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2 Catastrophic Things Are About to Happen to Our Supply Chain in November

2 Catastrophic Things Are About to Happen to Our Supply Chain in November

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By the author of  The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide and the online course Build a Better Pantry on a Budget

If you think things are bad economically now, hang on to your halo. We are facing a perfect storm for our supply chain within the next month unless several things change dramatically.

It’s been one thing after another ever since the Covid pandemic began to affect our supply chain back in 2020. To be clear, you don’t have to believe that a pandemic existed, that the virus was serious, or even that the virus existed. That isn’t what this article is about. Regardless of one’s feelings, it was a trigger for an economic disaster that has continued to snowball.

We watched the shelves in America get cleared in a day in March of that year, and things have never been the same since. Global shipping all but shut down.

And the prices went up.

Farmers could not harvest their food or get it processed and ready to be delivered to stores.

And the prices went up.

Then the cost of fuel skyrocketed.

And the prices went up.

And now, we’re facing a new challenge in what can only be described as a looming transportation collapse. Two things are slated to happen within the next month that could make what we’ve experienced so far look like a walk in the park.

1.) We have 25 days of diesel fuel left.

2.) Biden has failed to come to an agreement with rail workers’ unions, and a strike could start as soon as November 19th.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these factors.

The diesel fuel shortage

The diesel fuel shortage that is looming could be absolutely catastrophic. The fuel of trucks, trains, and ships – this could put a real kibosh on the transit of goods. What’s more, the diesel shortage also affects home heating fuel.

OilPrice.com reports:

A shortage of diesel fuel is spreading across the United States, with one company launching an emergency delivery protocol, requesting a 72-hour advance notice from clients to be able to make the delivery.

Per a Bloomberg report, fuel supplier Mansfield Energy wrote in a note to its clients that “conditions are rapidly devolving” and “At times, carriers are having to visit multiple terminals to find supply, which delays deliveries and strains local trucking capacity.”

Some are blaming this shortage on a lack of refining capacity. If you look more closely at this, refineries are closing down in direct response to the current administration’s new policies to move the country to green energy.

Phil Flynn, an analyst for Fox News, said:

Phil Flynn, a senior account executive/market analyst at the Price Futures Group and FOX Business contributor, warned that strict regulation under the Biden administration will continue to put pressure on refineries to stay in business.

“It wasn’t too long ago the country was clamoring for the industry to buy and build new refineries because they couldn’t keep up with demand,” Flynn said Monday.

But government pressure to wean the country off of fossil fuels has made business difficult, with Flynn arguing that “refineries are getting squeezed out of business because of stricter regulations from the Biden administration and the pressure by the government” to “reduce demand for gasoline.”

If we actually run out of diesel fuel, the result on our supply chain would be catastrophic. We could expect shelves to empty and cargo ships to divert from America to places that have a better chance of delivering the goods. What’s more, prices would skyrocket on any good that has to be transported – which is basically all of them. If you can find it at all, it will cost significantly more.

What is being done about this?

It’s pretty hard to solve a problem created by bad policies. It’s not something you can undo overnight. Yahoo News reports on these potential actions that could be taken to try and lessen the blow.

Deese adds that the Fed has some tools to bolster diesel supply, like the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, which houses one million barrels of diesel in case of a disruption in supplies.

“We have looked very carefully at being prepared to deploy as and when necessary,” he said.

But The Washington Post reports that diesel demand is so high, that if a million barrels of diesel were delivered from the Northeast reserves, they would be depleted in less than six hours.

The Biden administration also recently announced it would be tapping into the country’s emergency oil reserves to counter rising gas prices, despite concerns over the long-term efficacy.

White House officials haven’t completely ruled out fuel export restrictions either, but the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers sent out a joint letter expressing their concerns in early October.

“Banning or limiting the export of refined products would likely decrease inventory levels, reduce domestic refining capacity, put upward pressure on consumer fuel prices and alienate U.S. allies during a time of war,” the group wrote.

