The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods
September 2, 2020 7:56 AM Subscribe
Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”-
The more advanced the tech, the more cocooned insularity it affords. “I finally caved and got the Oculus,” one of my best friends messaged me on Signal the other night. “Considering how little is available to do out the real world, this is gonna be a game-changer.” Indeed, his hermetically sealed, Covid-19-inspired techno-paradise was now complete.
we cannot simply rise from the chrysalis of matter as pure consciousness
speak for yourself, peasant
posted by allegedly at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2020 [18 favorites]
speak for yourself, peasant
posted by allegedly at 8:10 AM on September 2, 2020 [18 favorites]
Of course they often pick New Zealand, the only anglosphere country that has even marginally managed to escape their utter fuckery. The rich are a disease.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:15 AM on September 2, 2020 [37 favorites]
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:15 AM on September 2, 2020 [37 favorites]
They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future
I think they know they’re affecting the future; they’ve just absolved themselves of any responsibility to affect it for the better.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:25 AM on September 2, 2020 [39 favorites]
I think they know they’re affecting the future; they’ve just absolved themselves of any responsibility to affect it for the better.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:25 AM on September 2, 2020 [39 favorites]
Weapons rooms, fake windows and a $3m price tag: inside a luxury doomsday bunker (SL Guardian)
Anyone who's played the Fallout 4 Far Harbor DLC will find this place familiar.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:32 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Anyone who's played the Fallout 4 Far Harbor DLC will find this place familiar.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:32 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
How privileged are you really if you must escape your collapsing country?
posted by infini at 8:47 AM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by infini at 8:47 AM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]
I think it's funny how billionaires think that in a Mad Max scenario they'll be the warlords rather than, I dunno, actual military leaders who already command hierarchies of people and equipment specialized in violence. These bunkers aren't going to do anything against actual military equipment.
posted by Pyry at 8:47 AM on September 2, 2020 [39 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 8:47 AM on September 2, 2020 [39 favorites]
Explore the preppers tag for many previous discussions on this topic.
posted by gwint at 8:48 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by gwint at 8:48 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Tired: We're making the world a better place
Wired: We're making a better place from the world
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:51 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
Wired: We're making a better place from the world
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:51 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
The only safe bunker is a bunker that nobody knows about, and there are precious few of those, because there are precious few rich folks who know how to construct a shelter all by their lonesome and even if they did, chances are the neighboring kids already know all about the "hidden" construction site and may have already built a sand fort out there last weekend. These people, I swear, they just don't think past the first approximations.
posted by aramaic at 8:53 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 8:53 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".posted by star gentle uterus at 8:53 AM on September 2, 2020 [41 favorites]
The only safe bunker is a bunker that nobody knows about
How is the Uber Eats driver supposed to find you after your 12 months of freeze-dried pinto beans runs out?
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:58 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
How is the Uber Eats driver supposed to find you after your 12 months of freeze-dried pinto beans runs out?
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:58 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
After 12 months on pinto beans alone, JoeZydeco, anywhere downwind would be a clue.
posted by scruss at 9:06 AM on September 2, 2020 [30 favorites]
posted by scruss at 9:06 AM on September 2, 2020 [30 favorites]
These bunkers aren't going to do anything against actual military equipment.
Or a mob with shovels. But fighting the horde plays into their demented psychology and what makes them special (to them). We know how the odds game plays out in real-life, though.
Will it be like the French knights at Agincourt, mired in the mud with their expensive armor and custom swords while hundreds of peasants beat them to death with hammers?
posted by lon_star at 9:10 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
Or a mob with shovels. But fighting the horde plays into their demented psychology and what makes them special (to them). We know how the odds game plays out in real-life, though.
Will it be like the French knights at Agincourt, mired in the mud with their expensive armor and custom swords while hundreds of peasants beat them to death with hammers?
posted by lon_star at 9:10 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
These bunkers aren't going to do anything against actual military equipment.
As the questioner in the post suggests, they won't even protect them against their own help.
The speed with which the elites will be outgunned, out-brutalized and quickly dead minus the consent of the governed and in a state of actual societal collapse hasn't really dawned on them broadly yet, I guess.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
As the questioner in the post suggests, they won't even protect them against their own help.
The speed with which the elites will be outgunned, out-brutalized and quickly dead minus the consent of the governed and in a state of actual societal collapse hasn't really dawned on them broadly yet, I guess.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
It's more likely that their climate control computers will go down, they'll be no one to reboot them, and they'll bake to death.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by mr_roboto at 9:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
More likely still that the computers will be working fine but no one knows how to replace a valve.
(I did some plumbing this weekend. Replacing a valve is no joke for someone who hasn't done it before. Your bunker staff should include a plumber, oligarchs)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:31 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
(I did some plumbing this weekend. Replacing a valve is no joke for someone who hasn't done it before. Your bunker staff should include a plumber, oligarchs)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:31 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
Maybe, what we need, is a bit of future extortion to get the ultra rich to give up on their plan to wreck the planet for short term profit then abandon us all to live out their lives in abject canned luxury.
Project: Fuck Your Bunker which tracks every billionaire bunker on the planet and promises that if "the event" really happens then we'll come visiting with a few thousand desperate people and some shovels to dig them out and kill them ugly.
I mean, sure, they don't accept "dude, eventually you'll run out of freeze dried luxury food and you'll need a civilization to come back to" as an argument against their escape pod plan, but a more direct threat to their bunkers might be workable.
Especially if there's a foundation tracking those bunkers, and buying up civilian grade weaponry and equipment specifically to break in so the sociopath bunker dwellers can be killed painfully. Oh, you've got a few mercs in radio controlled explosive collars? We've built a machine to detonate those simultaneously and then you'll be left without your mercenary force and at the non-existent mercy of our crack squad of sadists. Or we/ll just overwhelm you with numbers. After you wreck the planet, why shouldn't we peons go out trying to get to you?
Make it a very real, specific, threat that undermines their entire bunker strategy.
Drill holes in their metaphoric lifeboats and maybe they'll be less likely to steer the ship to the iceberg, yes?
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on September 2, 2020 [34 favorites]
Project: Fuck Your Bunker which tracks every billionaire bunker on the planet and promises that if "the event" really happens then we'll come visiting with a few thousand desperate people and some shovels to dig them out and kill them ugly.
I mean, sure, they don't accept "dude, eventually you'll run out of freeze dried luxury food and you'll need a civilization to come back to" as an argument against their escape pod plan, but a more direct threat to their bunkers might be workable.
Especially if there's a foundation tracking those bunkers, and buying up civilian grade weaponry and equipment specifically to break in so the sociopath bunker dwellers can be killed painfully. Oh, you've got a few mercs in radio controlled explosive collars? We've built a machine to detonate those simultaneously and then you'll be left without your mercenary force and at the non-existent mercy of our crack squad of sadists. Or we/ll just overwhelm you with numbers. After you wreck the planet, why shouldn't we peons go out trying to get to you?
Make it a very real, specific, threat that undermines their entire bunker strategy.
Drill holes in their metaphoric lifeboats and maybe they'll be less likely to steer the ship to the iceberg, yes?
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on September 2, 2020 [34 favorites]
There is a futility in all of this that seems to be missed. Perhaps rather than live through whatever calamity everyone else is going through, you can live in your bunker living off your food reserve for a few years--perhaps indefinitely. At that point, you're basically in quarantine: endlessly working through your DVD collection until...what?
You run out of food?
You die of natural causes
You rise out of the bunker, hoping the remaining survivors see you as a Great Leader?
Your kids leave the bunker to interbreed with the other superrich?
Basically, you've successfully kicked the can down the road until you have to face the same reality as everyone else, or die 'cause you died. Most scenarios, you're not getting to the other side (unless you are planning some sort of Cloud Ark sort of thing to have generations wait it out).
In short, this is just an extension of their inherent selfishness: they don't want to distribute their wealth or even take a crack at the problems they are trying to avoid. Instead, they just want to flex their privilege just a bit longer, to hell with the rest of us.
posted by MrGuilt at 9:36 AM on September 2, 2020 [14 favorites]
You run out of food?
You die of natural causes
You rise out of the bunker, hoping the remaining survivors see you as a Great Leader?
Your kids leave the bunker to interbreed with the other superrich?
Basically, you've successfully kicked the can down the road until you have to face the same reality as everyone else, or die 'cause you died. Most scenarios, you're not getting to the other side (unless you are planning some sort of Cloud Ark sort of thing to have generations wait it out).
In short, this is just an extension of their inherent selfishness: they don't want to distribute their wealth or even take a crack at the problems they are trying to avoid. Instead, they just want to flex their privilege just a bit longer, to hell with the rest of us.
posted by MrGuilt at 9:36 AM on September 2, 2020 [14 favorites]
Project: Fuck Your Bunker...:
Here's one to start with.
posted by aramaic at 9:40 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Here's one to start with.
posted by aramaic at 9:40 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Explore the preppers tag for many previous discussions on this topic.
