That’s the title of an article Michael Yon posted earlier this year. The little note at the bottom of the page on his website (MichaelYon.com) defines him as “America’s most experienced combat correspondent. He has traveled or worked in 82 countries, including various wars and conflicts.” And in the course of reporting on these various conflicts, he has seen much of famine and pandemics as well. He has even coined new terms as he writes about them, including PanFaWar (pandemic-famine-war) and gigacide, for what he believes the results of the covid jabs will eventually be.
Anyway, PanFaWar’s importance lies in the fact that pandemic, famine, and war often occur all together. We have already had the pandemic thing going on for nearly three years now, for those who believe this thing really was a pandemic. (Actually, it hasn’t had the mortality rate customarily associated with a true pandemic. I’d say a real pandemic with the accompanying significant mortality rate is still in the wings.) We can see the table is being set for famine, and the nut jobs running our world are doing everything they can to get us into the all-you-can-eat buffet of a full-scale war.
So why study famine now?
What’s Yon trying to say scream?
Like just about everything in history, famines follow a certain pattern, especially when those famines are government-induced, at least to some degree. The Holodomor, the Great Chinese Famine, and the Irish Potato Famine resulted in the deaths of millions of people. All of these famines occurred largely—not totally—as a result of malicious government controls. The governments of the time wanted a lot of people dead. That sounds familiar.
Some deaths were attributed to greedy Irish who had potatoes which they preferred to turn into moonshine instead of using to feed starving countrymen. There was food to be had in other parts of the world. Distributing it to starving people was, in essence, a supply chain issue. I think I’ve heard about that, too.
For those who need scriptural reminders, famine is mentioned over seventy times in the Bible. More often than floods and other natural disasters. The accounts record people selling their lands, homes, and then their children. How many people died? What did they resort to eating? Dove dung, donkey heads, and then, as Moses prophesied would happen if they didn’t follow God, their children. Elijah was fed by ravens. John the Baptist ate honey and locusts. (Yes, it wasn’t a famine, just government persecution. Maybe those globalists promoting bugs for dinner have been getting ideas from the Bible.)
We hear reports of menu price increases at eateries and normal menu items being unavailable. Listen up, folks. New menus are at the printer now. Prices are exorbitant and the grocery stores won’t be any different. Remember how the water and chips used to be complimentary? Now, the only free item is famine. Everything else has a price. An arm, a leg, your first born child. Oh, and actually, whether those are the prices or the menu items will be up for discussion.
If you want to have a say in what’s for dinner, you have to be prepared. Buy food now. More. Really, nothing in today’s post was new, just perhaps a reminder. What I really want to emphasize—what really struck me from reading Michael Yon today as well as some of his other articles—was the need to be prepared for cholera and typhus. We know that Disease always accompanies Starvation and War, even if she does dilly-dally a little bit. What’s not often emphasized is that those diseases are most frequently cholera and typhus.
Those preparing for the challenges ahead have been gathering their food and fuel. Medical supplies had better not be neglected. Make sure you’ve got everything you need to deal with cholera and typhus. See links below.
Jennifer, I started writing about how we are eating last year's crops and how much change in two Walmart's within reasonable driving distance in just the past two weeks as far as dry beans and white rice.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd be rewriting my older posts.
Two weeks ago, I could easily make up a couple of Mercy buckets, knowing there were extras up on the top rack of the display.
No more on top. Less than half of normal on the shelves.
WE ARE EATING LAST YEARS HARVEST.
Mercy Buckets I posted over at Busted knuckles Sept 21
2 X 5 gallon Buckets and lids = 9.28
2 X 8 pound dried GV pinto Beans = 11.96 100 calories per 1/4 cup dry (or about 1/3 cup cooked) 8 grams protein x 206 servings = 20,600 calories and 1,648 grams protein
1 X 20 pound GV White rice = 8.98 160 cal per 1/4 cup dry (or a bit over 1/2 cup cooked) 3 grams protein X 202 servings = 32,320 calories and 606 grams protein
6 X 12 ounce GV luncheon loaf various flavors = 13.08 180 calories per 2 oz serving, 7 grams protein X 36 servings = 6,480 calories and 252 grams protein
26 oz container Iodized Salt 54 cents
3 oz black pepper 2.68
2 oz jar chili pepper (pick the spice you like here) 3.98
4 pounds pure cane sugar 2.08 Calories NOT Counted just flavoring for Japanese Sweet Beans, Sweet Rice and so on.
