Pinchbeck audits a viral Substack piece by a Georgia-based writer claiming the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz leaves the United States without usable diesel by July 4, 2026 and sixty days from famine. Working through its citations to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, the International Energy Agency, Vitol and Jeff Currie of the Carlyle Group, he grants the reporting, including the last Middle Eastern crude cargo unloading at Long Beach, Spirit Airlines going under, and the tank-bottoms problem, but rejects five assumptions behind the famine forecast. He concludes the United States faces stagflation and a sharp recession while actual famine risk falls on Gulf Cooperation Council states and fertilizer-dependent South Asia, and that the real wild card is Trump's power and apparent cognitive decline.
In brief
- The essay accepts that the closure of Hormuz following the strikes on Iran described in the piece is the largest physical interruption to global oil supply in modern history, disrupting roughly a fifth of seaborne crude and liquefied natural gas and about thirty percent of industrial fertilizer.
- Pinchbeck argues the famine forecast rests on five unwarranted assumptions: that record American petroleum exports continue undiverted, that consumption stays at pre-crisis levels, that the coordinated release of 400 million barrels of strategic reserves is irrelevant, that the strait stays closed indefinitely, and that the United States is as food-vulnerable as importing states.
- Demand destruction is already running ahead of the doom model, with the International Energy Agency projecting the sharpest quarterly contraction since COVID and the Philippines, Vietnam and Lufthansa cutting work weeks and flights.
- The genuine famine exposure lies with Gulf states that import over eighty percent of their calories through the strait and depend on fuel-hungry desalination, and with South and Southeast Asian countries such as India that need ammonia-based fertilizer moving through it.
- Pinchbeck's conclusion is that neither the Center for Strategic and International Studies nor Goldman Sachs predicts American famine, but that an unpredictable president whom Bandy Lee and others have described as a malignant narcissist, now visibly declining and profiting from the war, is an X factor severe enough to make stockpiling beans and rice a rational hedge.
Full text
Just a few days ago, a piece made the rounds on Facebook. Eight weeks to empty shelves, 60 days to famine. The essay claims that as as a result of the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the senseless war in Iran, the United States will run out of usable diesel fuel by July 4th, that the food system will then collapse, and that there is a narrow window closing now for us individually to stockpile non-perishable goods and even drinking water. The article said, "If you can hear me, your life depends on what is in this article. I am not being dramatic. I'm not overstating this. I am telling you that the data says United States of America will run out of usable oil by July 4th, 2026.
Europe will run out this month. The food system that feeds you runs on diesel. Diesel runs out first. Read this. Understand it. Act on it today, not tomorrow, today." So, the author of this Substack piece was Mark Schroyer. He's not an economist or a specialist in agriculture. He lives in Georgia, and according to his bio, he was an international professor and Ph D fellow in India where he studied spirituality, Tagore, and cultural studies. He claims to hold an honorary professorship at the School of Ancient Wisdom. But anyway, his piece is well-researched with many citations from Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, and so on. In fact, he attaches a list of 47 sources to support his claim that we are running out of time before famine hits the United States, and that our personal survival depends on what we do right now.
So, I have to admit my first instinct was to ignore Schroyer's screed. I've written my own Chicken Little, "Sky is falling" articles over the years from time to time. Back in the 2008 financial crash, I told people they should stockpile non-perishable goods. And in fact, at that point I bought a small stack of cans and stuffed them into my cabinets in my East Village kitchen, New York. Eventually the cans passed their expiration dates. I I think that I ate them. Probably I threw some of them out, ate some of them. I don't know. Of course, I was also very concerned before that um about the meaning of 2012, the end of the 5,125 year long count of the Mayan calendar.
As I'd written the 2006 book looking at prophecies around that time. Also peak oil and so on. But Schryock offers many sources and citations to back up his idea of imminent collapse. I decided I would work through his research and see if I reached the same conclusions. So yeah, a lot of what he reports is quite accurate. He covers the collapse of Spirit Airlines, which went under at 3:00 in the morning on May 2nd due to the sudden spike in fuel prices caused by the war. He writes about the docking of the New Corolla on May 3rd, 2026. A Hong Kong based tanker called the New Corolla docked at the Port of Long Beach, California.
It was carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil that was loaded at the Port of Basra on February 24th, 4 days before the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed. And that tanker was the last one. That was the last oil shipment from the Middle East to reach American shores. So it arrived a couple weeks ago, it unloaded. Now it is gone. That's all true. But Schryock then makes a big leap. He writes, "We are entering a physical shortage, a point where fuel stops being available at any price because there is none left to sell.