(Now’s a good time to check out our free QUICKSTART Guide to building a 3-layer food storage system.)

The potential rail strike

Next, we have the possibility of a rail strike. This crisis was narrowly averted back in September when Biden and union representatives reached a tentative agreement. At the time, Biden hailed it as “an important win” for the American people, but it looks like the win was only a temporary kicking of the can.

Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division has rejected the deal offered last month, putting a strike back on the table.

The Washington Post reports:

…many union members were skeptical from the start, with some telling The Washington Post that the details were opaque. The plan included a 24 percent pay increase by 2024 — bringing the average wage to $110,000 a year — and $1,000 annual bonuses for five years. It also ensured health-care co-pays and deductibles would not increase.

But it seemed to include only one paid sick day, even after union leaders had pushed for 15.

“Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard. Railroaders do not feel valued,” BMWED President Tony D. Cardwell said in a statement Monday announcing the vote outcome. “They resent the fact that management holds no regard for their quality of life, illustrated by their stubborn reluctance to provide a higher quantity of paid time off, especially for sickness.”

The tentative pact stemmed from two years of negotiations between the carriers and unions, and the White House appointed an emergency board in early July to mediate. One of the sticking points was a points-based attendance policy adopted by some of the largest carriers earlier this year. Those policies can penalize workers for missing work for routine doctor’s appointments or family emergencies.

Unfortunately, that “win” wasn’t so much a victory as it was a temporary reprieve. Apparently, the decision of this union was a shock.

“For the first time that I can remember, the BRS members voted not to ratify a National Agreement, and with the highest participation rate in BRS history,” said Michael Baldwin, President of the BRS, in a statement.

Two of the biggest unions have not yet voted, and their decision could doom us to a railway shutdown. The deadline to reach an agreement is November 19th.

What would happen in the event of a rail strike?

Edward Segal of Forbes.com has been carefully watching this situation.

As I wrote last month, “Had the national railroad strike become a reality [in September], the labor stoppage would have created another crisis for thousands of companies and organizations. The impact on companies, organizations and fragile supply chains would have depended, of course, on the duration of the strike.”

Another factor company executives should keep in mind if there’s a strike is the reaction of consumers.

“After nearly three years of supply chain delays and asks for ‘understanding’ during difficult times, customers are facing supply chain fatigue,” Kushal Nahata, CEO of FarEye, a last mile delivery management company, said via email.

“The patience they had during the early days of the pandemic is waning, and the overall sentiment is that companies should be able to plan accordingly and have solutions readily available,” he advised.

Companies “should adapt their logistics models so [that] very little disruption is felt by their customer base. If they don’t, customers have no problem moving onto another brand that can— nearly 90% of customers will abandon an online retailer if they see poor delivery terms,” Nahata warned.

Segal isn’t wrong. We, the consumers, are sick of paying through the nose for terrible policies that have caused this economic disaster.

But, yet again, the decisions are out of our hands.

How do you prep for something like this?

How on earth do you prep for a transportation shutdown, especially after the past two and a half years? The supplies in stores are depleted and expensive; many of us have consumed a portion, if not all of our existing supplies; and Americans are broke.

Unless you are one of the people fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, you can’t buy your way out of this problem.

My suggestion is to consider the things you truly cannot get by without: medications, special foods necessary to your health, and any other essential item you must have, and focus your resources on these things. This isn’t about “wants” and “comforts.” It’s about “needs.” Be sure that you are clear on the difference. If we get lucky and these issues are resolved without a transportation collapse, you know you didn’t purchase a bunch of stuff you’ll never use – you got the things that are necessary.

As for everything else, we’re going to have to focus on being the most adaptable and resilient versions of ourselves. We are going to have to learn to live with different options at the store, making do, and doing without.