16 oz cooking oil 2.00 (Get the BEST Bottle you can leaks suck) Calories not counted just needed for cooking say refried beans and such.
130 count adult multivitamin 4.88
120 count 500 mg Vitamin C 3.96
25 +25 Beef and Chicken Bouillon cubes 3.76
Box of 100 black tea bags 1.00
Total cost 68.36
Total calories 59,400 /2,000 calories per day adult = 29.7 Man-days
Total Protein 2,506 / 30 days = 83 grams protein daily WELL over min needed here.
Mercy Bucket part two adds one more 5 gallon bucket with lid, an extra 20 pound WM GV White Rice and space for extras to double the 30 man days to 60 with still 40 grams protein. Cost + 8.98 for rice, + 4.64 for bucket and lid (WHY do folks spend so much time looking for “Free Buckets” and wash them forever…) = an additional 13.62 or about what I spend on a Burger Combo and a Shake….
Just for fun I did some “research” on “Survival Foods” and most “Servings” are about 140 calories mostly carbs and very little protein. AND from my asking about very FEW Folks have ever cooked some up and tastes them. I have several I’ve tasted. Worse was *Cough Wise *Cough*.
Move it or lose it, these prices and availability of cheap food will NOT last.
And again Phil sorry I forgot to mention in the email that you can PLANT and grow more pinto beans from those dry beans. I use them as seed in my garden yearly.
As of today, most of the prices I posted a year ago are still pretty accurate. Basics seem not as inflationary than frozen pizza.
Move it or lose it.
I couldn't agree more about your comments regarding "survival foods". The serving sizes based on calories alone are woefully inadequate. And the ones we've tried were pretty nasty, too.
DeleteI never spent much time looking for free buckets. The donut shops and grocery store bakeries gave them away, and I spent a little time washing them. I could wash about 10 per hour, so a pretty good return on investment. But then again, I would never buy a burger combo and shake. Too much money. And too many empty calories.
I'd say our food prices here are about 50-100% higher than yours, but we're still stocking up here, mostly on bread ingredients. We look out on a thousand head of cattle that will be here until they go to their summer range in April or May.
Jennifer could you please tell me how you manage to wash out buckets so fast? I find icing buckets (mostly shortening and sugar) very hard to clean well enough I don't smell the icing a few hours after I put the lid back on.
DeleteGiven the few prices that rose on Mercy buckets a part 1 and 2 for 2 months worth of belly filling foods is still under 100.00 even buying the buckets.
BTW Dry and canned beans are going to get expensive this fall. The US Bean harvest mostly travels by the Mississippi River and that's not happening as they are storing the crop in piles under tarps.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/massive-bean-piles-spotted-and-down-mississippi-river-barges-cant-meet-harvest-demand
We export a lot of beans, but all bean suppliers are having shipping issues.
Michael, I have been washing out bakery buckets that mostly contained the shortening-sugar frostings and occasionally a few fillings for over 30 years. And all I ever do is spend 1-2 minutes washing in hot, soapy water. I start with the first bucket, add soap and hot water and scrub and then pour that hot soapy water into the next bucket and so on. The first bucket gets rinsed well with hot water, and then that hot rinse water gets poured into the next bucket after it's been washed. When the rinse water gets a bit dirty, soap is added and it becomes the wash water.
DeleteYes, the frosting odor often remains right after washing. But I have never had it affect any of my food, and this all started long before Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers became available. And the frosting odor eventually dissipates.
Beans are already expensive enough. I pity those who haven't prepared and don't even know where to begin or that they need to begin.
DeleteLooking at this now 3 year old conservation, I know our food prices have gone up as much since 2023 as they did from 2020 to 23.
DeleteWe are now sitting at $9 per gallon of milk. Cheese blocks used to be 700g, then they became 650g... Now a standard block is 300-340g.
Back in 2016 i bought a wheel of cheese for $60 for a 10lb wheel. Broke it up and waxed it and we used the last of it up earlier this year. Found out the price now is over $200 for same wheel.
Our Canadian media is pushing that the massive decrease in Can's holidaying in the USA is because we are pissed at US tariffs.Not true its because everyone I know at work has had to massively reduce non critical expenses because of inflation.