Yeah, I guess COVID-19 adds the barest of new winkles to the discussion, but this is same thing we hash out over and over on here on the subject. Half the comments are practically verbatim (see: "complaints about going to New Zealand", "how about them plumbers/carpenters, am I right??", and "we'll just know where to find them easier!!").
posted by sideshow at 9:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I guess COVID-19 adds the barest of new winkles to the discussion, but this is same thing we hash out over and over on here on the subject. Half the comments are practically verbatim (see: "complaints about going to New Zealand", "how about them plumbers/carpenters, am I right??", and "we'll just know where to find them easier!!").
posted by sideshow at 9:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
So many options beyond letting them flee to their bunkers: seared filets, tartare, poached, jerked, stewed, spit roasted, en papillote....
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:43 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:43 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
We should have done a Golgafrincham B-Ark deal on these fuckheads.
posted by SansPoint at 9:51 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 9:51 AM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
The speed with which the elites will be outgunned, out-brutalized and quickly dead minus the consent of the governed and in a state of actual societal collapse hasn't really dawned on them broadly yet, I guess.
Has on at least one of them. Not sure how many others are listening.
posted by flabdablet at 9:59 AM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
Has on at least one of them. Not sure how many others are listening.
posted by flabdablet at 9:59 AM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
Having made their wagers that the world will collapse, they now find themselves looting everything in sight and actively promoting the collapse, lest their wagers fail to pay off. I will of course make it my life's mission to find these bunkers and plug their air intakes and/or exhausts. In a pinch I suppose you could mix ammonia and bleach nearby and let the vapors get sucked in.
posted by hypnogogue at 10:03 AM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by hypnogogue at 10:03 AM on September 2, 2020 [8 favorites]
Here’s an idea! If we can trick the super rich into thinking the apocalypse is here today, right now, maybe they’ll go seal themselves in their bunkers and leave the rest of us alone.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:04 AM on September 2, 2020 [20 favorites]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:04 AM on September 2, 2020 [20 favorites]
MetaFilter: this is same thing we hash out over and over on here on the subject. Half the comments are practically verbatim
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:05 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:05 AM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
IIRC Leslie Fish has gone pretty nutty themselves, but the Digwell Carol is still a fine moral instruction.
"But still the people stayed alive, and well they promised then/That all the devils hid in Hell would never rule again."
posted by tavella at 10:11 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
"But still the people stayed alive, and well they promised then/That all the devils hid in Hell would never rule again."
posted by tavella at 10:11 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
I noticed how Peter Thiel spoke at the last RNC in 2016 and then promptly left the country.
posted by Selena777 at 10:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 10:13 AM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
Previously: Stop Pretending You're Not Rich
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:14 AM on September 2, 2020
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:14 AM on September 2, 2020
All right, but if we can't stop climate change, bunkers are the only hope for the survival of humanity.
As a species, there's no way we can reproduce in an atmosphere that's over 1000ppm of CO2, plus tons of ground-level ozone and particulates, with lowered oxygen content, especially if it's heated up a few degrees. We're large mammals with enormous brains, which makes us very vulnerable to atmospheric changes.
So far every plan to reverse climate change has involved unprecedented levels of global cooperation as a starting point. As in, in order to make these plans work, we're going to have to be a whole lot closer to world peace than we currently are. But nobody has a plan to make that part happen.
The wealthy and powerful know the limits of wealth and power better than anyone. And they're acting like climate change can't be solved.
If you're not going to let them retreat into bunkers, then you should probably decide who gets to retreat into bunkers instead, and then start building bunkers.
Because our plans to stop climate change are flimsy enough that a backup plan is a really good idea.
posted by MrVisible at 10:15 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
As a species, there's no way we can reproduce in an atmosphere that's over 1000ppm of CO2, plus tons of ground-level ozone and particulates, with lowered oxygen content, especially if it's heated up a few degrees. We're large mammals with enormous brains, which makes us very vulnerable to atmospheric changes.
So far every plan to reverse climate change has involved unprecedented levels of global cooperation as a starting point. As in, in order to make these plans work, we're going to have to be a whole lot closer to world peace than we currently are. But nobody has a plan to make that part happen.
The wealthy and powerful know the limits of wealth and power better than anyone. And they're acting like climate change can't be solved.
If you're not going to let them retreat into bunkers, then you should probably decide who gets to retreat into bunkers instead, and then start building bunkers.
Because our plans to stop climate change are flimsy enough that a backup plan is a really good idea.
posted by MrVisible at 10:15 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
"Rich" people aside (Billionaires and techno Utopians are pretty universally terrible) I think the article is interesting in that does tap into a certain kind of thinking. Bubble thinking? Maybe its just selfishness? I mean I understand the desire get out of the US at the present moment but with stuff like the tutor bubbles mentioned in the article or stuff like this comment: “I always wanted the kids to get a Waldorf education, and now they even have an online option” I'm less enthused about.
One thing I think the writer seems more forgiving about then I would be is that attitude that Individualism is gonna save them when the outside world is chaos. Sure there are degrees of it but in my mind they aren't that different. Time and again, even during this pandemic, we see it isn't individualists that are making strides but those societies and cultures and individuals within those groupings that have relied on and have been successful with collective action. Two of the main things remained with me from being in the social sciences for years (and from my own personal experiences) were that A) humans always put themselves into various kinds of progress traps and B) the only way out of them and in fact the only way to survive is to work together & most importantly listen to each other. To be plainer, the only way to deal with an insurmountable human problem is through working together as humans.
The idea of privileged people seeing other humans as an existential threat needing to escape from is a pernicious one. There's a disconnect in some societies and cultures that the "not me" people are not worth being saved, or dehumanised and/or are frightening and you need to escape from them... Years ago my partner had some clients, wealthy young tech entrepreneurs, who planned to live in a home in a remote area in Northern Canada near where I'm from. They told my partner that they hoped to avoid the "zombie holocaust" there, found the locals "weird", and were disappointed that none of their wealthy Toronto friends wanted to drive 15 hours to visit them. In the end they came back because of bad Internet service and loneliness... So much for going galt. So the article's line "[t]here’s no escape from the others" (a paraphrase of "hell is other people"?) had me wondering if the contemporary longevity of the zombies in media is an expression of that and also part of why the US is in the morass that it finds itself in.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:16 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
One thing I think the writer seems more forgiving about then I would be is that attitude that Individualism is gonna save them when the outside world is chaos. Sure there are degrees of it but in my mind they aren't that different. Time and again, even during this pandemic, we see it isn't individualists that are making strides but those societies and cultures and individuals within those groupings that have relied on and have been successful with collective action. Two of the main things remained with me from being in the social sciences for years (and from my own personal experiences) were that A) humans always put themselves into various kinds of progress traps and B) the only way out of them and in fact the only way to survive is to work together & most importantly listen to each other. To be plainer, the only way to deal with an insurmountable human problem is through working together as humans.
The idea of privileged people seeing other humans as an existential threat needing to escape from is a pernicious one. There's a disconnect in some societies and cultures that the "not me" people are not worth being saved, or dehumanised and/or are frightening and you need to escape from them... Years ago my partner had some clients, wealthy young tech entrepreneurs, who planned to live in a home in a remote area in Northern Canada near where I'm from. They told my partner that they hoped to avoid the "zombie holocaust" there, found the locals "weird", and were disappointed that none of their wealthy Toronto friends wanted to drive 15 hours to visit them. In the end they came back because of bad Internet service and loneliness... So much for going galt. So the article's line "[t]here’s no escape from the others" (a paraphrase of "hell is other people"?) had me wondering if the contemporary longevity of the zombies in media is an expression of that and also part of why the US is in the morass that it finds itself in.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:16 AM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
I think it's funny how billionaires think that in a Mad Max scenario they'll be the warlords rather than, I dunno, actual military leaders who already command hierarchies of people and equipment specialized in violence.
It would be, I think, instructive for these people to recall that the title of "duke," one of the grandest noble titles, derives from the Latin "dux," which in the latter days of the Roman Empire was the official in charge of a province's legions.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:16 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
It would be, I think, instructive for these people to recall that the title of "duke," one of the grandest noble titles, derives from the Latin "dux," which in the latter days of the Roman Empire was the official in charge of a province's legions.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:16 AM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Has no one yet linked to Dee Xtrovert's amazing comment from years ago?
posted by notsnot at 10:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [27 favorites]
posted by notsnot at 10:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [27 favorites]
It’s interesting to see Randian ubermenschen slowly approach awareness that there’s a big flaw in “the strike”: who makes their breakfast and cleans their mansions so that they can sit around all day moving primes or whatever other exceptional thing they imagine they’ll be doing? It’s especially amusing that it’s hedge fund managers trying to figure out how they’ll keep being the center of attention after money becomes worthless. The only reason Rand’s fairy tale fools people at all is her protagonists do something nominally objectively useful. The glorified middle men, however rich, are not invited to Galt’s Gulch. They’re really asking Rushkoff how to remain on top after the only source of value they ever offered to anybody becomes obsolete.