While we aren’t surrounded by marauders, and we still have power, this is the scenario we’ve been prepping for, and I believe that we, as preppers, are mentally ready to survive this. It won’t be easy, but we have the advantage – we knew it was going to happen. We didn’t know for sure what it would look like, but we’ve known for years that this kick-the-can economy was hanging on by a thread.

(Want uninterrupted access to The Organic Prepper? Check out our paid-subscription newsletter.)

What are your thoughts on the supply chain?

Do you think that we’ll run out of diesel and that the railway strike will occur? How devastating do you believe it will be for our supply chain if these things do happen? How do you intend to prepare for this? And do you have any advice for others? Let’s discuss it in the comments section.

About Daisy

Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites.  1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2)  The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.

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Comment by carol ann parisi on November 7, 2022 at 6:01am
Think about it…Central banks have clearly lost control of the global economy.

They can’t raise rates without breaking things… and they can’t NOT RAISE RATES without inflation becoming the new normal.

Checkmate.

Looking back, it seems obvious that a decade of near-zero interest rates created the biggest misallocation of capital the world has ever seen.

Because you could borrow money for free… we invested in riskier and riskier things…


Ridesharing scooters that people smash for fun… 

Food delivery apps that couldn’t even turn a profit when we were literally locked inside our houses… 

Meme stocks and monkey jpegs….


Loss making companies in every sector of the economy have not just survived but thrived.

Even cruise ships (if there’s a less essential sector of the economy I don’t know about it) got a bailout!

And let’s be clear… this is ALL a direct result of the endgame of the 40 year downtrend in interest rates (which has now reversed)



Since 1981 interest rates fell… and fell… and kept falling until they hit zero and THEN WENT NEGATIVE!

Obviously this was crazy, but it's important to understand WHY this generated so much wealth for the boomer generation.

If you bought a house back in the 80’s the value of the house went up, sure… but it really went up because the value of the debt went down.

Interest rates got cheaper and cheaper… which gave people more borrowing power… which brought more buyers to the housing market… 

More buyers with more borrowing power made prices go up, and loan repayments go down.

Which made prices go up even more, and that brought even more buyers in.

<!-- -->A beautiful positive feedback loop which lasted for 40 years until <checks notes> about 6 months ago.

She-eet. 

The “everything bubble” was really the decrease in interest rates, which enabled so many other mini bubbles…

Rolexes selling for 10x retail…
A badly drawn .jpg of a cartoon ape selling for a million dollars!
Wine appreciating at 20% per year compounding for decades!
Second hand cars selling for literally more than the new list price wtf!

It was fun while it lasted… 

But the tide has gone out, we can see who has been swimming naked… and reality has asserted itself with a vengeance.

We have plenty of Silicon Valley unicorn companies that will never earn a profit but not enough oil wells.


There isn’t enough wheat to feed most of the world.

The central banks don’t have a solution to inflation that doesn’t involve making us all poor and unemployed so we spend less.

And it's more than “just another recession like we have every 10-15 years” (HINT - it’s been 14 years since the last one)

The next recession is going to make us wish we were back in 2008… when the central banks actually had the power to fix things by turning back on the money printer.

That’s the key thing to understand here…

Like a heroin addict who doesn’t actually get high from his fix anymore…

The money printer doesn’t work anymore.

Zero interest rates just “stop the economy from feeling sick”... they don’t actually make it grow.

The whole world order is collapsing… The Pax Americana that’s been in place since 1949 (where the USA guarantees peace for the world's commerce and trade, and in return gets to be the global currency) is disintegrating IN REAL TIME…

Authoritarian regimes across the world are challenging the power of Western democracies… and they JUST MIGHT WIN!

You need to be prepared for the NEW world order that’s coming next.
 
Be Well, Be Blessed, Be Free and Be the Change you wish to see,
φ
Comment by carol ann parisi on November 6, 2022 at 8:36pm

“From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
-Ephesians 4:16

Hey Carolann!

