Europe's economy, currencies and industries are in free fall, plunging toward "economic wasteland" status that's less than a year away if natural gas supplies from Russia aren't quickly restored. That's the conclusion of numerous experts who have spoken to Natural News over the last two weeks, including war correspondent Michael Yon, Finnish economist Tuomas Malinen, global agricultural trends researcher David Dubyne, and Italian-American author Leo Zagami.

The situation is so dire that Germany chemical giant BASF — formerly part of the Nazi-run IG Farben chemical conglomerate that carried out war crimes against humanity — is now threatening to shut down operations for industrial plants that have run continuously since the 1960s. As explained by author Philip Oltermann in a UK Guardian article entitled, "How gas rationing at Germany's BASF plant could plunge Europe into crisis," BASF is close to shutting down its massive chemical facilities in Germany due to a lack of natural gas. But shutting down production might be permanent, since no one knows if the plants can ever resume operations after a shutdown, since the very act of shutting the system down may break it.

BASF is critical to the world's supply chain for fertilizer, petroleum refining, medicines, plastics, consumer products, industrial materials and more. If BASF were to go down, Western Europe's industrial economy would rapidly collapse into ruin, and the global supply chain crisis would dramatically worsen far beyond anything we saw due to covid lockdowns.