And you just know these guys are all social Darwinists.
I especially like how he offers that their best bet for survival is to build real human relationships and loyalties before they need to rely on them and they’re like, “well obviously we aren’t doing that. Tell me more about exploding slave collars.”
posted by gelfin at 10:58 AM on September 2, 2020 [20 favorites]
And you just know these guys are all social Darwinists.
I especially like how he offers that their best bet for survival is to build real human relationships and loyalties before they need to rely on them and they’re like, “well obviously we aren’t doing that. Tell me more about exploding slave collars.”
posted by gelfin at 10:58 AM on September 2, 2020 [20 favorites]
So perhaps a true (smart) billionaire prepper philanthropist would hide many secret caches of books, how to, basic science and engineering, and of course include a few special volumes of their personal philosophy (for kindling).
posted by sammyo at 11:08 AM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 11:08 AM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
Techno-futurism used to be so much fun. We were all going to have robot butlers and shit.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:35 AM on September 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:35 AM on September 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
It's always the same stupid, sensational story; people making their plans based on a movie fantasy version of the apocalypse: a sudden event that goes BOOM and you have to run. But the actual apocalypse already unfolding here and now is slow – Gibson got it right; a jackpot dragging on for 100 years. Another flood here, a wildfire there, a constant influx of refugee boats, an ever-present plague with a mortality rate low enough (and killing mostly the poor) that it can be ignored or half-assed, oops a protester got shot, no one did anything, hey people are getting kidnapped in vans... it's all engulfing us slowly, there will be no spectacular turning point.
I think the Hollywoodian sudden apocalypse stories are wish-fulfillment at this point, get it over with in two hours so it's done and we can rummage though the rubble or sit on a pile of canned food in our bunkers in peace. Ain't gonna happen. It'll be death by a thousand cuts.
posted by Tom-B at 11:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [37 favorites]
I think the Hollywoodian sudden apocalypse stories are wish-fulfillment at this point, get it over with in two hours so it's done and we can rummage though the rubble or sit on a pile of canned food in our bunkers in peace. Ain't gonna happen. It'll be death by a thousand cuts.
posted by Tom-B at 11:42 AM on September 2, 2020 [37 favorites]
As a New Zealander: look it's fine if they want to fatten themselves in bunkers. It's convenient of them to make these stashes for us to raid, ha ha.
What I'm much more worried about is the distorting effect on our polity of very, very rich people using their money to lay foundations for them to rule. Which there may be signs of already.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:19 PM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
What I'm much more worried about is the distorting effect on our polity of very, very rich people using their money to lay foundations for them to rule. Which there may be signs of already.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:19 PM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
I like sammyo's idea! If they're really clever they would hide them in plain sight. Maybe even make them accessible to the public, so they'd have a stake in not destroying them. It's a crazy idea but it might just work! I'm going to write to this Carnegie fellow and see what he has to say.
posted by phooky at 12:22 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by phooky at 12:22 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
Will it be like the French knights at Agincourt, mired in the mud with their expensive armor and custom swords while hundreds of peasants beat them to death with hammers?
I live in hope
posted by peakes at 12:33 PM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
I live in hope
posted by peakes at 12:33 PM on September 2, 2020 [10 favorites]
If you're not going to let them retreat into bunkers, then you should probably decide who gets to retreat into bunkers instead, and then start building bunkers.There isn't a plan B. If we don't get CO2 under control it's all over for humanity.
Because our plans to stop climate change are flimsy enough that a backup plan is a really good idea.
posted by Xoder at 1:40 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
If we don't get CO2 under control it's all over for that portion of humanity that is poor and lives in vulnerable regions.
I'm willing to learn if you have any good references, but from what I've read I don't think that, for example, an upper-middle class resident of Buffalo will be directly affected much.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:00 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm willing to learn if you have any good references, but from what I've read I don't think that, for example, an upper-middle class resident of Buffalo will be directly affected much.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:00 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
The upper end of CO2 predictions get extremely ugly for everyone. It starts with flooding and drought, it ends with ocean food chains collapsing from acidification, land food chains collapsing for reasons including the most common type of photosynthesis in food crops becoming ineffective, and substantial portions of the earth's surface subject to heatwaves that will kill any human without artificial cooling. That's assuming nukes don't start flying when, say, China decides to cut off India from the rivers of the Himalaya.
posted by tavella at 3:31 PM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by tavella at 3:31 PM on September 2, 2020 [7 favorites]
There isn't a plan B. If we don't get CO2 under control it's all over for humanity.
But there should be a plan B, right? The end of all humanity would be an unthinkable tragedy.
If we can't successfully cope with the damage we've done to our planet, that would be awful, and we should do everything we can to prevent that. But if that effort fails, I believe that we should try to survive as a species.
Certainly that's not a controversial position, is it?
We're close to having the technology that we'd need to create habitats which could supply the occupants with good food, clean water, medical care, and breathable air efficiently. If we can plan to keep people alive on Mars, we can probably figure out a way to keep people alive on an Earth that's turned uninhabitable. It'll be a staggering technological challenge, but it's within the scope of our technology and our political capabilities.
Saving the biosphere may not be.
Thus, we should have a backup plan.
posted by MrVisible at 3:32 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
But there should be a plan B, right? The end of all humanity would be an unthinkable tragedy.
If we can't successfully cope with the damage we've done to our planet, that would be awful, and we should do everything we can to prevent that. But if that effort fails, I believe that we should try to survive as a species.
Certainly that's not a controversial position, is it?
We're close to having the technology that we'd need to create habitats which could supply the occupants with good food, clean water, medical care, and breathable air efficiently. If we can plan to keep people alive on Mars, we can probably figure out a way to keep people alive on an Earth that's turned uninhabitable. It'll be a staggering technological challenge, but it's within the scope of our technology and our political capabilities.
Saving the biosphere may not be.
Thus, we should have a backup plan.
posted by MrVisible at 3:32 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
But there should be a plan B, right? The end of all humanity would be an unthinkable tragedy.
We've gone around on this specific issue before, if I remember right.
I think the trouble there ends up being a combination of "The people most interested in making sure they specifically survive should be furthest from it" and "If people think they have an escape hatch, they're less willing to dedicate resources to making sure the collapse doesn't happen"
The end of humanity a tragedy? Sure, though I think it's a bit self-serving of humans to be making that argument.
But I'm not particularly interested in "whatever the survival of humans looks like, that's necessarily any less of a tragedy". A world where the ultra-rich burrowed away until they could emerge rulers of their future domain like some bastardized version of Seveneves is hardly any world at all, and you'd have to do some convincing to make that seem more compelling of a Plan B than "figure out how to set up plant & animal species to survive the eons to come"
It's akin to the received wisdom around the game theory of Chicken. Throw away the steering wheel, handcuff yourself to the A-column, make it clear that there's no way anybody's getting out preferentially.
(Honestly Seveneves is very relevant here, particularly in the first act where each nation is trying to figure out how they choose who among them might go out to the Ark. )
posted by CrystalDave at 3:55 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
We've gone around on this specific issue before, if I remember right.
I think the trouble there ends up being a combination of "The people most interested in making sure they specifically survive should be furthest from it" and "If people think they have an escape hatch, they're less willing to dedicate resources to making sure the collapse doesn't happen"
The end of humanity a tragedy? Sure, though I think it's a bit self-serving of humans to be making that argument.
But I'm not particularly interested in "whatever the survival of humans looks like, that's necessarily any less of a tragedy". A world where the ultra-rich burrowed away until they could emerge rulers of their future domain like some bastardized version of Seveneves is hardly any world at all, and you'd have to do some convincing to make that seem more compelling of a Plan B than "figure out how to set up plant & animal species to survive the eons to come"
It's akin to the received wisdom around the game theory of Chicken. Throw away the steering wheel, handcuff yourself to the A-column, make it clear that there's no way anybody's getting out preferentially.
(Honestly Seveneves is very relevant here, particularly in the first act where each nation is trying to figure out how they choose who among them might go out to the Ark. )
posted by CrystalDave at 3:55 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Oh, the biosphere will survive, just like it has before, it'd survive even if we started tossing nukes. It's just another Great Dying. Just not a lot of humans, and if we fuck things up that bad I'm quite fine with the species not surviving. If it comes down to a few sociopathic billionaires and their thralls in sealed domes, viva extinction.
posted by tavella at 3:56 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 3:56 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ah. So, somehow, in all of this, the following moral positions have emerged.