A while back, I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine.

He shared an article by someone who lived through the Balkan civil wars.

Now, I don’t recommend this article to anyone, because some of the details may be a bit too much for many to handle…

But one thing DID stand out in the account of the war, as written by the writer.

The writer said when the war broke out…

Survival was not about who had the most ammo, or the best weapons.

Survival was about who could get as many people to work together, as possible

And this wasn’t about fighting, either. 

Whoever could get the most people into their “family” to handle duties such as security, cooking, maintaining the weapons, and managing/ defending the garden had the highest odds of survival.

And this holds true even today, even in non-wartime conditions.

Here’s the honest truth:

No man or woman is an island.

At the end of the day, we are all meant to work together toward our goals

As it is written in Ephesians 4:16…

Each person in your support system is a supporting ligament in the body of your network. 

And each one grows and builds itself up, and supports every other part. 

By having a support network, not only do you grow stronger yourself…

But you also help the network grow stronger than the sum of its parts.

Remember, you’re not an island.

We are meant to work together.

Everyone has a role to play.

And in a few days, one of the most powerful events where the world is going to work together to heal our souls is going to happen. 

Comment by carol ann parisi on November 6, 2022 at 7:54pm
Comment by carol ann parisi on November 6, 2022 at 7:42pm

The Blackout Book and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted

For as long as I’ve been involved in preparedness, it’s revolved around a combination of skills and stuff – but mostly stuff. Go to just about any website, including my own, and you’ll see gear reviews, cupboards full of food, flashlights, generators, and all sorts of…well…stuff.

But prepping has to change. No longer can we focus just on the “stuff” aspect, amassing things for our stockpiles and expecting that to save us. Instead, our focus should be on building the resilience we need to weather the unexpected. Because let’s face it – the future is looking anything but predictable.

Preparedness is entering a new era and if you want to be ready, you’re going to need to adapt. All of the things I’m going to talk about here have been mentioned in the past, but now they take on an entirely different level of importance.

Why is preparedness changing?

Lately, anyone who has turned on the news or opened a news website has been hit with a barrage of news that we never would have dreamed possible even a year ago. Cancel culture is in overdrive, a new administration is taking power, and innocent activities like stocking up on some extra cans of creamed corn are enough to make someone, somewhere point and wail, “Hoarder!”

While I will not delve into the politics of this, I think we are at a point at which the potential for civil war is increasingly high. Tempers are flaring and the media is busily fanning the flames.

Add to this the pandemic and subsequent restrictions. This has caused economic devastation for many families who can now barely afford this month’s bills, much less fund a stockpile run to Costco. And, there’s less to buy as our supply chain continues to devolve.

Over the past year, we’ve learned that bad things can really happen anywhere and that no society is above a collapse, especially when certain people are using a crisis to benefit themselves. We’ve watched some of the same events that led up to the collapse of Venezuela happen right here in the United States.

So, things look a whole lot different now than they did previously, making the following suggestions of the utmost importance.

Knowledge is something nobody can take from you.

No matter what happens to your carefully chosen supplies, regardless of where yourself when all hell breaks loose, and whether or not you plan to hunker down and make your stand, the importance of knowledge cannot be overstated.

Learning skills and retaining important information are two ways that anyone, on any budget, can become better prepared. Several of us have written about this topic. Learn more in the following articles.

It isn’t just the skills you need to learn. Retaining information is also very important. Your knowledge of a foreign language, a cultural difference, landmarks, random facts, or history could come in incredibly handy in the future.

Knowledge and skills are the backbone of resilience.

You still need some stuff.

At the same time that I’m telling you not to focus on stuff, I want to be clear and say that you do still need some stuff. Good quality basics like the items I keep in my bag and the ones Toby recommends that are often-overlooked are just a few of the tools you need to give yourself the best possible chances of survival.

