The Fuel Shortage in Venezuela Will Lead to Starvation

Dear readers, those who already know me are aware I used to write about confirmed facts we all care about as preppers. At this point in my life I hardly can be considered a prepper, though. A survivor? Sure. I’ve been in much better conditions (as I have mentioned earlier in previous articles) than other migrants. Always had a roof and something to eat, and could buy my kiddo a good meal every now and then and even an ice cream, cookies and the occasional chocolate when he asked for it. Maybe I have not eaten a grilled steak every two days, but I haven’t starved. Have I seen myself rationing? Sure. At least I have something to ration. I know I have been a little…disperse. I have realized that facing with a reality you had only had imagined in your worst scenario fantasies, is harder than I thought. That´s why I´ve been trying to recover myself, and getting used to the quite grim possibility of death far away from my homeland.

This said, I received a few audios about a situation that is presenting given the scarcity of gasoline that has already impacted the food supply. The person sending me these materials is reliable, and informed me that indeed that happened.

There’s a fuel shortage in Venezuela

The local majors, governors, and uniforms have confiscated the fuel, and they sell them in dollars, for their own personal profit. This way they are bypassing tax controls, impeding the audit, and pocketing all the money they collect. They are trafficking with the fuel, and this brings along two consequences.

One, crops were lost. Not that they care, of course. The Chinese need Venezuela with the least amount of people possible. They want our land for themselves and this is evident. Almost one million square km, plenty of water, and mineral resources with an extremely low-density population? That leaving outside the extremely privilege its position means.

This geopolitical comment is because I need the world to know exactly what is happening. We didn’t “choose” poorly. This was imposed. If we didn’t elect Hugo, the result would have been just another coup d’etat. And another, until thugs could control the country by force like it is happening now.

The other consequence is much worse. No crops, no food. People will die by the thousands unless extreme measures are taken. And I mean really extreme. We don’t deserve this.

People are getting fed up.

What has happened is, in one town in the Falcon state in the West of Venezuela (relatively close to the major refineries in South America, which are not producing even a drop of fuel), the fuel trafficking was so shameless that the entire town (and I hope this is will be an increasing trend) kicked the heck (literally!) out of the major and one middle-low rank uniforms, who is in the hospital right now. This collective beating means that crowds are starting to walk on the loose.

This is an isolated case, but this information spreads like wildfire even with the strongest of censorships. They took out of the pockets of one of the uniforms the 300$ he had made (illegally) selling gasoline in the middle of the night to the always existent privileged wealthy inhabitants. Be no mistaken, this money is part of the laundering system they have turned the country in. Selling gasoline to Colombian smugglers, they get CASH. Huge amounts of it. This cash is going to be stockpiled God knows where and for what reason.

In another town (the part where the footage in my channel is taken from) there was a massive protest when thousands of riders on all kinds of bikes (mostly the low-income class, on those cheap Chinese bikes). I’ve been in bike shows with many other riders but this was an aggressive, criminal-abundant pileup of guys on bikes. Truly scary. Never would consider getting close to such herd. I’d prefer to face a zombie herd with a baseball bat that getting into one of those. These are the kind of situations where one of them pulls a gun, shoots, take a nice shiny bike, and gets out of dodge. Nobody saw anything, there is no record of what happened. I know how things are with this failure of a State we are now.

And this leads me to another situation that deserves careful thinking. I’ve had to re-evaluate again our spot. With the gasoline scarcity the only ones being able to travel some distance, quarantine or not, are the guys riding these bikes. A few dollars spent in gasoline will be enough for them to travel long distances. Not all of them are thugs, sure. But a respectable amount are, enough to make you trigger a red alert if a couple of men on one of these bikes gets suddenly in your way. There are dirty cops that will have made previous arrangements. They will have sometimes free passage because they work for someone high in the political sphere, more often than you can think of.

This makes me think that, under the situation we are currently, not even being close to a road is a safe bet. I mean, my goal was to go with my kiddo and live peacefully in the mountains, until things settle down. It seems that doing this without an arsenal at home would be not the best of the ideas until the house itself has been adequately remodeled.

Don’t delay your preparations.

I would like to remark on something. Please don’t waste time. Start prepping and keep prepping. I always thought I would have more time to prep, but things happened too fast. Now that I need my house with minimal conditions, don’t even know how ruined it is, or if it has been looted or trespassed. My family cannot even go to check if everything is OK there because there is no fuel and town access is closed. My old folks cannot leave home, even when there is not one single case of the Chinese virus SARS/Cov2 in the entire state, 300 km around, one of the biggest states in the country.

Of course, this entire situation is a total mess: not being able to have a certain degree of mobility, provided you are already in your safe location under isolation makes you rely on your preps. One of the main items I can say people should start stocking now is soap and detergent, for clothes, dishes, and personal hygiene. If the industries producing them happens to be severely affected these products will disappear from the market. Same as medical supplies like alcohol, disinfection products, and supplies. I don´t mean just “stockpile”, I mean to be able to produce these items yourself as I have mentioned in previous articles. It´s better to have a steady source of good homemade distilled alcohol than a huge stockpile and no means nor knowledge to produce it in the future.

We all are seeing how fragile the supply chain of our “modern” world is.

Thugs control the gasoline and diesel supply, and every product will see its price rising to levels so incredible that it´s inevitable the thin society fabric survives to such stress. First rips are being seen in Venezuela. Good thing is, people are directing their violence to those directly responsible for the abuse.

On the other hand, people won´t fight back, just a small percentage with courage enough, but without weapons. If that is going to change, I see the possibility, once despair has become epidemic. Then, the last (and unpredictable) stage will be present: the civil war.

They are giving fuel for free just to the cars of the red elite, high-rank members of the party, “official” vehicles (whatever this means), and ambulances.

This is not happening just in the cities. It´s happening as well in the smaller towns. Even worst because unarmed people can be controlled much easier by a gang of trained killers. That is exactly what we are seeing there. Cubans trained the most ductile (and stoopid) minds to spy, and made them become the snitches of those opposing some sort of violent resistance since the 2014 demonstrations.

Remember these thugs are the support of a very complex structure, involving narcos and Islamic terrorism. I could have prepared, indeed, but it would have required tons of resources. It wasn´t impossible (nor it is) but a major change in my lifestyle was needed, and with a family over my shoulders, they needed some sort of stability back in those years.

Use the time you have wisely.

I am now in much better condition, indeed. All of this “free” time (I always have found something to do to earn a few bucks here and there using the web) has been wisely used to download and gather information, make partnerships, design some devices that will be available to improve fellow preppers life, and see where my preps really failed badly.

Just for the record, one of the wiser choice (maybe the only one I have had in a decade, to be honest) was the diversification of my income. Not depending on just one source has been the key, even in this quite difficult conditions: a foreign country, my health details here and there, psychological impacts on my nerves, seeing all my former life going to the drain and finding myself broke when I had planned an early retirement…well, this is life, isn´t it?.

Thanks for your words, your encouragement, and stay safe.

We will prevail.

J.

About Jose

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They are currently setting up a new life in another country. Follow Jose on YouTube and gain access to his exclusive content on Patreon. Donations: paypal.me/JoseM151