Wanting the wealthy and powerful to die rather than use their wealth to save humanity, storming bunkers where people are trying to survive and killing them, and dooming humanity to extinction: good.
Using our technology to give humanity a chance to learn from our mistakes and continue evolving: bad.
Have I got that right?
posted by MrVisible at 4:01 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Wanting the wealthy and powerful to die rather than use their wealth to save humanity, storming bunkers where people are trying to survive and killing them, and dooming humanity to extinction: good.
Using our technology to give humanity a chance to learn from our mistakes and continue evolving: bad.
Have I got that right?
posted by MrVisible at 4:01 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
If by "Using our technology to give humanity a chance to learn from our mistakes and continue evolving" you mean "only a few special chosen people get to survive and propagate the species while everyone else perishes" I'd say yes it's bad.
posted by technodelic at 4:05 PM on September 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by technodelic at 4:05 PM on September 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
Or more precisely in my case "if the option involves sociopaths killing the rest of humanity and most of the natural world so that they can accumulate enough wealth to build their own little paradises in a mostly-dead world", then yeah, no, they can go down with the rest of us.
posted by tavella at 4:08 PM on September 2, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by tavella at 4:08 PM on September 2, 2020 [15 favorites]
If by "Using our technology to give humanity a chance to learn from our mistakes and continue evolving" you mean "only a few special chosen people get to survive and propagate the species while everyone else perishes" I'd say yes it's bad.
So, if it comes down to a situation where a few hundred thousand human beings could survive, the fact that someone would have to choose them means that we should all die instead? Or is there a method of surviving extinction that you'd prefer, which would meet your moral standards better?
posted by MrVisible at 4:10 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
So, if it comes down to a situation where a few hundred thousand human beings could survive, the fact that someone would have to choose them means that we should all die instead? Or is there a method of surviving extinction that you'd prefer, which would meet your moral standards better?
posted by MrVisible at 4:10 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Or more precisely in my case "if the option involves sociopaths killing the rest of humanity and most of the natural world so that they can accumulate enough wealth to build their own little paradises in a mostly-dead world", then yeah, no, they can go down with the rest of us.
Is there a group of people who you believe should survive? A way of choosing the survivors of the human race that would seem fair to you? Who? How?
posted by MrVisible at 4:11 PM on September 2, 2020
Is there a group of people who you believe should survive? A way of choosing the survivors of the human race that would seem fair to you? Who? How?
posted by MrVisible at 4:11 PM on September 2, 2020
"I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines...."
posted by thelonius at 4:24 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 4:24 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Is there a group of people who you believe should survive? A way of choosing the survivors of the human race that would seem fair to you?
I mean, you're the one proposing the rest of humanity be sacrificed to buy comfort for Bezos, Thiel, & Musk. Why are you putting the work on us to come up with a way to make your proposal less monstrous.
posted by CrystalDave at 4:41 PM on September 2, 2020 [16 favorites]
I mean, you're the one proposing the rest of humanity be sacrificed to buy comfort for Bezos, Thiel, & Musk. Why are you putting the work on us to come up with a way to make your proposal less monstrous.
posted by CrystalDave at 4:41 PM on September 2, 2020 [16 favorites]
I mean, you're the one proposing the rest of humanity be sacrificed to buy comfort for Bezos, Thiel, & Musk. Why are you putting the work on us to come up with a way to make your proposal less monstrous.
No, I'm saying that there's a good chance we can't save the biosphere. In that event, I think that it would be a good thing if humanity doesn't go extinct. I think that shelter from the ever-more-toxic atmosphere is going to be necessary. And I think that some pretty advanced technologies will need to be developed in order to make sure some people survive.
If I'm right, billions of people are about to die, no matter what we do. The worst case scenario is that everyone goes extinct.
If we can build habitats that can support enough people to create a sustainable infrastructure, shelters which can provide thousands of people with what they need to survive, that could keep humanity alive long enough to figure out what to do without a survivable planetary biosphere.
My premise is that Bezos, Thiel and Musk can't stop climate change. They're certainly acting like they can't. If that is the case, if climate change is unstoppable, if billions of people are about to die and humanity is at risk of going extinct... isn't building bunkers exactly what you want the richest people in the world to be doing?
posted by MrVisible at 4:54 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
No, I'm saying that there's a good chance we can't save the biosphere. In that event, I think that it would be a good thing if humanity doesn't go extinct. I think that shelter from the ever-more-toxic atmosphere is going to be necessary. And I think that some pretty advanced technologies will need to be developed in order to make sure some people survive.
If I'm right, billions of people are about to die, no matter what we do. The worst case scenario is that everyone goes extinct.
If we can build habitats that can support enough people to create a sustainable infrastructure, shelters which can provide thousands of people with what they need to survive, that could keep humanity alive long enough to figure out what to do without a survivable planetary biosphere.
My premise is that Bezos, Thiel and Musk can't stop climate change. They're certainly acting like they can't. If that is the case, if climate change is unstoppable, if billions of people are about to die and humanity is at risk of going extinct... isn't building bunkers exactly what you want the richest people in the world to be doing?
posted by MrVisible at 4:54 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
Also, circling back more directly, you're eliding a *lot* with this phrase "Wanting the wealthy and powerful to die rather than use their wealth to save humanity"
They aren't trying to save humanity. They're trying to save themselves, and burn up humanity faster in order to do so. You're very deliberately conflating the two to try and make it sound like we're some dangerous mob trying to kill humanity! because of dangerous moral standards! and prevent us from learning from our mistakes!
but instead you're arguing to protect the same people making the mistakes, to protect their ability to keep making those mistakes, and wrapping it up in false nobility.
Right now, assuming your predictions, billions are going to die. So you need to figure out an argument for saving some subset of humanity in a way that doesn't leave the rest of the world rejecting that proposal. BATNA is spite right now, and humans have a whole lot of room for spite.
I'm not against some sort of sci-fi style "we figure out Biosphere properly this time and we create an Earthbound generational ark consisting of some theoretical cross-section of the world" proposal in all permutations, but right now the neutral reading of that is real suspect, to say nothing of the original article's described behavior which is *far* on the side of "nope, try again".
If they were building this super-ark with the promise that neither they nor anybody they knew would inhabit it, and that they would have no say in who was selected, we'd be having a very different discussion right now. But that's not what's going on, and that's not what you're proposing either.
But either way, stop with this motte-and-bailey business, to borrow a phrase I suspect you might be familiar with.
posted by CrystalDave at 5:09 PM on September 2, 2020 [17 favorites]
They aren't trying to save humanity. They're trying to save themselves, and burn up humanity faster in order to do so. You're very deliberately conflating the two to try and make it sound like we're some dangerous mob trying to kill humanity! because of dangerous moral standards! and prevent us from learning from our mistakes!
but instead you're arguing to protect the same people making the mistakes, to protect their ability to keep making those mistakes, and wrapping it up in false nobility.
Right now, assuming your predictions, billions are going to die. So you need to figure out an argument for saving some subset of humanity in a way that doesn't leave the rest of the world rejecting that proposal. BATNA is spite right now, and humans have a whole lot of room for spite.
I'm not against some sort of sci-fi style "we figure out Biosphere properly this time and we create an Earthbound generational ark consisting of some theoretical cross-section of the world" proposal in all permutations, but right now the neutral reading of that is real suspect, to say nothing of the original article's described behavior which is *far* on the side of "nope, try again".
If they were building this super-ark with the promise that neither they nor anybody they knew would inhabit it, and that they would have no say in who was selected, we'd be having a very different discussion right now. But that's not what's going on, and that's not what you're proposing either.
But either way, stop with this motte-and-bailey business, to borrow a phrase I suspect you might be familiar with.
posted by CrystalDave at 5:09 PM on September 2, 2020 [17 favorites]
I especially like how he offers that their best bet for survival is to build real human relationships and loyalties before they need to rely on them and they’re like, “well obviously we aren’t doing that. Tell me more about exploding slave collars.”
The best bet would be to install that team of useful people in your bunker now, and befriend them. "Hey, Plumber, here is this free high tech house for you, and I will be visiting and living in the neighbourhood every summer. You and your kids get free health care at the high tech medical facility here, and your kids go to school with the carpenter's kids, and the network admin's kids, and the baker's kids, for free."
posted by Meatbomb at 5:25 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
The best bet would be to install that team of useful people in your bunker now, and befriend them. "Hey, Plumber, here is this free high tech house for you, and I will be visiting and living in the neighbourhood every summer. You and your kids get free health care at the high tech medical facility here, and your kids go to school with the carpenter's kids, and the network admin's kids, and the baker's kids, for free."
posted by Meatbomb at 5:25 PM on September 2, 2020 [5 favorites]
Right now, assuming your predictions, billions are going to die. So you need to figure out an argument for saving some subset of humanity in a way that doesn't leave the rest of the world rejecting that proposal.