As well, the more food and personal hygiene supplies you can stash away, the better off you’ll be. I have gotten many emails over the past year from people who told me that their stockpiles really saved their bacon when they lost their jobs due to pandemic mandates, or when they could no longer make a living for other reasons last year. I’ve experienced the same thing myself. Back when I got laid off from my job for several months, the items I had on hand in closets and pantries fed us, kept us clean, and even provided some birthday gifts. I didn’t have to spend my very limited money on food for months because we had plenty.

So as far as stockpiling is concerned, do what you can. Here are a few resources.

Every single thing you can put back helps you feed your family during difficult times. If you are starting to produce your own food, don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s as easy as throwing a handful of seeds at some turned over soil and collecting clean, colorful eggs from friendly hens. You’ll probably see more failure than success when you first start out and you need supplies as a backup in the event your food production plan fails. True resilience (there’s that word again) means you have something to fall back on if Plan A doesn’t work.

You need to become a producer.

I say this often, but you need to be a producer, not just a consumer. Anyone who has noticed the empty store shelves or barren clothing racks at your local stores can see that the ability to produce your own supplies has never been more important in our lifetime.

Everything you can provide for yourself makes you that much more resistant to supply shortages and financial problems. Being able to provide for yourself provides far greater long-term resilience than any stockpile ever could.

Discretion is important.

Here’s the part that a lot of folks consider controversial. I lean strongly toward OpSec when the deck is stacked against self-reliant, critically thinking people. All you have to do is take a look at social media and mainstream outlets to see that you don’t have to be a big Hollywood star to get “canceled.”  Any perceived misstep can destroy your ability to make a living, can affect your family, can prevent your kids from getting into their desired colleges, can annihilate your business (which affects your customers and employees as well as you)< and can even cause problems with your living arrangements.

I know that we all want to vent our outrage right now. Trust me – there are so many articles I want to write that I have opted not to because of the reasons listed above.

We all have to make our own decisions with regard to this topic. Should you be out there fighting for freedom, or should you be gray? Is this the best time to make a stand or will you have the advantage later? What does it mean for the people in your life if you are indiscreet? Do the advantages outweigh the potential disadvantages?

That’s not a decision that I can make for you. As for me, I know I don’t want my neighbors to be aware I have a stockpile of food and other gear. You may not want to make it public knowledge that you’re a gun owner. You may wish to keep a low profile on behalf of your family or employees who work for your business. You have to weigh your responsibility to others and decide whether this is the time for you to be upfront about your views or if you’d be better served to wait until you’re in a stronger position. It’s McCarthyism all over again right now and people are not thinking rationally.

You need to be flexible.

While most of the lessons we learned before about preparedness are still applicable, it is vitally important to remember that we’re in a fluid situation. Things are changing rapidly and something that might be great advice during a hurricane would be terrible in our current social climate. Events are occurring right now that we wouldn’t have imagined even two weeks previously.

You must assess the situation realistically as it exists at the moment. Planning is great, but you need to have multiple plans in case your first one goes wrong. Don’t cling too staunchly to one course of action that may well be a mistake while things are evolving.

As new things occur, remember that the rules are always changing. You have to work within the set of rules that exists while you’re trying to survive. You have to be prepared to rapidly abandon Plan A and move through the alphabet. You must adapt to survive, especially when human nature and mob mentality are involved in the equation.

Watch and learn about the things going on in the world, especially those nearby. You may need to change your plan based on where a crowd of angry people are gathering, or you may need to figure out a different way to get the kids safely home from school than you’d initially decided was the best route. Also, keep your finger on the pulse of current events. Being able to accurately analyze things that are occurring and adapt based on this new intelligence is a valuable skill.

Adaptability is true resilience.

Have you made any changes to your preparedness plans?

Are you prepping exactly the same way as you did previously? Have you made any changes due to current events or the economy? What do you think are the most important adaptations a prepper can make? How are you planning to become more resilient?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

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