The food crisis is showing the first signs of real famine

 

Here in North America, we’re unlikely to face the full effects of the worldwide famine that appears to be developing, and that we’ve discussed in these pages on several previous occasions.  However, it’s biting hard in several regions and countries, and getting worse.  For example, see these articles (selected at random from many others I could have linked):

Even though I think we’ll probably still have food on US supermarket shelves, there are almost certain to be local and regional shortages of various products;  greatly increased prices;  and disruptions in normal consumption patterns, as people are forced to buy what’s available rather than what they really want.  It’s not going to be easy for anybody.

A few days ago, Michael Yon stuck his neck out with a more dire warning than he’s ever issued before on this subject.  I hope he’s wrong . . . but given his very extensive background in reporting around the world, I’m sure he absolutely believes what he’s saying.  Given my respect for his track record, I’m taking him seriously.

Sounded pretty crazy in January 2020 when I began warning about potential power outtages, major war, and famines…didn’t it? PanFaWar [Pandemic, Famine, War].

The idea was a mile outside the Overton Window. I was reluctant to publicly express the depth of my concern due to being dismissed as a quack. You know…like when I warned about Iraq civil war in 2005, that we were losing the Afghanistan war in 2006, and that CCP might soon take Hong Kong in 2019 — those were mostly outside the Overton Window. Today they are common knowledge.

Time to take a leap out the Overton Window on the 1,000th floor.

If you have not stockpiled at least two years of supplies, just stop what you are doing and get on it. Plant a garden if possible. Get chickens. Learn to fish. Notice I have never sold any of the supplies, and rarely even mention models of products other than a few like Katadyn water filters, or Berkey, but I make no money from that and have no relationships any companies. People often say that I should set up an online store. But that would undermine the message. If I tell you to stock up and then provide a link, the message is undermined.

Most folks smart enough to read my pages have been preparing for a long time. Comparing notes with each other. Searching for holes in their strategies. Some folks even make dry runs by turning off their water and electricity for varying periods in order to find more weaknesses in their plans.

Self defense is vital. We’ve seen 911 is a joke. We are our keeper. A grandmother with a little training can throw some serious self defense downrange.

Later this year we likely will see various governments within the Unites States starting with price controls and increased subsidies. Governments always do this when they are losing control. These policies will exacerbate situations. OGUS will push to make rationing electronic to gain even more control of every aspect of our existence. All the indicators are there.

Stock up thick. The clock is ticking. Conditions are set: 2022 will become serious. 2023 will be a year of starvation in many countries. I do not even see a way out of this. Too much inertia and sabotage. Serious famine creates real pandemic, more war, and HOP — Human Osmotic Pressure — which leads to migrations.

PanFaWar with it’s recursive variables can be like an indoor fire. Heat cannot quickly escape, causing more fuel to burn, heat-feedback, FLASHOVER.

War creates famine creates pandemic creates war creates famine creates migration creates war creates famine creates pandemic until enough fuel and energy is expended and it goes away and people say, “Boy the people that did this sure were stupid. We’d never do that again.” And then they do.

There’s more at the link.

Yesterday, Mr. Yon expanded on his views.

I noticed in my earlier days of world travel that my world view greatly expanded after I had been to about five countries that were very different. Like China, India, Poland, Italy, and California. (Yes, California. I was there when it was still great, and also many other times watching it fall such as last year.)

The paradigm change is profound.

You learn much of what you learned is flat wrong. You see many of your teachers should be students. Like the mice experiments with overcrowding. Folks who read my work probably were taught the mice-thing and the wild extrapolation to humans. The extrapolation is flat wrong. Wrong in the way it was used, anyway.

I spent months in Mongkok, Hong Kong, the most densely populated area in the world. Very orderly.

Inverse, I spent years in sparsely populated 3rd World… zoo-ville.

If you put 200 3rd-worlders into 200 square miles, there will be **** everywhere and voodoo galore.