So, it's not up to the people proposing that we murder any possible survivors to stand down, it's up to me to propose a method of saving humanity that will be palatable to everyone.
But you yourself proposed a palatable solution, one that's acceptable to you. "we figure out Biosphere properly this time and we create an Earthbound generational ark consisting of some theoretical cross-section of the world" proposal in all permutations,"
So, let's do that too. That sounds great to me.
Whoever can build these shelters should be building these shelters. Nations, corporations, individuals, tribes, collectives, whoever, I don't care. The future of humanity is literally at stake.
But if the default attitude of the entire population is "bunkers bad, kill all bunker dwellers, raar", that means humanity has a worse chance of survival.
I get that it's frustrating that the wealthy and powerful don't listen to the supplications of the masses, don their spandex, jump in their quinjets, and save the world. But if they haven't by now, there are really two possibilities. Either they're all insane, lunatic sociopaths who don't care if the world they live in burns and everyone dies as long as they get their greedgasms, or they simply don't have the power to stop climate change.
I hope that they, or someone, anyone, has the power to stop human extinction.
posted by MrVisible at 5:30 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
So, it's not up to the people proposing that we murder any possible survivors to stand down, it's up to me to propose a method of saving humanity that will be palatable to everyone.
But you yourself proposed a palatable solution, one that's acceptable to you. "we figure out Biosphere properly this time and we create an Earthbound generational ark consisting of some theoretical cross-section of the world" proposal in all permutations,"
So, let's do that too. That sounds great to me.
Whoever can build these shelters should be building these shelters. Nations, corporations, individuals, tribes, collectives, whoever, I don't care. The future of humanity is literally at stake.
But if the default attitude of the entire population is "bunkers bad, kill all bunker dwellers, raar", that means humanity has a worse chance of survival.
I get that it's frustrating that the wealthy and powerful don't listen to the supplications of the masses, don their spandex, jump in their quinjets, and save the world. But if they haven't by now, there are really two possibilities. Either they're all insane, lunatic sociopaths who don't care if the world they live in burns and everyone dies as long as they get their greedgasms, or they simply don't have the power to stop climate change.
I hope that they, or someone, anyone, has the power to stop human extinction.
posted by MrVisible at 5:30 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
My premise is that Bezos, Thiel and Musk can't stop climate change. They're certainly acting like they can't.
They’re acting like they can’t because they’re selfish, greedy, rapacious fucks who would rather see the majority of humanity die a slow, painful death than give up even one ha’penny of their ill-gotten gains to prevent it.
If they’re the fraction of humanity that gets to survive this particular disaster, they’ll just destroy everything again as soon as they get the chance.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:45 PM on September 2, 2020 [11 favorites]
They’re acting like they can’t because they’re selfish, greedy, rapacious fucks who would rather see the majority of humanity die a slow, painful death than give up even one ha’penny of their ill-gotten gains to prevent it.
If they’re the fraction of humanity that gets to survive this particular disaster, they’ll just destroy everything again as soon as they get the chance.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:45 PM on September 2, 2020 [11 favorites]
I mean, the extinction of all humanity is sad, but the extinction of all but the worst representatives of humanity isn’t any better IMO.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:47 PM on September 2, 2020 [21 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:47 PM on September 2, 2020 [21 favorites]
Okay, here's a question.
You have a hundred billion dollars. Bill Gates level wealth.
You've done the research, and you've figured out that you can't do anything to stop climate change by yourself, and you know that the kind of international collaboration that might have a chance at stopping climate change is highly unlikely.
You know that the conditions we can expect if we fail to stop climate change will not be survivable for humanity. If we can't create an environment in which we can survive, humanity will go extinct.
What do you do? What is your moral obligation in this situation?
posted by MrVisible at 5:55 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
You have a hundred billion dollars. Bill Gates level wealth.
You've done the research, and you've figured out that you can't do anything to stop climate change by yourself, and you know that the kind of international collaboration that might have a chance at stopping climate change is highly unlikely.
You know that the conditions we can expect if we fail to stop climate change will not be survivable for humanity. If we can't create an environment in which we can survive, humanity will go extinct.
What do you do? What is your moral obligation in this situation?
posted by MrVisible at 5:55 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
A vast party
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:03 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:03 PM on September 2, 2020 [2 favorites]
You've done the research, and you've figured out that you can't do anything to stop climate change by yourself
I confer with the experts, and use my billions to do what they suggest. I also use a part of it to do my best to influence the other people who need to get on board with the idea of not destroying the world.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:06 PM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
I confer with the experts, and use my billions to do what they suggest. I also use a part of it to do my best to influence the other people who need to get on board with the idea of not destroying the world.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:06 PM on September 2, 2020 [9 favorites]
moreover, the values and intentions of the bunker-builders will determine the capacities and capabilities of those bunkers, and the examples provided in TFA would rather consider protecting themselves by enslaving those of their fellow human beings willing to use force against the rest of their desperate, dispossessed and starving fellow human beings than dedicate their immense resources to preventing or mitigating such a situation.
i suspect they lack the imagination to develop such bunkers as will preserve the human race in such a dire scenario, but that some humans will be able to survive and procreate elsewhere.
on preview: my moral obligation would be to mitigate the suffering of as many as i can, now.
the range of outcomes of climate change is a spectrum of possibilities, isn't it?
how do i develop certain knowledge that all viable breeding populations of humans cannot survive?
i don't think certain extinction is what the bunker-builders seek to forestall: they want to survive scarcity without sharing. so far.
posted by 20 year lurk at 6:08 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
i suspect they lack the imagination to develop such bunkers as will preserve the human race in such a dire scenario, but that some humans will be able to survive and procreate elsewhere.
on preview: my moral obligation would be to mitigate the suffering of as many as i can, now.
the range of outcomes of climate change is a spectrum of possibilities, isn't it?
how do i develop certain knowledge that all viable breeding populations of humans cannot survive?
i don't think certain extinction is what the bunker-builders seek to forestall: they want to survive scarcity without sharing. so far.
posted by 20 year lurk at 6:08 PM on September 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
Incidentally, what gives these wealthy individuals the right to make the decision to burn through the rest of us in order to save a small fraction they get to choose? Becoming a billionaire does not automatically give a person the prescient abilities of Paul Atreides. Becoming a billionaire is actually an infallible sign of deep personal moral failure. What makes you think they have any grand belief in the human race? They've already shown their ineligibility to be taken seriously as anything other than a menace to the rest of us, simply by being billionaires.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:16 PM on September 2, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:16 PM on September 2, 2020 [16 favorites]
Okay, that's excessively depressing so let me offer a techno-optimist counterpoint to the discussion of "is it morally preferable that humans go extinct if the alternative is that only the billionaires and 100,000 of their shock-collar-wearing servants survive in a bunker?"
I'm not saying that I think this is what will definitely happen - just that if you're laying awake at night painting a bunch of scenarios in incredibly broad strokes, this one is also plausible.
Decarbonization proceeds faster than expected, because technology continues to advance and capital will not voluntarily keep rolling coal just to own the libs. It still isn't fast enough, we're beyond that point now. By 2050 humanity is geoengineering on a large scale, because it's easier than building Mars habitat style bunkers to last "forever" and saves most of the human race instead of just a few. We don't have to continue geoengineering forever after doing enough carbon sequestration. Lots of bad things happen along the way but the vast majority of the billions of people in the world get through this.
If you'd like an even more optimistic scenario: in the next 10 years we have radical breakthroughs in fusion power and direct air capture of carbon, and by 2040 our robots have pulled a thousand gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere and fixed the entire problem. This may seem far fetched but it's a hell of a lot more realistic than Seveneves.
posted by allegedly at 6:19 PM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm not saying that I think this is what will definitely happen - just that if you're laying awake at night painting a bunch of scenarios in incredibly broad strokes, this one is also plausible.
Decarbonization proceeds faster than expected, because technology continues to advance and capital will not voluntarily keep rolling coal just to own the libs. It still isn't fast enough, we're beyond that point now. By 2050 humanity is geoengineering on a large scale, because it's easier than building Mars habitat style bunkers to last "forever" and saves most of the human race instead of just a few. We don't have to continue geoengineering forever after doing enough carbon sequestration. Lots of bad things happen along the way but the vast majority of the billions of people in the world get through this.
If you'd like an even more optimistic scenario: in the next 10 years we have radical breakthroughs in fusion power and direct air capture of carbon, and by 2040 our robots have pulled a thousand gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere and fixed the entire problem. This may seem far fetched but it's a hell of a lot more realistic than Seveneves.
posted by allegedly at 6:19 PM on September 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
You've done the research, and you've figured out that you can't do anything to stop climate change by yourself
They haven't done the research, though. Bezos is making almost a quarter million dollars a minute!(cite). Are you seriously trying to say he couldn't spend an hour's worth of money every couple of days towards climate change research and possibly come up with a breakthrough in research?
