Just another domino: ug99 wheat rust

I believe in the prophecies about the last days culminating in the Second Coming of Christ. These are recorded in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and also written by the living prophets. These prophecies include wars, famine, plagues, pollutions, violence, and many other unsavory events.

I have long paid attention to the specific prophecies, and wondered how they are all going to happen. What order will they happen? Will they start slow and then build up slowly? Or will they start slow and then go kaboom all at once at the end like the fireworks shows on the Fourth of July, culminating in a huge finale? (in my opinion, it will be the latter.)

In my mind's eye, I see a whole scene of dominoes set up, every event will be just waiting its turn, until the day God decides to hit the first domino and the world as we know it will start falling down in a series of terrible events.

Every time I see another sign of the times, happening or getting prepped to happen, I picture it as another domino, just waiting to fall.

So today I found out about a new crop disease that is occurring in Africa, a wheat rust called ug99. Its name comes from being discovered in Uganda in 1999. The disease is spread by spores blowing in the wind.

It is already killing 20-80% of any wheat crop it infects. I do not want to think what will happen if it actually reaches the United States. This would be just one more way for these prophecies of famine to come true.

I'm not posting this to my ward blog, http://GottaWannaNeedaGettaPrepared.blogspot.com because it makes me sound too alarmist and wild-eyed. But since I am always looking for dominoes, I might as well record this one here.


Here is one of several articles about ug99 that I found on the internet:

Farmers in Afghanistan already struggle with the effects of drought and years of conflict. Now there is worry about a new threat headed in their direction in the wind — a fungus that destroys wheat crops. The disease is a form of stem rust named for its discovery in Uganda ten years ago. Ug99 is now in one of Afghanistan’s neighbors, Iran. The disease kills wheat plants by robbing them of water and nutrients. Stem rust produces reddish-brown spots on the stems of infected plants. The weakened stems break easily. The world’s last major outbreak of stem rust took place in the nineteen fifties. Agriculture — excluding opium production — represents about one-third of the Afghan economy. But agriculture employs eighty percent of the country’s workers. And almost all Afghan farmers grow wheat to feed their families or to sell. Afghanistan has a population estimated at almost thirty-four million people. Mahmoud Solh directs the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, in Aleppo, Syria. He says it took a few years for Ug99 to show its destructive power. Then, in Kenya, it destroyed from twenty to eighty percent of wheat crops. And before long, he says, winds carried the disease from Kenya to Ethiopia. Ug99 has also affected Sudan and more recently has moved into Asia, spreading to Yemen and Iran. Mahmoud Solh says the disease now threatens Afghanistan..... http://www.ug99.info/