This is an English translation of an article I wrote for a German magazine. The article looks into the post apocalyptic strategies the wealthy and ultrarich are focusing on. Main point: The rich are as afraid of the collapse of society as anyone else, but their means to face the calamity are on another level.
IMO the one thing they can’t escape is themselves. I saw an illustration of one of these survival bunkers, which went ten floors down, with the bottom floor being a huge armory. My first thought was, so it’s going to be nine storeys packed to the brim with entitled sociopaths, sitting on a massive pile of guns?
I’m pretty sure I’ll last longer outside with the cannibals lol
Thought you typed cannabis at first and was like “well, yeah”
You know it’ll be fucking hilarious if it happened. These rich assholes are building bunkers and surrounding themselves with ex-marines and survivalists and they somehow believe they’re not the weakest link.
Money ain’t mean shit post-apocalypse.
100%, those idiots will last less than a day. Meanwhile, the rest of the world may collapse, but a society will survive and rebuild. Those rich morons will be some of the first casualties, and they are setting their own doom traps themselves.
The fun thing about bunkers is they have to be ventilated.
Imagine if there was a guilt-free hole in the ground. You can toss whatever in there and its OK. Dirt. Rocks. Used oil. Toxins. Trash. Bodies.
That’s what would happen. And you can’t guard it that effectively, because you need guards around yourself. I think you’re right, and a day is all it would take. A week at most.
You’re forgetting the killbots again aren’t you.
I’m glad you mentioned robots, because robots and automation are something I deal with often. I can respond with a question: You’re forgetting how useless a billionaire is, aren’t you?
Robots don’t spring from whole cloth, ready to go. Someone, usually several people, have to make them. And once they are made, someone has to maintain them, charge them, and repair them. Amd it will be left in the hands of someone that Bob the Billionaire doesn’t respect: a mechanic. Someone who isn’t useless, and can disable those robots in minutes, probably in ways you can’t easily trace.
I totally agree but something like perimeter Phalanx CIWS with decent ammo stores would put all but the bravest off for a while surely you agree with that? I’m also expecting one of the first purposes of decent Automatons would be a certain amount of self maintainance/basic repair.
for a while
Therein lies the problem. No matter what they come up with, it will not work forever.
Yeah, true. You can spend money on resources/people but once you’re there if you don’t have an Economic system there’s no reason to keep working for someone who’s money doesn’t exist anymore.
i think there are multiple ways to ensure that people will still work for you in such a senario, i doubt they are that stupid that they will rely on cash in the apocalypse. If we can think that wouldn’t work out so can they. There are other commodities that you can secure and make sure you are the only one that knows how to get access to them combined with having a few trusted guards that are given a lot of power when working under you which they wish to keep, you can get a lot of people to stay in line with limiting their resources and having a small core of loyal armed men. Before inventing money we still had people rich in other ways that had a bunch of people working under them, it’s not going to be very different after the collapse. Although i do agree with the statement that a bunker unless it’s to protect yourself from a nuke or whatever or long term radiation is not a good idea especially when shared with strangers.
There are other commodities that you can secure and make sure you are the only one that knows how to get access to them
This sounds like an excellent way to spend the last minutes of your life having your fingernails pulled off.
By that logic people would be pulling their fingernails now in order to get money out of them, what’s the difference?
No, they are aware of that fact. See here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
They wanted a way to ensure loyality of their mercenaries post-money.
I’m always confused why people think the rich are the ones who will go to Mars. It would be a huge dampener on their lifestyle, and risky ensuring supply lines. There are no ski resorts, yachts, or big game hunting ranges on Mars!
No, they won’t be the ones going. They want to send the rest of us in order to outsource the more damaging production 1 step further. Just like we have Ugandans deal with our fast fashion waste and social media moderation now, but even further out of sight and out of mind. It will be an economic and/or literal prison colony. The island bunkers are just a stopgap until they can find a way to not share the planet with as many plebs ruining their view.
Rich people want a legacy. I believe it’s why, for example, Bill Gates started being super charitable and started doing AMAs, becoming the internet’s poster boy, regularly chatting about inequality while offering zero actual solutions (the ex world’s richest man talking about inequality, ha!).
When our current crop of billionaires get old, they’ll likely start doing the same. It really wouldn’t surprise me if in a few decades people are gushing online over how great a guy Bezos or Zuckerberg is.
If the first trip can be a return trip, I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if a billionaire wanted to do it.
Actually staying there and building something, though? Fuck no.
from all the rich idiots out there you really had to pick Bill Gates?
He’s the clearest example of a wanker billionaire who then started publicly pandering to create a legacy of him being a lovely wholesome guy.
He isn’t a wholesome lovely guy, he never was. He’s trying to save face.
The charity money still does good things, and that’s great, but donating money to charity and telling the world about it doesn’t make you a great person.
The likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg will 100% do the same thing when they’re old. It worked wonders for Bill’s image. He and his team have successfully turned him from the devil incarnate to bubbly grandpa of internet teenagers.
ah yes…
I prepare for civilization ending the same way I prepare for anything going wrong. I invest in my skillsets and in the people around me. Why hunker down and conserve what little I have when I can expand and network?
If they hide in bunkers, they will just have a much closer view of their very own, very intimate, civil war.
It doesn’t matter what they come up with, it doesn’t matter how loyal their guards are. Someone in that bunker will one day wake up, and decide the old man needs to go.
I read a book by China Mieville called “Iron Council” which put it best: “History is dripping. And red. With the blood of those who trusted the uncorruptible.”
None of these will be feasible, because they didn’t invest in the technology for it, because they were too busy trying to find ways to nickel and dime the poor
It sounds like they know that when the fall happens their money will not save them.
Elon Musk says he wants to go to Mars to save the “seed of humanity”. Ummm… save the current planet instead of dreaming about living in space. No grass, trees, animals, nature, breathable air. Takea half a year to get there and the gravity is different.
It is atupid to think Mars is any kind of option. He will spend the rest of his money on his rockets rather than improving the world around him.
There’s no way that Mars will be an option for anyone now living, but it might be in the future. If it takes 100 years, for example, we need to start now to limit the apocalyptic window
Spend the money eliminating the apocalyptic window.
Let’s just get Elon Musk to Mars and decide from there.
What about getting rid of the 99%? Sounds like a more plausible final solution for me.
There’s a really good interview with Rushkoff on the You Are Not So Smart podcast, gives more context to the story and has some great info.
Obligatory addition:
Only one of these things is currently possible