But, while we're at it, how does Bezos continue to make money? By burning a whole lot of fossil fuels which contribute to climate change. So, he is the one that should be saved? He could shut down Amazon, continue to pay all his employees (and contractors *cough*), fund climate change mitigation at unprecedented levels and still live off the interest of all his other money at less than 2% interest.
These are the people you are defending?
To be clear:
1. I don't want to see humanity end (for my kiddo's sake).
2. I expect it will anyway, eventually . (I would be surprised if we make it out of the solar system before Sol goes nova).
3. Earth will be just fine (better, probably) without us.
4. Given how many species go extinct all the time, I don't see why we should consider ourselves a great loss rather than just nature doing it's thing.
I would also ask you stop threadsitting.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:26 PM on September 2, 2020 [18 favorites]
They haven't done the research, though. Bezos is making almost a quarter million dollars a minute!(cite). Are you seriously trying to say he couldn't spend an hour's worth of money every couple of days towards climate change research and possibly come up with a breakthrough in research?
But, while we're at it, how does Bezos continue to make money? By burning a whole lot of fossil fuels which contribute to climate change. So, he is the one that should be saved? He could shut down Amazon, continue to pay all his employees (and contractors *cough*), fund climate change mitigation at unprecedented levels and still live off the interest of all his other money at less than 2% interest.
These are the people you are defending?
To be clear:
1. I don't want to see humanity end (for my kiddo's sake).
2. I expect it will anyway, eventually . (I would be surprised if we make it out of the solar system before Sol goes nova).
3. Earth will be just fine (better, probably) without us.
4. Given how many species go extinct all the time, I don't see why we should consider ourselves a great loss rather than just nature doing it's thing.
I would also ask you stop threadsitting.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:26 PM on September 2, 2020 [18 favorites]
Morgan Stanley estimates it would cost about $73 trillion USD between now and 2050 to stop climate change. That's about $2.43 trillion a year.
Credit Suisse calculates the global 1% have $158.3 trillion in wealth.
Take half, save the planet. Global wealth tax, now.
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 7:13 PM on September 2, 2020 [27 favorites]
Credit Suisse calculates the global 1% have $158.3 trillion in wealth.
Take half, save the planet. Global wealth tax, now.
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 7:13 PM on September 2, 2020 [27 favorites]
I like sammyo's idea! If they're really clever they would hide them in plain sight.
I try not to be argumentative phooky, and glad you got my joke but it kinda wasn't, following this discussion of the futility of luxury hiddy holes for billionaires, if one was super rich and wanted to indulge in post apocalyptic philanthropy, caches of paper books that could be found after the downfall of society could be a valid project. I'm rarely original so maybe it's in progress.
I think we are going to space, the earths surface will mend in time and become essentially a vacation parkland, but that may be longer term that many would hope for.
posted by sammyo at 7:34 PM on September 2, 2020
I try not to be argumentative phooky, and glad you got my joke but it kinda wasn't, following this discussion of the futility of luxury hiddy holes for billionaires, if one was super rich and wanted to indulge in post apocalyptic philanthropy, caches of paper books that could be found after the downfall of society could be a valid project. I'm rarely original so maybe it's in progress.
I think we are going to space, the earths surface will mend in time and become essentially a vacation parkland, but that may be longer term that many would hope for.
posted by sammyo at 7:34 PM on September 2, 2020
Where are these literal doomsday scenarios coming from? One estimate is a 7 percent decline in world GDP by 2100, relative to what would occur otherwise - that's something on the order of 0.1 percent reduction in total growth. With total growth on the order of 2 percent, that's rounding error. This is obviously a limited perspective, and climate change will be the major problem for humanity in the next century, but there's no reason to think the human population will decline, much less fall drastically.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:28 PM on September 2, 2020
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:28 PM on September 2, 2020
If you'd like an even more optimistic scenario: in the next 10 years we have radical breakthroughs in fusion power and direct air capture of carbon, and by 2040 our robots have pulled a thousand gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere and fixed the entire problem.
I have no numerical analysis to back this opinion, just some intuitions about thermodynamics, but it seems at least plausible to me that releasing enough fusion energy on-planet to run the quantity of robots required could easily contribute enough direct waste heat to offset the effects of all the greenhouse gases they remove and then some.
But leaving that minor point aside: the only "radical breakthrough in fusion power" we actually need is widespread acceptance of the truths that we already have more fusion power available than we could ever use and that it comes complete with planet-wide wireless distribution.
Not only that, but such parts of it as we're not already using have already been warming the planet for literally billions of years. Inserting a few extra energy conversion stages between the absorption of radiation in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum and re-radiation in the infrared cannot warm the planet further.
The global heat balance would be shifted utterly imperceptibly by the entirety of humanity tapping into energy flows that already exist at the planetary surface to run our civilizations. The same absolutely cannot be said for releasing the "limitless" potential energy currently locked up in fuels already here, or for importing additional energy from space.
Any kind of techno-optimism really really needs to be challenged by reflecting on the fact that the major problems that beset humanity today are direct consequences of our collective technological successes, not our failures.
We need to get off this conceptual merry-go-round of working hard to solve our immediate problems in the most expedient fashion possible, and instead get better at anticipating such dangerous consequences as could follow from new technologies being adopted at what has now become global economic scale, and get far far far more selective and cautious about those we push to scale.
And since a great deal of that pushing has always come from a relatively tiny handful of individuals with pots and pots of money, this is largely on them. If they don't like that responsibility, then perhaps they should have thought of that before adding the last three or four zeroes to their bank accounts.
posted by flabdablet at 10:35 PM on September 2, 2020 [12 favorites]
I have no numerical analysis to back this opinion, just some intuitions about thermodynamics, but it seems at least plausible to me that releasing enough fusion energy on-planet to run the quantity of robots required could easily contribute enough direct waste heat to offset the effects of all the greenhouse gases they remove and then some.
But leaving that minor point aside: the only "radical breakthrough in fusion power" we actually need is widespread acceptance of the truths that we already have more fusion power available than we could ever use and that it comes complete with planet-wide wireless distribution.
Not only that, but such parts of it as we're not already using have already been warming the planet for literally billions of years. Inserting a few extra energy conversion stages between the absorption of radiation in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum and re-radiation in the infrared cannot warm the planet further.
The global heat balance would be shifted utterly imperceptibly by the entirety of humanity tapping into energy flows that already exist at the planetary surface to run our civilizations. The same absolutely cannot be said for releasing the "limitless" potential energy currently locked up in fuels already here, or for importing additional energy from space.
Any kind of techno-optimism really really needs to be challenged by reflecting on the fact that the major problems that beset humanity today are direct consequences of our collective technological successes, not our failures.
We need to get off this conceptual merry-go-round of working hard to solve our immediate problems in the most expedient fashion possible, and instead get better at anticipating such dangerous consequences as could follow from new technologies being adopted at what has now become global economic scale, and get far far far more selective and cautious about those we push to scale.
And since a great deal of that pushing has always come from a relatively tiny handful of individuals with pots and pots of money, this is largely on them. If they don't like that responsibility, then perhaps they should have thought of that before adding the last three or four zeroes to their bank accounts.
posted by flabdablet at 10:35 PM on September 2, 2020 [12 favorites]
The end of all humanity would be an unthinkable tragedy.
Every story has an ending.
posted by tillermo at 2:41 AM on September 3, 2020 [7 favorites]
Every story has an ending.
posted by tillermo at 2:41 AM on September 3, 2020 [7 favorites]
The GQ interview of Jaron Lanier is particularly on point:
"Many people in Silicon Valley were fleeing, to panic bunkers and second homes and survival compounds in New Zealand. Some of them were even inviting Lanier along. “A few people have called me from time to time and said, ‘Hey, you have to get in on our New Zealand thing,’ ” Lanier confided. “I'm like, ‘No.…’ I just feel like, if we can fuck it up here, why can't we fuck up New Zealand? What's better about New Zealand than here? It's even riskier for earthquakes, so the only thing about it that's inviting is we haven't fucked it up yet. This idea that you can fuck up the world, but then there'll be some part of it that you haven't fucked up, is wrong. If you fuck up the world, you fuck up the whole world, you know?”"
Speaking as a Kiwi, that's the kind of person we'd invite here. Billionaires can, in general, fuck the fuck off.
posted by happyinmotion at 4:31 AM on September 3, 2020 [13 favorites]
"Many people in Silicon Valley were fleeing, to panic bunkers and second homes and survival compounds in New Zealand. Some of them were even inviting Lanier along. “A few people have called me from time to time and said, ‘Hey, you have to get in on our New Zealand thing,’ ” Lanier confided. “I'm like, ‘No.…’ I just feel like, if we can fuck it up here, why can't we fuck up New Zealand? What's better about New Zealand than here? It's even riskier for earthquakes, so the only thing about it that's inviting is we haven't fucked it up yet. This idea that you can fuck up the world, but then there'll be some part of it that you haven't fucked up, is wrong. If you fuck up the world, you fuck up the whole world, you know?”"