Put two million Japanese in a tiny city and it will be clean, quiet, peaceful, orderly. Hong Kongers can stack even thicker and still maintain order. (Well, CCP is crushing that.)

But that’s not the point.

The point is that after you read about five books on Pandemic, or five on Famine, or travel to about five very different countries, your mind starts to boost that experience to something greater than the sum. Like 5 = 9

How did I so accurately predict global famine (famine starting in earnest later this year, in 2022) well over two years ago? I’ve never been in a famine. Or any serious pandemic. Still haven’t been in a serious pandemic. Just a seriously-weaponized-minor-humanmade-‘pandemic.

It’s all written down. Old people wrote it down. I read it.

To make the best of your time, do Reading Recon with strategy. Why read five books [on the] Irish potato famine? Spread it out … One book on [the] Potato Famine … A book on Mao’s famines. Huge. And amazingly still sort of hidden … Holodomor — incredible and unfolding again … India [or] Bangladesh … A specific recommendation is THREE FAMINES by T. Keneally. I recommend this because he also compares/contrasts.

Again, more at the link.

To begin your search for reading material, look at open-source libraries and similar resources.  For example, Project Gutenberg has several free e-books on famines.  Take a look and decide whether one or more would be of interest.

Here’s how a Philippines blogger (whom we’ve met before in these pages, and who’s also read Michael Yon’s warnings) is seeing current events and preparing for what’s coming.

Now that the kitchen remodel is done, it is time to be more serious about the food storage.  I simply can not stick all my dry goods in glass jars and afford to have 2 years stock up for a couple people.  I need to get food grade 5 gallon buckets ASAP.

My pantry as it is now, has enough space to handle a bunch of 5 gallon buckets.  So I guess bulk rice, beans, etc will be the menu.  Plus a ****load of spices.

. . .

I hate living like this.  This situation forced upon my life for the last couple years.  But this is the hand we are dealt on May 1, 2022.

. . .

Weighed this random chicken from latest batch.  This is 30 days exactly.  Zero hormones, zero antibiotics.  Just a feed with pro-biotics, lots of mangoes and maybe 10 pounds of sunflower seed from the garden.  2.1 kilos or 4.6 pounds.  6 week wonders indeed.  7 or 8 weeks and they turkey sized.

Planning on canning most of them.  

. . .

I ordered 20 kilos of TVP this morning.  Price went from 60 to 100 [Philippine pesos] per kilo since the covid **** started.  I ate it but it makes one gain weight at a alarming rate.  So all the 2 year old stuff is used in the dog food.  With the price of dog food and cat food now exceeding 150-180 per kilo almost double in 2 years, I best get something put aside, and in a pinch I can eat it myself.  Unlike dry dog food at 2x the costs.

I can also use it to boost chicken feeds.

Now that the coffee motivation has kicked in, I will go over to the meat market and get some stuff to can.  I will see what is cheaper costing or what looks good when I get there.  

My malabar spinach is growing like crazy.  I best harvest and eat some today too.  I suddenly find a lot of surplus in the garden foods.  I went from starving for anything fresh to a excess, gradually, then suddenly too much.  

I gave my Norwegian neighbor a kilo of shelled lima beans yesterday.  I could have canned but he sent over some fresh whole wheat bread last week, so returning the favor.

More at the link.

He’s taking Mr. Yon’s warnings seriously.  We should follow his example.

Peter

17 comments

  1. Was in the Everything a $1.29 store yesterday and noticed that they had remodeled. Everything was spaced out differently to make it seem there was more stuff than there was and still there were empty spaces. I'd seen this at the grocery before but not there.

  2. Proverbs 27 12 The prudent see danger and take refuge,
    but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.

    Proverbs 13 23Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor, but without justice it is swept away.

    I agree with Michael Yon, famine is near.

    What's the worse case if you buy more than a years worth of food?

    You have to eat it?

    1st Timothy 5 …7Give these instructions to the believers, so that they will be above reproach. 8 If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 9

    Move it or lose it.

