Starving Venezuelan oil workers are growing too weak for heavy labor. They are too fatigued to act quickly which leads to more fatal accidents. Crude oil makes up about 95% of Venezuela's exports. The country has no other source of foreign income.

Nextbigfuture predicts that the Maduro government will be overthrown in a military coup by the end of 2018. North Korea has terrible but stable conditions. Venezuela conditions continue to worsen at an unsustainable level.

Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty, according to a new university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages.

Prices in Venezuela rose 4,068 percent in the 12 months to the end of January, according to estimates by the country's opposition-led National Assembly, broadly in line with independent economists' figures.

The study showed that 87 percent of people in Venezuela, one of Latin America's wealthiest nations back in the 1970s, were living in poverty last year, rising from 82 percent in 2016 and 48 percent in 2014.

Daily oil output dropped to 1.77 million barrels in January from a peak of 3.34 million in 2001. Much of the decline is due to lack of money for maintenance and exploration. Recently, though, hunger is also to blame.

A monthly OPEC report revealed Venezuela pumped 1.6 million barrels of oil per day in January. Production in January was down 20% from a year ago.

Migrate or Die

More than half a million Venezuelans who have fled to Colombia, many illegally, hoping to escape grinding poverty, rising violence and shortages of food and medicine in their once-prosperous, oil exporting nation. They migrate or die of hunger.