But is that actually true? It is true that the few month buffer of tankers already at sea is now been used up. There was a one commentator, Brian Stock, uh director of the Chevron El Segundo refinery, uh which is one of the largest refineries on the West Coast, and he called it a significant milestone, uh one that he's not seen or faced in his 27-year career. So his refinery finally normally gets 20% of its crude from the Arab Gulf, and that supply is now zero. California imports roughly 60% of its crude, and 20% of that, you know, usually comes from the Middle East until now. So the disruption is is no doubt real by every credible measure.
This is the largest physical interruption to the global oil supply in modern history. 15 to 20% of the world's seaborne crude moves through the Strait of Hormuz, along with roughly the same share of global liquefied natural gas, and maybe equally or even more alarming, 30% of the world's industrial fertilizer. If you enjoyed this video and want more content like it, please like this video and subscribe to our channel. Also, you might consider sharing it with your friends. After Operation Epic Fury, the strikes the United States of Israel launched on February 28th, which killed uh uh Iran's leader, Ali Khamenei, and also killed thousands of Iranian civilians and schoolgirls, the strait closed, uh mines were were were laid out, uh gunboats were deployed, anti-ship missiles were fired, and I think 20,000 mariners are still stranded in the Gulf.
But Triac knows clearly from these already alarming facts for the certainty that one what comes next is going to be mass famine in America. He builds his argument around a condition the oil industry calls tank bottoms. It turns out that storage tanks need a minimum volume of liquid to keep the pumps working. And below that volume, the remaining oil becomes physically inaccessible because the pumps cannot draw at all the gooey sediment at the base would clog the refinery filters if anyone tried to get it out. Speaking to Bloomberg on May 6th, Jeff Currie of the Carlyle Group said, "You're going to hit the physical limits of the system.
That's when the price has to do all the work to destroy demand." He warns that once these levels are breached, yeah, physical reality intervenes and then overrides any economic theory. Even if more oil were suddenly become available, restoring the whole system would take months. And before that could happen, we will see sustained shortages and extreme price volatility. Europe hits tank bottoms sometime in May, and yeah, the United States is going to hit it at current rates around July 4th after that diesel runs out. So, if there are no changes in government policies, the trucks are going to stop, food's going to stop moving, the shelves in grocery stores will start to empty out, and there'll be some kind of panic.
And now Europe is currently addressing the crisis in a coordinated fashion. The European Commission has convened the oil coordination group to implement a 10-point demand reduction strategy. Shryock argues that here in the US, we need to stockpile or starve, and this argument rests on a number of assumptions. The first assumption is that the United States continues to export petroleum at record levels while its own tanks drain. Tryuk himself notes that US petroleum exports hit 14.2 million barrels per day in early 2026, up 33% from the prior year. Jet fuel exports rose 82% making map windfall profits for oil companies. Uh and yeah, the Defense Production Act gives the president the executive branch the authority to redirect those exports toward domestic need, domestic supply.
So, the question is whether this administration will will use that authority, and that's an unknown, a political question. We can see that our federal government has become very unpredictable under an increasingly turbulent or even demented president. I mean, still it seems unlikely they're going to let the entire country grind to a halt. The second assumption from the piece is that consumption is going to continue at pre-crisis levels. But, if prices rise, demand contracts. The International Energy Agency now projects a contraction of 1.5 million barrels per day in global oil demand for the second quarter. This will be the sharpest quarterly drop since COVID. Goldman Sachs projects an even steeper reduction in the next period.
This is caused by what economists call demand destruction. Factories closing, flights canceled, commutes eliminated, farming scaled back because the fuel is just too expensive. And yeah, we're already seeing impacts of this war in countries around the world, particularly in Asia. The Philippines have moved to a four-day work week. Vietnam is asking workers to stay home. Lufthansa has canceled 20,000 flights. A global contraction, in other words, is already underway and it is reducing consumption faster than Tryock's model assumes. Third assumption. He assumes that the coordinated 32-nation release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves is just too small to matter. Tryock dismisses it as, quote, "Borrowing from our own emergency stockpile interest to fill a hole that cannot be filled." Unquote.