Speaking as a Kiwi, that's the kind of person we'd invite here. Billionaires can, in general, fuck the fuck off.
posted by happyinmotion at 4:31 AM on September 3, 2020 [13 favorites]
If we’re taking votes on the apocalyptic hellscape solution we want most, I’d like to put in my vote for City of Ember
posted by Mchelly at 4:57 AM on September 3, 2020
posted by Mchelly at 4:57 AM on September 3, 2020
The end of all humanity would be an unthinkable tragedy.
Unthinkable tragedies --death is only one, of thousands-- happen to literally billions of people every single day already. If they haven't happened to you yet, count yourself unthinkably fortunate. Fuck, most days I'm not even sure extinction rises to the level of "bummer."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:28 AM on September 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
Unthinkable tragedies --death is only one, of thousands-- happen to literally billions of people every single day already. If they haven't happened to you yet, count yourself unthinkably fortunate. Fuck, most days I'm not even sure extinction rises to the level of "bummer."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:28 AM on September 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
(Honestly Seveneves is very relevant here, particularly in the first act where each nation is trying to figure out how they choose who among them might go out to the Ark. )
I read the FPP and immediately began pondering seveneves, read seveneves.
posted by noiseanoise at 9:01 AM on September 3, 2020
I read the FPP and immediately began pondering seveneves, read seveneves.
posted by noiseanoise at 9:01 AM on September 3, 2020
Seveneves rushes through global disaster and skips over developing a sustainable society to get to its Good Part of inventing a humanity with real racial differences.
posted by clew at 9:23 AM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 9:23 AM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]
it also offered a carefully-crafted, unequivocally-certain global extinction threat.... or failed to consider & present the significant and influential population of deniers (who, nevertheless, would have become irrelevant pretty early in the events portrayed).
posted by 20 year lurk at 9:49 AM on September 3, 2020
posted by 20 year lurk at 9:49 AM on September 3, 2020
Yeah, there was a tweet on my timeline a couple of weeks ago, the gist being "this is the only thing that gives me much hope for the future of humanity" with a link to how much faster the cost of solar power was dropping even compared to projections.
posted by tavella at 12:15 PM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 12:15 PM on September 3, 2020 [3 favorites]
This is hardly news -- the most amusing part to me (and this applies to survivalists at large, not just the billionaires) is that the kind of people who would fuck off in their hole in the ground to escape whatever, are exactly the kind of people that I would like to fuck off in their hole in the ground - even better, I have a more than reasonable hunch that they are the ones that should do it to give the rest of us greater chances to avert the coming catastrophes.
posted by _dario at 2:22 PM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by _dario at 2:22 PM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
All these wacky Mars ark and bunkers and geoengineering bullshit piss me off. I work with environmental science communication (self-link) and all that technocratic crap does is to distract us from the real solutions, which are simple and low-tech:
1. Ramp down and stop extracting fucking fossil fuels, period
2. Zero deforestation NOW with satellite imaging and rapid response environmental law enforcement. Been done before and it works splendidly, before it got fucked by the nazis – check the beautiful curve in the Amazon between 2004, when the satellite system got online, and 2012, when the cowboy cattle rancher motherfuckers in Congress got their paws on the law and started dismantling it. Now our asshole führer wants to pull the plug on this program completely because "can't afford it"
3. Replant forests so they suck up CO2. Indigenous people already got this and will show us how.
There. Done. But no, it's easier to dream of a sci-fi wankfest than dream of – I'm not even saying the destruction – but mere limits to capitalism.
We need trains, buses, and forests, not fucking spaceships to Mars.
posted by Tom-B at 6:51 PM on September 3, 2020 [24 favorites]
1. Ramp down and stop extracting fucking fossil fuels, period
2. Zero deforestation NOW with satellite imaging and rapid response environmental law enforcement. Been done before and it works splendidly, before it got fucked by the nazis – check the beautiful curve in the Amazon between 2004, when the satellite system got online, and 2012, when the cowboy cattle rancher motherfuckers in Congress got their paws on the law and started dismantling it. Now our asshole führer wants to pull the plug on this program completely because "can't afford it"
3. Replant forests so they suck up CO2. Indigenous people already got this and will show us how.
There. Done. But no, it's easier to dream of a sci-fi wankfest than dream of – I'm not even saying the destruction – but mere limits to capitalism.
We need trains, buses, and forests, not fucking spaceships to Mars.
posted by Tom-B at 6:51 PM on September 3, 2020 [24 favorites]
Preach it, Tom-B. Can't favourite that hard enough.
posted by flabdablet at 8:07 PM on September 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 8:07 PM on September 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
Concur.
Of all the times to get stuck with a pack of ignorant ideologues, it had to be now.....
posted by aramaic at 8:10 PM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Of all the times to get stuck with a pack of ignorant ideologues, it had to be now.....
posted by aramaic at 8:10 PM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
oh man, this is like buying a yacht. They rarely use it, but it's there so they can say they have it. Look at me and my stuff. How pathetic.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 10:34 PM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
Suggestion: hack into billionaire news feeds with fake impending apocalyptic event; wait for them to go into bunkers; build Chernobyl-style impregnable concrete sarcophagi around the bunkers; get on with rest of life, maybe get kids to do some cool murals on these concrete domes that are scattered about.
posted by reynir at 12:35 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by reynir at 12:35 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
Tom-B All three are good, but IIRC isn't it also insufficient at this point? I'm all in favor of reforestation of course, and it's a great component to a solution but I don't think by itself it will suck out enough CO2 to actually fix things.
posted by sotonohito at 4:20 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sotonohito at 4:20 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
Young secondary forests are capable of storing huge amounts of carbon, and are the cheapest and most effective way of putting the brakes on this runaway train we're on. Maybe they're "insufficient", but stating this over and over again at this point just reinforces inaction, and it might be the difference between crashing at 100 km/h instead of say 20. Remember that the apocalypse is slow and long-term. We gotta act: 1. no fossil fuels, 2. zero deforestation, 3. replanting forests. That's the strongest cost/benefit we got. Anything else will be more expensive and not as effective, and if the limit (or so we're told) is money, it brings us to point 4. revolution.
posted by Tom-B at 5:42 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Tom-B at 5:42 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
Oh, and whatever you do, DON'T TAKE THE BLACK PILL. The black pill is the enemy. Nihilism is comfortable and oh so delicious. Don't.
posted by Tom-B at 5:45 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Tom-B at 5:45 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
Those are great goals. I truly hope those things happen. I hope they're enough to save the biosphere.
What happens if these measures fail?
Given the political climate, there's a chance that these enormous, ambitious projects will not have the international support they need to succeed.
And if they fail, there's a good chance humanity will go extinct.
So, talking about contingencies would seem to be a prudent thing to do. If we can't keep the biosphere habitable for humanity, are there any options? If we can't save everyone, can we save enough?
It's usually best to build lifeboats before you're absolutely sure you need them.
posted by MrVisible at 7:17 AM on September 4, 2020
What happens if these measures fail?
Given the political climate, there's a chance that these enormous, ambitious projects will not have the international support they need to succeed.
And if they fail, there's a good chance humanity will go extinct.
So, talking about contingencies would seem to be a prudent thing to do. If we can't keep the biosphere habitable for humanity, are there any options? If we can't save everyone, can we save enough?
It's usually best to build lifeboats before you're absolutely sure you need them.
posted by MrVisible at 7:17 AM on September 4, 2020
If anyone is interested in possible political responses to climate change I cannot recommend that book Climate Leviathan strongly enough.
The authors identify and explore four likely general categories, which they term Climate Leviathan, Climate Behemoth, Climate Mao, and Climate X.
Leviathan is the Western liberal capitalist approach, which at the moment they deem the one most likely to be tried (since it is currently being tried) but also one they think isn't likely to succeed.
Behemoth is the right wing nationalist approach and basically the nation level version of what the billionaire bunker people are doing. Fort up, blame foreigners, start a murderous border policy, and take only the most selfish and nationalist action with no effort at international cooperation at all. That's what Trump is doing.
In a few more years/decades when climate change is totally invisible to deny we'll see the American right instantly switch to claiming they always knew it was a problem and that it was caused entirely by filthy foreigners who are now trying to come to America and ruin it the way they ruined the rest of the planet. That will be used as the excuse for plans to fully militarize the borders and shot any migrants on sight. As well as internal witch hunts to find and execute anyone living in the US undocumented, and later to remove citizenship from "fake Americans".
posted by sotonohito at 7:31 AM on September 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
The authors identify and explore four likely general categories, which they term Climate Leviathan, Climate Behemoth, Climate Mao, and Climate X.