Exile1981
$9 for a gallon of milk? That would have bankrupted us when the kids were young.
DeleteWe can see the inflation all around us, but I guess most people have been brainwashed to believe it's the tariffs. Of course, in reality, it's the money-printing, which I assume is happening in Canada as well. Gold is poised to top $4000 USD, and silver $50 USD. That's not due to tariffs.
pre-covid a Canadian dollar was worth about 90cents US. Once Turdeau went on his drunken sailor spending spree our dollar its now below 72 cents. At that exchange rate a holiday south of the border is going to cost more.
DeleteWith 2 teens still at home yes $9 milk is killing us.
Exile1981
I read your column every day and I enjoy your posts.
ReplyDeleteMy purpose in writing this is not to turn your blog into a history class, but I believe you ran off the road and into the weeds when you said, speaking of the Irish Potato Famine, "Some deaths were attributed to greedy Irish who had potatoes which they preferred to turn into moonshine instead of using to feed starving countrymen. There was food to be had in other parts of the world. Distributing it to starving people was, in essence, a supply chain issue. I think I’ve heard about that, too."
First, I fancy myself as a historian, not an Irish apologist. If Ancestry.com is correct, my Irish ancestry is in the single-digit percentages, and the rest comes from England, Scotland, and Wales. Frankly, I 'm more English than the King of England.
Now that this is out of the way, in all my reading of history, I have never heard it suggested even one time that potatoes were being turned into moonshine during "The Great Hunger." (Obviously, anything is possible, but to say that and leave it there is not acceptable.) Ireland actually produced enough food to adequately feed its starving peasantry during the famine, but the "free trade" forces in Britain and within the "Irish Ascendancy," sometimes called the "Protestant Ascendancy," demanded that food be allowed to be sold at the market rate. (The Ascendancy was composed of the small Anglican ruling class, the descendants of Cromwell's Army who were rewarded for their service with land confiscated from native Catholic Irishmen. The Duke of Wellington is just one example.)
British soldiers were sent to Ireland to protect food marked for export to ensure that it actually did get exported to England. The free trade forces' efforts meant more profits for the large landowners. There was no "food in other parts of the world" issue. There was no "supply chain" issue because the food to feed the Irish masses was forcibly exported FROM Ireland and not imported to it.
British Prime Minister Charles Trevelyan, an ardent "laissez faire," free trade advocate, in the midst of Malthusian population growth and food supply theories, also looked on the famine as "divine punishment for the Irish" and as a "mechanism for removing surplus population." (Does this sound more than a bit reminiscent of Ebenezer Scrooge, the fictional character who was also a creature of the 1840s.)
The simple fact is that the Irish population's bitterness and sense of betrayal from its horrid treatment by the British during the famine resulted in a straight line to the Easter Rebellion of 1917, to the Irish Free State in 1922, and to final independence in 1949.
Now, please take out a pen and paper for the 10-question pop quiz. Fair warning: It's not open book and I don't grade on a curve.
I should have put a happy face on my last comment in case my effort at humor wasn't obvious. :-)
DeleteWell, that was a screw-up, wasn’t it? As this article was written over three years ago, I now have no idea where I got some of the information. Maybe I was in a rush and I apologize. The following two quotes (with links to take you there) show that grain and potatoes (to a limited extent) were distilled into alcohol during the famine. They could have been used to feed people instead. Would it have been enough to prevent the wide-scale starvation? No, but it would have prevented some.
