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by Michael Snyder
August 1, 2012
from
EndOfTheAmericanDream Website
This week has provided two very clear examples of why it is so
important to keep on prepping.
In the United States, the historic
drought ravaging the central part of the country is absolutely
devastating our crops. According to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, drought is affecting
nearly 90 percent of all corn
crops in America at this point. This is pushing the price of corn to
levels never seen before.
On Tuesday, the price of corn hit
another new record high of $8.20 a bushel on the Chicago Board of
Trade.
Over the past six weeks the price of
corn has risen more than 50 percent, and it could go a lot higher as
the drought continues to absolutely bake America. Meanwhile, the
massive power grid failures in India are reminding us all just how
incredibly dependent we are on electricity and technology.
Power was cut off to nearly a tenth of
the entire global population on Tuesday, and there was quite a bit
of panic about that even though power is rapidly being restored. So
what would happen to them (or to us) someday if the power went off
for good?
As much as humanity would like to think that our technology has
conquered nature, that simply is not the case.
Without the rain that falls from the sky, there would be mass
starvation on this planet. We are not immune to drought, and there
are a lot of indications that the drought we are experiencing right
now is just the beginning of a longer trend.
For example, one team of scientists has just published a study that
says that the western United States could be facing a "100-year
drought".
They say that the recent drought of 2000-2004 was the worst
long-term drought in more than 800 years.
The following is from a recent CTVNews
article...
The four-year-long drought that
affected western Canada and the U.S. at the turn of the century
was the worst to hit the region in 800 years, say scientists who
warn that dry spell was nothing compared to the “megadroughts”
still to come.
A group of 10 scientists from the University of British Columbia
as well as several American universities write in Nature
GeoScience that they believe the bone-dry conditions seen
between 2000 and 2004 could become the “new normal” in the
region.
And as I wrote about recently, this
current drought is the worst single year drought in more than 50
years, and the federal government has declared
the largest natural
disaster area in U.S. history because of this drought.
On Monday, the high
temperature hit 111°F in Little Rock,
Arkansas. That was a new all-time record for July 30th, and it was
the third-highest temperature ever recorded in Little Rock.
The heat and drought are causing massive problems for farmers and
ranchers all over the country.
The following is an excerpt from the
shocking information that Ron Klinefelter shared on
standeyo.com
the other day...
This month, the 3 nearest
cattlemen’s livestock auctions set ALL TIME EVER records for
livestock sales, as farmers sell off their herds. There was only
one early cutting of hay this year, and the round bales are
going for $100/bale. (This should normally cost $20-25/bale.)
We had a pipe break in our 340 foot
deep well, which necessitated us getting the pump pulling truck
out here this last month. When we originally drilled the well,
in the “plenty of rain years”, the water rose to within 24 feet
of the surface. Last month, it was 180 feet down to the water
level, and we are down in a valley bottom, and not irrigating
out of it.
The guy pulling the pump told me
that the call he made earlier in the day to a guy who wasn’t
getting any water in his pressure tank, found, when they pulled
the pump, that the water level was now 40 feet BELOW the pump,
which was completely dry and burnt out! Some of the rural water
systems have also run out of water, and burnt their pumps out.
I talked to one of my sons today. He manages the largest
elderberry farm in the U.S., up by Jefferson City, Mo. They are
in their harvest now. He said that last week, they picked 10
long field rows, where, in a “normal” year, they would get about
700 pounds of berries.
This year they got 35 pounds!
The latest
U.S. Drought Monitor map is
posted below.
As you can see, the drought continues to get even
worse...
As the drought drags on, more crops
continue to fail.
According to Businessweek, the condition of some
key crops has gotten progressively worse in recent weeks...
The condition of the U.S. corn crop
worsened for an eighth straight week amid the worst Midwest
drought in a generation. Soybean ratings also fell.
About 24 percent of the corn was in good or excellent condition
as of yesterday, down from 26 percent a week earlier and 77
percent in mid-May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said
today in a report. An estimated 29 percent of the soybeans got
the top ratings, down from 31 percent.
Sadly, even when this summer ends our problems will be far from
over.
In a previous article I detailed a bunch
of signs that the western United States is
progressively becoming
drier and drier.
If something does not change, it is only
a matter of time before dust bowl conditions return to the western
United States. Already, giant dust storms that are thousands of feet
high called haboobs are hitting major cities in the southwest such
as Phoenix, Arizona.
You can see below, videos of giant dust storms hitting Phoenix:
What will people do in these areas when these giant dust storms get
even worse?
Sadly, it is not just the United States that is fighting these kinds
of conditions. Heat and wildfires are also
absolutely ravaging
Russia right now. It turns out that Russia is not going to be able
to export as much food as they were anticipating this year.
So what is going to happen someday if the United States and Russia
do not have any food to export? How many people around the world are
going to starve?
That is frightening to think about.
Meanwhile, massive power grid failures in India and Pakistan are
reminding all of us how desperately we all need electricity.
This week hundreds of millions of people in India have been left
without power. On Tuesday, a second major power grid failure in just
two days plunged
more than 600 million people into the dark.
The following is from a Fox News article
about
the recent blackouts in India...
India's energy crisis cascaded over
half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids
collapsed, leaving 620 million people without
government-supplied electricity for hours in, by far, the
world's biggest blackout.
Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights
went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric
crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power
officials said.
Two hundred workers were stranded in three coal mines in West
Bengal when the blackout cut off electricity to elevators in
their underground pits, a mining company official told The Times
of India.
You can see a picture of the horrible
traffic jams in India
right here.
At one point on Tuesday nearly one-tenth of the entire population of
the globe was without power. Sadly, it is not just India that is
dealing with major power grid problems.
Right now
in Pakistan extended blackouts have become so common that
people are starting to riot...
Prolonged and widespread power
outage in most of Pakistan’s cities during scorching summer heat
has triggered violent protests in most areas of the country.
Coupled with hot and humid summer weather, the prolonged
blackout has forced outraged citizens to take to the streets to
protest the tough living conditions.
According to PressTV, power company
offices all over the country have been attacked by angry citizens...
Offices of Pepco, the Pakistan
Electric Power Company, were also attacked in Islamabad,
Abbottabad, Charsadda, Okara, Multan, Mandi Bahauddin, Sialkot,
and Sheikhupura and many of them were reportedly set ablaze.
So what happens someday if the power
goes out for all of us for an extended period of time?
All it would take is one really, really bad solar storm. A massive
EMP burst from the sun could potentially fry electronics all over
the planet. Scientists tell us that such a burst has happened before
and that one is likely to happen again.
In a
previous article, I discussed what the world might look like
after such an EMP burst...
Just imagine a world where nobody
has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been
fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can
make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the
entire country is brought to a complete stop.
A nation that does
not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely
stripped of it at that point.
So are you ready for these things?
Are you ready for the power grid to go down? Are you ready for a
massive food shortage caused by extended drought?
Just because we have experienced incredibly good times for decades
does not mean that things will always be that way.
Our world is becoming increasingly unstable. The
economy is falling
apart, war in the Middle East could break out at any time,
society
is decaying all around us, and natural disasters are becoming more
frequent and more powerful.
In such an environment, it only makes sense to work hard to prepare
yourself and your family for what is coming. There is evidence that
the system is starting to fail wherever you look, so now is the time
to work to become more independent of the system.
In the end, it is those that are totally dependent on the system
that will feel the most pain when everything begins to completely
fall apart.
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