I’ve been telling you that severe shortages, famine and so on are coming. I’m not alone. Others are talking about what it means to have the Strait of Hormuz stay closed to ship traffic and they all agree with me. Right now all that most of us are feeling is pump shock at what it’s suddenly costing us to fill our gas tanks. But a shortage of fuel doesn’t mean just higher fuel prices, it means higher everything prices for what there is available, which will soon be less.
It doesn’t seem right that this 20% loss of crude oil from the blocked Strait could cause so many problems, but it does because there was a balance between the need for oil and the supply of it and now that balance is gone and the world economy is literally in shock. It will take a long time to work around this problem if the Strait stays closed and the economy’s already badly damaged now because of the time it’s been closed. There’s no timeline for it’s opening again and meanwhile, there’s nothing in place to make up for the shortfall, so the situation will continue to worsen.
In my view, our real, actual world leaders, not those who posture and pontificate, are setting the world up for yet another extended period of hardship.
I took inventory this morning of my Cold Room food stash, it seemed timely especially since I’ve been consuming stuff out of it rather than see it get too far past it’s Use By date. Then I made a list and went to one of our local cheap food outlets and stocked up on more, much more, granulated sugar and white flour, plus vinegar and raisin bran cereal. They were out of shredded wheat. These are minimally processed foods, healthy to eat and a long shelf life. A few more items to replenish and I’ll have it. The goal is to maintain a 2 year food supply.
It doesn’t cost all that much to have that much food put away for a single person who weighs around 145 pounds and doesn’t eat like a pig. No cookies, snack chips or other garbage food. My one concession to that is some cans of wasabi peas, unless you count a large jar of salted peanuts, which I consider the same genre as energy bars, one case of them.
Some people find security in owning one or two large, expensive dogs to protect them from danger, but I’d rather not find myself in the position one day of choosing whether or not to start eating the dogs. Dogs eat a lot, and big dogs eat more. I’d rather have a cold room stuffed full of food.
This may all blow over and everything will go back to normal. I hope it does. I just don’t think it will. That’s all.