  3. I do agree with M. Yon in this instance – I think before you give him carte blanche credibility on any subject, you may want to spend some time investigating his statements regarding the gun walking that was going on in the Southwest a few years back.

  4. My situation is… stress-inducing.

    My wife grew up in Kazakhstan, where in the 1930's Stalin starved to death one out of every three ethnic Kazakhs*. During the collapse of the USSR she described how there would be weeks at a time when they didn't know where their next meal would come from.

    Yet she, her mother, and her aunt laughed at my "grocery store" in the basement and, when I asked why they were laughing given their personal and ethnic experience, their response was "This is America – that can't happen here".

    I think it's desperate denial.

    * Book: The Hungry Steppe

  5. Nitzakhon I hear you. My family tree includes an escape after Kristallnacht and my beloved wife also has troubles with "That cannot happen here" syndrome.

    I have to gently bring her into the light from time to time as she shies away from it. I compromise with spending money I'd rather put to good use for lunches out and such. So, she "humors" my shopping 🙂

    The most eye-opening moments is when SHE brings up troublesome factors from the internet.

    Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

  6. Yes 2022 will be bad, 2023 will be hell. As said before, the means to keep your supplies is at least as important as having the supplies. Owning long distance hole punchers in various sizes makes sense in a world of scarcity.
    When,not if, the usual idiots in charge decide that the solution to run away inflation is price controls, owning the currencies that are acceptable in the black markets will be essential. Silver US coinage is probably the best and most trustworthy.

  7. I'm only saying this because no one knows where I am and I post using a VPN. Last I checked I was 1000 miles away from "my location." I doubt there are ten people that know what we have put by over the years.
    My wife tells me that we easily have two years of groceries in the basement. I hope it is a total waste of money. She's not panicking but, since health issues have forced a change of diet, she's quietly looking for deals to supplement what she has. Two cases of dehydrated cabbage showed up last week. (When I married her 40+ years ago she had 800 pounds of wheat in the attic.)
    This summer we'll rotate all out stored water, possibly 1000 gallons and find some missing fittings for a propane heater we've stored away with two 40 gallon tanks. I probably should rotate the kerosene for another heater but can't just dump it in the car like gasoline.
    I keep 20 gallons of gasoline on hand, rotating one can every three months.
    I can count half a dozen ways to cook other than our primary stove, ranging from Dutch ovens (charcoal stacked on a gorilla rack) to a dual fuel Coleman stove.
    If push comes to shove, the problem isn't having enough to eat, it's keeping or at least controlling what you have. Hoarding is a popular word to use and I have heard of authorities actually searching to see if someone has more than their "fair share." It took years to get to this point and I'm confident no one went hungry because we vacuum packed some flour in 2012. Our best bet will be to enlist some friends. They will be much more protective when "our" rather than "my" supplies are threatened

  8. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Part of the worst will be the govt will analyze your purchases and if it is found you are a hoarder they will come to relieve you of the excess, it is only fair to everyone else who has none. Also, if the US even appears to have more food than our neighbors to the south we will see extreme migration pressure resulting in famine.

    Ask yourself what this summer will be like if the power goes out.

    We're picking a fight with Russia and China is poised to take advantage. Power and water may become problematic in short order, not just food and fuel.

    Another article said at current rate by the end of the Biden Administration 20% of people here will be non-native. I don't even know how many would be legal vs illegal, but what are their expectations on the rule of law and what they are willing to do. I had a neighbor's daughter once remark that we were rich, I believe because we had a rainy day fund and whenever we had an unplanned expense it was no big deal. Anyone with savings or foresight is about to be rich – congratulations. The rich are always targeted. (Oh and middle class rich with savings, those will disappear due to inflation and the coming market crash but they will still be a target)

  9. I have been looking at potential nuclear bombing targets and fallout from them considering the prevailing winds. We have enough potassium iodide tablets to give everyone at the homestead or those who will be a daily dose for 90 days. All the beans, band aides and bullets which we have prepped for will not stop you from glowing in the dark. Russia has stated outright that NATO backs off involvement in Ukraine or nuclear strikes are not out of the question and they mean it. For some reason that old REM song keeps running through my mind, but I am not sure that I feel fine.

    https://modernsurvivalblog.com/nuclear/us-nuclear-target-map/

  10. @Michael:

    My wife called me as gas prices were topping $4 per gallon. WTF? Yet when I tell her that this is nationwide because President Potato stopped us being energy independent, she won't make the connection.

