Running on Empty: Shocking Truths About Resources the World Is Desperately Losing

Alex Brown

The ever-increasing world population comes with a growing demand for critical things like water, medicine, soil, etc. The demand for these essential things has left the world running out of them at an alarming rate. You might not know this, but it can only shrink in availability and become more expensive. Therefore, you should hoard everything we listed on this list.

Chocolate

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We grew up seeing various chocolate brands on supermarket shelves while we were young. This is different nowadays when you are short of options. In 2014, the global chocolate industry took a severe hit from the widespread cocoa diseases, especially cocoa pod rot, that affected 50% of chocolate production.

Sardines

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Over the years, sardine has been a source of a balanced diet that provides essential nutrients like protein, calcium, omega-3, and others. The destructive impact of overfishing and temperature changes in the Pacific Ocean has hit the fishing population badly. If care is not taken, you’ll have to trek the length and breadth of New York before you can get a high-quality sardine from the store.

Clean Drinking Water

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It’s no news that over 3.6 billion people worldwide live without clean drinking water. Studies have attributed this menace to climate change that alters the weather pattern worldwide. It was also reported that this scarcity does not end because of the increasing water consumption.

TopSoil

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The world is getting stripped of high-quality soil at an unprecedented rate. This big problem is having a lasting impact on our food production and overall well-being. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, the world could run out of good quality topsoil in 60 years.

Burial Spaces

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This is a spillover from the pandemic of reduced land that has engulfed the world in the last decades. Before the industrial era, dead people were being buried in church graveyards and family plots. The urbanization came with an enormous demand for glamorous and large graveyards, leading to few burial spaces in existing cemeteries.

Blood

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Blood banks have become a rarity since the outbreak of the HIV epidemic In the 1990s. This epidemic introduced a stricter regulation to the once blossoming blood market, leading to the first ever occurrence of blood shortage in 2015.

Clay Bricks

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During the 2009 world economic crisis, Almost 1.2 billion clay bricks were left in ruins, forcing most of these brick factories to shut down. However, the effect of this crisis still lingers today because of the shortage of kiln-fired clay brick production.

Lethal Injections

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Most pharmaceutical firms nowadays are shying away from the production of lethal injections. This is not about lack of ingredients but the guilt that comes with the production. More than 30 leading pharmaceutical companies in the UK and US, like Akron, Pfizer, Roche, etc., have publicly adopted this policy.

Quality Coffee

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Your morning is incomplete without a cup of coffee. This is the idea we grew up with, all thanks to the Brazilian and American coffee beans. In recent years, an extreme drought, erratic rainfall, high temperature, and disease outbreak in Brazil and Central America has endangered the production of viable coffee beans, leading to an extreme shortage of good quality coffee.

Helium

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It’s hard to believe that the world is a helium shortage. Helium is a lighter-than-air gas that makes the balloon float. The universe has a finite supply, and the escape ratio is rising. This increasing exhaustion of the helium stockpile has mandated the signing of the “Responsible Helium Administration Stewardship Act” by the US Congress.

Snakebite Antidotes

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A multitude of environmental and production constraints have jeopardized the production of region-specific antivenom. According to Doctors Without Borders, there is a significant depletion in the supply of snakebite antidotes. They project that the world could run out of snakebite antidotes by 2040.

Rare Earth Treasures

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Our world is laden with wonderfully created rare earth treasures like cerium, terbium, palladium, scandium, Holmum, and others. Since the booming economy of smartphones and other gadgets, the demand for these treasures has increased. However, the exclusive mining operations have eaten so deep into these materials, giving rise to concerns of total exhaustion in the next 15-20 years.

 IP Address

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Internet protocol address are those four numerical combinations connected to computer networks for network interface identification and location addresses. In a 2015 memo released by the American Registry for Internet numbers, there has been a recorded shortage of combinations of numbers available for use.

Bacon

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There is a global concern over the shortage of high-quality bacon. The ever-increasing demand for high quality by United States consumers also coincided with the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) and African Swine Disease that has killed millions of pigs in the United States and China. This has disrupted the production of rich and high-quality bacon in the market.

Goat Cheese

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The warning of a goat cheese shortage has been circulating right from time. This is a perfect storm of rising demand and falling production due to a disease outbreak among goats that led to an unprecedented culling. Most top brands like Pizza Express have resorted to importing goats from Asia and other parts of the continent.

Data Storage

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Data storage is an essential driving force in business decision-making. The growth rate is exponential, and data storage industries are having difficulty storing zillion of data produced daily. According to the IDC report, almost 175 zettabytes of data would require storage space by 2025.

Antibiotics

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Most manufacturers have blamed the shortfall of antibiotics productions like amoxicillin, cefalexin, etc., on factors like difficulty sourcing raw materials. This shortfall has created a domino effect that also wipes out the supplies of substitute medicines.

Gold

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The incessant leasing and naked short-selling of gold have deprived the world of an adequate supply of physical gold. Many analysts have speculated that this shortage might lead to an apocalyptic period where people would line up to buy an ounce of gold at all costs.

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Alex Brown
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