Leviathan is the Western liberal capitalist approach, which at the moment they deem the one most likely to be tried (since it is currently being tried) but also one they think isn't likely to succeed.
Behemoth is the right wing nationalist approach and basically the nation level version of what the billionaire bunker people are doing. Fort up, blame foreigners, start a murderous border policy, and take only the most selfish and nationalist action with no effort at international cooperation at all. That's what Trump is doing.
In a few more years/decades when climate change is totally invisible to deny we'll see the American right instantly switch to claiming they always knew it was a problem and that it was caused entirely by filthy foreigners who are now trying to come to America and ruin it the way they ruined the rest of the planet. That will be used as the excuse for plans to fully militarize the borders and shot any migrants on sight. As well as internal witch hunts to find and execute anyone living in the US undocumented, and later to remove citizenship from "fake Americans".
posted by sotonohito at 7:31 AM on September 4, 2020 [3 favorites]
MrVisible, since you continue the one-note:
1. Unless we make the planet actually uninhabitable (drop the oxygen content of the air past survivability, manage to tip it over to Venus), there will be human survivors. They probably won't be the rich technocrats you want, rather the most durable and ingenious of the far edges of the world, but there will be people.
2. If we make the planet actually uninhabitable, there is no refuge anyone can build that will last out the time it would take for it to return to livable. It's a total fantasy, the hallucination of people who think the 'event' will be a few years of riots that they can wait out with their canned food and AK-47s.
3. And if we actually manage to destroy the planet that thoroughly, I see no reason why the human race *should* survive. Maybe there will be time for whatever is left to take the path to a wiser form of intelligence, maybe there won't, but as others have said -- all stories end.
posted by tavella at 9:02 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
1. Unless we make the planet actually uninhabitable (drop the oxygen content of the air past survivability, manage to tip it over to Venus), there will be human survivors. They probably won't be the rich technocrats you want, rather the most durable and ingenious of the far edges of the world, but there will be people.
2. If we make the planet actually uninhabitable, there is no refuge anyone can build that will last out the time it would take for it to return to livable. It's a total fantasy, the hallucination of people who think the 'event' will be a few years of riots that they can wait out with their canned food and AK-47s.
3. And if we actually manage to destroy the planet that thoroughly, I see no reason why the human race *should* survive. Maybe there will be time for whatever is left to take the path to a wiser form of intelligence, maybe there won't, but as others have said -- all stories end.
posted by tavella at 9:02 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
1) Once the CO2, particulates and ozone hit a certain level, I think it's going to be very difficult for human beings to reproduce. I wish I knew where that level was, but it should be pretty easy to establish with multigenerational lab rat experiments. We should really know what our limits are, since we're pushing them so hard.
2) That's the technological problem I'm proposing that we solve, yes.
3) Ah. There we have it. You see, I like humanity, and think we should survive. I think we're a young species, and we've made some terrible mistakes, but I think we should live to learn from them. I think we create amazing beauty along with the calamities we create, and I have hope that in time we will become a wiser species. I think it would be a tremendous tragedy if no-one ever got to build on the art, the music, the literature, and the science that we've struggled to create so far. And I'd be heartbroken to think that there would never be any human voices raised in harmony again, that the world would never hear a giggle or a guitar solo again, that everything we had ever done would perish from the universe, to be forgotten.
I'd like to avoid that.
Somehow that makes me a bad person around here, but I think it's an important perspective to share.
posted by MrVisible at 9:16 AM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
2) That's the technological problem I'm proposing that we solve, yes.
3) Ah. There we have it. You see, I like humanity, and think we should survive. I think we're a young species, and we've made some terrible mistakes, but I think we should live to learn from them. I think we create amazing beauty along with the calamities we create, and I have hope that in time we will become a wiser species. I think it would be a tremendous tragedy if no-one ever got to build on the art, the music, the literature, and the science that we've struggled to create so far. And I'd be heartbroken to think that there would never be any human voices raised in harmony again, that the world would never hear a giggle or a guitar solo again, that everything we had ever done would perish from the universe, to be forgotten.
I'd like to avoid that.
Somehow that makes me a bad person around here, but I think it's an important perspective to share.
posted by MrVisible at 9:16 AM on September 4, 2020 [2 favorites]
Once the CO2, particulates and ozone hit a certain level, I think it's going to be very difficult for human beings to reproduce.
Then instead of building pissy little bunkers for fuckwits to hide in, let's grow huge diverse fire-resistant rainforests to lower local CO2, particulate and ozone levels as far as possible on city scale.
posted by flabdablet at 9:53 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
Then instead of building pissy little bunkers for fuckwits to hide in, let's grow huge diverse fire-resistant rainforests to lower local CO2, particulate and ozone levels as far as possible on city scale.
posted by flabdablet at 9:53 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
I really enjoyed the first article by the author about billionaires buying spaces in gated bunkers, or real estate in New Zealand, to escape to in the event of The Event, so thank you for posting this update.
It talks a lot about the middle-class version of escape, which mostly involves escape to digital worlds. What's funny is that after so many words, we just come back to Ready Player One again.
The other thing to notice, of course, is that the hidden costs of capitalism that first pushed the suffering out of sight to third world counties, is increasingly more visible in the US and parts of Europe. Perhaps this is because the US is becoming a third-world country.
posted by subdee at 9:58 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
It talks a lot about the middle-class version of escape, which mostly involves escape to digital worlds. What's funny is that after so many words, we just come back to Ready Player One again.
The other thing to notice, of course, is that the hidden costs of capitalism that first pushed the suffering out of sight to third world counties, is increasingly more visible in the US and parts of Europe. Perhaps this is because the US is becoming a third-world country.
posted by subdee at 9:58 AM on September 4, 2020 [4 favorites]
Tied up in that, the idea that ordinary people would act exactly like rich people if they had the same resources. And tied up in that, the idea that the generalized prosperity of the US after the second world war was actually a historical blip, which is now being corrected to the norm.
I'm sure many friends who live in, say, the Philippines or other colonized or neo-colonized countries will recognize this social structure of the rich - or even the middle class - isolating themselves from the vaster numbers of the poor.
posted by subdee at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2020
I'm sure many friends who live in, say, the Philippines or other colonized or neo-colonized countries will recognize this social structure of the rich - or even the middle class - isolating themselves from the vaster numbers of the poor.
posted by subdee at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2020
everything we had ever done would perish from the universe, to be forgotten
That was always going to happen. Entropy comes for us all.
posted by tavella at 10:06 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
That was always going to happen. Entropy comes for us all.
posted by tavella at 10:06 AM on September 4, 2020 [5 favorites]
Mod note: MrVisible, you've made your point several times, please let it rest now and let other people discuss what they want.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:21 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:21 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
Project: Fuck Your Bunker...:
So this is kinda an ecological Roko's Basilisk.
Do what you can to save the environment or we're coming for you first.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
So this is kinda an ecological Roko's Basilisk.
Do what you can to save the environment or we're coming for you first.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2020 [5 favorites]
secret caches of books, how to, basic science and engineering, Many preppers do have caches of books. I suspect it's more likely that war, pestilence, famine, disease, will make life hellish for many. There won't be 1 way humans cope, there will be many ways, in many cultures. Greedy assholes obviously think they can build a self-sufficient bunker, and they can, but they will be bored because they love the game of gathering money as much as the money. Their kids will hate them and want to leave, the inmates will bicker, the staff will manipulate.
The other option is to try to fix it. It's harder, more complicated and might be futile. There should be a Nobel-level prize for progress on Climate Crisis. Leaders like Thunberg are celebrated; that's a start. The climate news this week is unsettling at the very least so I'm pessimistic. It is a perfect sunny, breezy day in Maine, so I just want to have a beer and enjoy some denial.
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2020
The other option is to try to fix it. It's harder, more complicated and might be futile. There should be a Nobel-level prize for progress on Climate Crisis. Leaders like Thunberg are celebrated; that's a start. The climate news this week is unsettling at the very least so I'm pessimistic. It is a perfect sunny, breezy day in Maine, so I just want to have a beer and enjoy some denial.
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2020
If you knew someone who had a bunker, and they invited you, would you go?
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2020
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on September 7, 2020
Does it have a pool? And is there a cafeteria / craft services deal?
posted by Meatbomb at 12:37 PM on September 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Meatbomb at 12:37 PM on September 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
theora55: Considering the kind of people who have bunkers? No, and fuck no.
posted by SansPoint at 7:23 AM on September 8, 2020
posted by SansPoint at 7:23 AM on September 8, 2020
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posted by Melismata at 8:07 AM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]