    She's occasionally gone food shopping – since I have my business at home normally that's my task – and will sometimes mention that there are some things she can't find. She won't make the connection.

    Same for my Holocaust-generation cousin. "Oh don't be silly, that can't happen in America".

    I think people are so addicted to their normalcy bias that they'd rather put themselves at risk than acknowledge the threat.

    I wanted to convert our backyard to a big vegetable garden. "Oh, no no no, that would look ugly and what would the neighbors think"?

  11. Nitzakhon happily my bride enjoys my tomatoes and humors me 🙂

    When I was living in a HOA I hid potatoes in the flower bed. We were allowed to grow flowers so…

    When asked I told them the truth they were flowering nightshades Latin name
    Solanum tuberosum. I also grew Malabar Spinach the same way. Rather decorative :-).

    A GARDEN is noticeable due to open area, nice lines and all that. Planting corn and red tomatoes is something even hood rats know are food.

    BTW tomatoes come in black, brown and other colors. All tasty.

    Maybe you should look into a Keyhole Garden. Its worth your looking at. For both the Aesthetic value (NOT Typical Garden), and also well placed a fighting position. Planting it in mixed dense plantings AND Marigold Flowers (for pest and rodent-deer resistance) makes it looks like an flower bed to the folks that come by my place.

    Funny part the UPS guy and I talk about gardening and he has quite a truck garden. So far he's given no clue that the two keyhole gardens are gardens 🙂

    An extra benefit if you like is while you're doing all that digging, a nice place to bury something worth recovering later. Over the years I've found finding a cache harder than putting it in.

    Disinformation is a useful skill.

  12. Consider the lemur. I would write lemming but without spell check or a dictionary who knows how to spell it. Consider the little mammal. I think it's a mammal.

    You guys are just a tad crazy but good on you! That wonderful movie about the killer worms….Cool.

    You planned AHEAD and are saved! You have plenty of food while the rest perish of starvation or something and you have plenty of guns and ammo to NOT PERISH but I wonder why?

    I think there are probably a handful of believers here. You made it through life's lotto and bred and had children who are grown and off a thousand miles away doing their thing. Come the breakdown it will be people like you and me that can realistically make it 1000 miles but not without a lot of killing.

    And for what?

    I don't think 7 of 9 is going to throw herself at you and Tasha is gone so what is your purpose to live on unless it is to protect and nurture? I don't think those pretty babes will be throwing themselves at the 60 year old guys with two years worth of oatmeal stored in the cellar. And have you seen that the thing they lock up now at CVS is Infant Formula. Who ever would have thought?

  13. That video from Peru a few weeks ago was due to their (commie) President suddenly declaring a lockdown overnight, so there was a lot of panic buying as it was unexpected and the duration unknown. I'm glad I had already left a week earlier.

    As for stocking up, well, that's what hamsters do.

  14. Thanks for the shout out. You also can check out Iceage farmer youtube. He is the one whom I saw beating the drum last year and got me working on getting my house in order.

    comeandmakeit blog

  15. @Michael:

    Last year's tomatoes on the second floor balcony were so rain-drenched the fruits rotted on the plants. The jalapenoes did OK, however.

    This year it will be potatoes up there. And some tomatoes again, in another try. We're overrun by squirrels and chipmunks. And we have a few rabbits that have burrowed under the gazebo that I cheerfully refer to as "emergency meat" to the frowns of my daughter.

    As I say in my Survival Sundays post () short of having started 10 years ago and having a lot of discretionary-spending funds, one cannot be ready for everything. But one can at least be far ahead of the average sheeple who will wake up, one day, to society having fallen apart.

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