haven’t seen this sort of sustained seismic activity in southern California in a long time.
Is something very unusual starting to happen?
Let’s keep a very close eye on the numbers coming from the Southern California Earthquake Data Center. If the number of quakes in a week rises above 1,000 and stays there, I would say that there is cause for alarm.
As I wrote about earlier this month, scientists assure us that we are way overdue for “the Big One”.
When it finally arrives, the ground on the western side of a major fault line could suddenly drop by several feet (or more), and because much of that area is just barely above sea level that could potentially allow the Pacific Ocean to come rushing in.
Let us hope that nothing like that happens any time soon. But right now the flooding that has recently occurred in the region is putting a tremendous amount of stress on the fault lines.
Unfortunately, it can take a long time for extra water to disappear.
Just look at what has happened in Death Valley. Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on the area last August that it actually created a lake, and it is still there after all this time…
A lake has formed in an area of the US considered one of the driest places on earth seven months after it was battered by storms. Death Valley National Park, California, holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on July 10, 1913, according to the World Meteorological Organization, at 134 degrees.
However, despite being the driest place in North America, a lake which formed after Hurricane Hilary in August 2023 has yet to fully dry up. Death Valley typically receives about 2 inches of rain per year, however, the official weather gauge at Furnace Creek has measured 4.9 inches in the past six months. On August 20 last year, over a years worth of rain fell in one day with 2.2 inches being measured.
I never would have imagined it would be possible for a lake to exist in Death Valley for six months.
But we do not live in normal times.
Speaking of that, we are being warned that the Gulf Stream is in danger of shutting down in the not too distant future…
In the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, humanity is plunged into a nightmarish international storm that sends the planet into a new ice age.
And although the blockbuster was consigned to the realms of sci-fi, the science behind the frightening scenario is true.
In a matter of years, melting glaciers could shut down the Gulf Stream – the system of currents that brings warmth to the northern hemisphere, experts say.
Without this additional heat source, average temperatures could drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see ‘severe and cascading consequences around the world’.
Can you imagine what our world would look like if that actually happened?
Much of Europe and North America would no longer be able to grow crops, and global famine would be guaranteed.
A lot of people would rather not think about such matters.
But just because things have been a certain way in the past does not mean that they will continue to be that way in the future.
We really are on the verge of apocalyptic times, and global events will soon turn all of our lives completely upside down.
Sadly, most of the population isn’t paying much attention to what is happening, and for the moment ignorance is bliss.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
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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.