Delete“It has often been charged that the government allowed food to be exported while Ireland starved. Nicholson looked at the matter of diverted food sources from another angle: she charged that grain used for distilling alcohol could have fed the Irish poor. Elizabeth Malcolm says very little about alcohol and the Famine in Ireland Sober, Ireland Free except to note that duty on spirits increased and that in 1847, with grain prices sky high, the consumption of legal spirits fell only about twenty-five percent, from approximately 8,000,000 gallons to about 6,000,000 gallons [48]. The 60,000,000 pounds of grain or 30,000 tons of grain to distil 6,000,000 gallons of eighty proof spirits could have provided more than 300,000,000 servings of grain-based cereals.” https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/civilisation/domaine-britannique/irlande-et-ecosse/asenath-nicholson-and-the-great-famine
(Part 2 of the above comment, since Blogger said it was too long) “Alcohol was also a major item of export. Although the foundation of Father Mathew’s temperance movement in 1838 had damaged the Irish alcoholic drink industry, it remained an important sector of the economy both for internal and external consumption. In 1847, six million gallons of grain spirit were consumed within Ireland. Exports were also high, mostly in the form of ale, stout, porter, and whiskey. These products were derived from grain (barley and malt or, to a limited extent, potatoes) and thus represented a disguised export of grain. In the first nine months of 1847, for example, 874,170 gallons of porter were exported from Ireland to Liverpool. During the same period, 278,658 gallons of Guinness were imported into Bristol. Whiskey exports were also substantial and 183,392 gallons of this spirit arrived in Liverpool. This aspect of the export trade was criticised within Ireland. The prohibition of distillation during a subsistence crisis was a traditional response by governments. In both 1845 and 1846, there were calls for distillation to be outlawed. This included requests from the corporation of Dublin and the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Heytesbury. These entreaties were refused.” https://historyireland.com/food-exports-from-ireland-1846-47/
DeleteNor should I have used the term “supply chain Issues” to suggest that food couldn’t be taken to the starving poor. Ireland did have food; it was the British government taking it away. Though I believe it can be fairly stated that if the Irish had been well-armed, the British would have had a hard time taking the food. If the landowners had insisted on feeding the Irish people first, instead of profit-taking, more food would have stayed in Ireland.
How will we honor contracts in this country when famine hits? The landowners and farmers in Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s could have pleaded that they were simply fulfilling their contracts. After all, the people on the other end were planning to eat that food. What would happen to them if the Irish didn’t sell their grains? Would the British have starved?
In this country, we have some of the finest farmland yielding produce that is shipped all over the world. Those farmers have contracts with China, Japan, much of the rest of Asia and Europe for organic berries. I can’t purchase any of the high-quality powdered milk that Buttercup’s uncles sell to a co-op that sells it all under contract with China. What happens when Americans are starving, but producers are under contract to sell to other countries? These farmers and ranchers only sell to the highest bidder. Foreigners pay better for American produce; Americans don’t want to pay so much for their food. We want illegals to come here to do the work we don’t want to. How much obligation will these ranchers and farmers feel towards their fellow Americans who didn’t want to support them when times were tough? So maybe it wasn’t right to call them supply chain issues, but then again, maybe it was.
Thank you, Survivormann, for keeping me honest, and apologies to everyone else for my errors.
Jennifer your so kind but your errors were trivial in the context of your message.
DeleteBut then again online folks DO like to correct grammatical errors in informational posts so don't feel alone in that long totally useless in the context of the article report of 99.
GET FOOD, Learn how to GROW it. Learn how to HIDE IT when the powers that be decide to grab it for "export", Control, feeding the Children or whatever excuse they use this time.
Food is POWER over people.
From reports of some Ukrainian neighbors that had grandparents IN the Holodomor that they survived by hiding food even from their neighbors cabbages and root veggies in barrels in the woods.
They actually chose to go hungry until the neighbors stopped thinking they had food. Eating quietly and again often going hungry again as neighbors got curious.
Why hide from neighbors? BECAUSE Commies LOVE to "reward" snitches with a bit of food they recovered from you, AND that they simply didn't have enough food to feed them all.
Not only the "Government" is a threat. Think of the too many well armed but skimpy on food and such folks around you. It would be foolish to assume they have such "HIGH MORALS" that hunger will not get them to get some for themselves and their families.
Pray for wisdom, learn that even among friends not all information needs to be shared. Children are really bad at OPSEC, often talking about Mom's root cellar and shooting guns is "So cool".
Further digging revealed that Ukrainians during the Holodomor would convert their grain into moonshine because it was more easily hidden from the government and sold for more money.
DeleteInteresting how booze hold value even in times of starvation.
DeleteMaybe I need a pot thumper still :-)
I've been thinking about getting a still. That's going to take a lot of research.
DeleteDistilled water is useful for CPAP and very useful for converting some .999 silver plus 27 volts DC into colloidal silver.
DeleteNote I said distilled water and .999. Coin silver will harm you with copper poisoning and you don't want unknown minerals added to your silver solution.
Almost half the herbals you teach us about seems to have pure ETOH involved so a still for that seems wise.