But the purpose of strategic reserves is precisely to bridge the gap between a disruption and the restoration of flows. The reserves aren't meant or designed to solve the crisis, but they can slow it down and they can cushion the impacts. Tryock's fourth assumption is is is that the strait will stay closed indefinitely. Operation Epic Fury ended on May 5th. Uh according to the US Navy's mine countermeasure timeline, uh the timeline for reopening the strait is 21 to 30 days. Obviously, we don't know if that's going to happen. The IEA uh and Vitol both estimate 10 to 12 weeks from strait reopening to first refined fuel at the pump if they if they use emergency fast-track refining methods.
Tryock himself acknowledges in an editor's note added after his original post went viral that his 64-week figure refers to full system normalization, not first fuel delivery. But the math to first gas at the pump is closer to 18 weeks. So, that's not a small correction. It could be the difference between a crisis, which is already quite bad, and a collapse, which could be horrifying. So, in in his fifth and probably the most consequential assumption is that the United States faces the same food vulner- vulnerabilities the countries that are actually around the Strait of Hormuz and in the Gulf the Gulf states and so on. The USDA's April 2026 food price outlook projects a 2.9 to 4.6% increase in food prices for the year.
But actually that may be premature and it's possible the next month's report will revise those figures upward considerably. I mean even a 10% price rise in food is very severe but not necessarily famine level. Although it also comes at a time of increasing inflation and massive job loss in the US. When many millions of Americans are already pushed to the edge. So it is definitely pretty bad particularly considering that our federal government now seems to be against helping people in general as its first principle. They can't they can't Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal.
We have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place over you have to you have to let states take care of them Russell. But yeah, it seems that the country is risking immediate famine if this blockade continues or the or those of the Gulf Cooperation Council stage states. Which import more than 80% of the calories through Hormuz as well as countries in South and Southeast Asia like India who depend on imports. We know the United States remains a net food exporter. Many Gulf states face an existential threat from the closure of the strait.
Yeah, more than 80% of their caloric requirements come through it. That's that's nothing to sneeze at. And they also survive with the help of energy intensive desalination plants that provide nearly all of the portable water in the region. Without a constant flow of fuel and imported goods they actually lose their life support systems, and that moves them from, you know, market volatility to a state of physical scarcity uh quickly. Actually within days. In South and Southeast Asia, the biggest threat is the disruption of the industrial nitrogen cycle. 30% of the global ammonia-based fertilizer supply comes through the strait. India actually needs these inputs to sustain its huge population.
If the strait remains closed, we're going to see a massive reduction in agriculture. This is going to push tens of millions of people around the world into extreme food food insecurity. So, I mean, you know, for better or worse, the US situation is less dire at this point. 70% of American food may move by diesel trucks now, as Shryock writes, but when necessity forces our hand, the system will evolve. It's not going to keep running as before. Uh under any rationing regime and and rationing would be one obvious policy move as conditions worsen, the food system is going to get prioritized over discretionary fuel use. Neither the Center for Strategic and International Studies nor Goldman Sachs is predicting famine in the US.
They project a sharp recession recession stagflation, 3 to 5% GDP GDP contraction, mandatory telework. One analyst called the long winter of 2026. However, there's one serious X factor we have to consider. We have what seems to be a degenerate psychopath in the White House running an apocalyptic death cult. And he still holds the support of roughly 33% of the country. This is the case even though he's betrayed every campaign promise, except for maintaining an unstinting commitment to racism, sexism, bigotry, and cruelty. We find ourselves in a strange situation now where Trump has amassed far more power than any modern presidents. At the same time, we can all see that he is cognitively disintegrating.
Bandy Lee and many other psychologists have long classified him as a malignant narcissist. Observers across the political spectrum now are describing what seems to be an accelerating cognitive decline or sundowning. The problem, or let's say the danger, is that if Trump is aware on some level that he is collapsing, we just don't know what he's going to choose to do with all of his power. He could try to take the whole country, or even the whole world, down with him. We know that he and his cronies have been benefiting from this Iran war, even though it's a war that could unleash global catastrophe and and kill tens of millions of people.
And they're doing this by profiting off of insider knowledge in the stock market, for instance. You know, who knows? A dying Trump might actually enjoy presiding over mass famine and even, you know, launching nuclear war. We just don't know. Right now, we find ourselves in uncharted territory, lurching from one chaotic crisis and disaster to another, with really no idea what comes next. Considering all of that, maybe stocking stocking up on some beans and rice is not actually the worst idea.
Transcript of the video essay, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.