Quelle surprise that the ultra-rich are prepping for The Big One

March 12, 2024 5:20 AM

"For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us." (slCBC)
posted by Kitteh (59 comments total)

masque_of_red_death.gif

Also, why does the bunker look like the sports bar next to a convention center?
posted by ryanshepard at 5:36 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]

Whenever I see these stories about the rich building bunkers, I think that if they were to lock themselves in a nice load of gravel over the entrance and some plastic over the vents would solve the billionaire problem right quick.

Sieges in olden times usually didn’t go well for the besieged unless some help showed up to lift the siege.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:38 AM on March 12 [41 favorites]

U.S. ‘prepper’ culture diversifies amid fear of disaster and political unrest
posted by chavenet at 5:49 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

None of these fuckers have ever played Fallout, or The Last of Us, or Horizon Zero Dawn. Either someone gets in and fucks you up for your stuff (usually the protagonist), or something/someone on the inside fucks you up for your stuff (and then the protagonist fucks them up for your stuff).
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:53 AM on March 12 [23 favorites]

So the world ends. These wealthy yahoos lock themselves into their plush bunkers and live the high life while everyone else goes through hell.

What happens when they exit? They’ll emerge like pupating larvae, pale and soft, into a world where the people on the surface have banded together in the worst event ever to befall humanity, finding a way forward despite incredible hardship, forging a new society. By necessity, a society built on cooperation and trust - all the data shows that when things go to hell, that’s what people do.

Do the bunker dwellers really think they’ll be welcome or have anything of value to add? The only thing that made them special - their insane wealth - will be gone, meaningless. Why would anyone need them or treat them with anything other than contempt? Why would they be anything other than pariahs?

This is the glorious future they envision for themselves. They survive. They miss out on a little bit of the hardship. And they die alone.

I’ll take the surface, thanks.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:58 AM on March 12 [50 favorites]

Checked to see if they quoted David Rushkoff (Survival of the Richest from 2018, The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods from 2020), and they do - it's the linked quote, in fact.

The big new development in this one comes at the end:

"Vivos is not merely about concrete, steel and blast doors. It is about having a backup plan for mankind to survive and for families to have the opportunity to potentially be part of a like-minded community as these events unfold," said Dante Vicino, director of operations at Vivos xPoint, in an email to CBC.

This is a more recent development, said Garrett.

"You see people now building these bunker communities, where their goal is to get people that have complementary skills to move in with each other," he said.

So they took the advice from actual futurists and preppers that survival is more about community than tech to heart, and responded by... trying to create their own communities of millionaires + doctors and dentists. Great.
posted by subdee at 6:04 AM on March 12 [16 favorites]

What happens when they exit?

They're going to starve to death once the supply chain aimed at the Whole Foods their personal chef shops at collapses.

This is a Randian fantasy rooted in their own delusions about their independence from the systems keeping *all* of us alive right now.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:05 AM on March 12 [34 favorites]

With an extra dose of irony that Zuckerburg is creating his billionaire isolationist bunker in Hawaii, where the native culture emphasizes community...
posted by subdee at 6:08 AM on March 12 [7 favorites]

Whenever I see these stories about the rich building bunkers, I think that if they were to lock themselves in a nice load of gravel over the entrance and some plastic over the vents would solve the billionaire problem right quick.

It is the time of Digwell, now Summer's gone away
People come from miles around to meet on Digwell day
We all come here with mighty stones, with gravel, rocks, and sand
Bring it here with oxcarts or with buckets in your hand

Pile high, pile high, the devil's underground
Pile high, pile high, keep the devil down
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:08 AM on March 12 [18 favorites]

Rezvani's Hercules 6x6 Military Edition has six wheels, as well as safety features such as on-board gas masks, electrified door handles and "underside explosive protection." That will cost you $459,000 US.

coming to high school parking lots and residential streets near you!

although i do wonder if a 6x6 like that can cut a donut very well. that might tamp down on the teenagers-driving-death-machines trend i see all the time around me.
posted by glonous keming at 6:09 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Speaking of that Rezvani truck... sure, your truck is tough, but are you ready to fight the Gorn for it?
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:17 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]

Related: Why the world cannot afford the rich
posted by chavenet at 6:25 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]

If I were a Meta stockholder, wouldn’t I be concerned about how little confidence its CEO was showing about the long-term value of its stock?
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:26 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]

Absolutely not, because the LONG-term value of stocks is not a thing rich people appear to care about anymore.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:31 AM on March 12 [14 favorites]

I saw a conspiracy video floating around on tiktok saying that Bill Gates' farmland purchases line up with a map of arable land that will stay above sea level after catastrophic global warming. When the ice caps melt California's Central Valley will be under the Pacific Ocean and somewhere else will become America's breadbasket. It seems both plausible and too close to Lex Luthor's stupid real estate plot from Superman '78.
posted by thecjm at 6:35 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]

Facebook does plan medium-to-long-term.

Source: My brother, an engineer at Facebook, currently working on a project to calculate risks from climate change to existing data centers and use climate change modeling to figure out where to put the new datacenters so they won't fail at the same time to the same things (don't put two of them in the same flood zone, for example).

He says the budget cuts do impact the long term planning though, so the engineers on those projects have to fight to keep the staff on them from being reassigned to other, shorter term projects.
posted by subdee at 6:36 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]

As my husband likes to say, "Good thing climate change is a Hoax invented by the Chinese, otherwise all of this would be very concerning."
posted by subdee at 6:41 AM on March 12 [14 favorites]

The billionaire bunker-builders seem to think that if society collapses that they will need to hide from roaming hordes of zombie-like and lightly armed poors. I think if history teaches us anything, when there is collapse they are more likely to have to deal with heavily armed and organised gangs of criminals, military, and paramilitary. I doubt those groups would be slowed down too much by rich idiot bunkers.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:44 AM on March 12 [12 favorites]

I’m trying to decenter the rich. It’s much harder to think through what regular-way folks maybe ought to be ready to do whenever the ocean and/or SkyNet rises or whatever.

I’m thinking quick, painless, and above ground.
posted by edithkeeler at 7:00 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]

These guys do know that Stark was written by a comedian, right? By the guy who co-wrote The Young Ones and Blackadder? That it was a warning, not a handbook?
posted by rory at 7:06 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

They all think they'll be Immortan Joe. They really do. Wear fetish gear all the time. Have an army of twinks beg for your eye. A harem of women to ensure your genetic survival. They probably can't wait until it's socially acceptable to do in public what they probably already do in private.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:08 AM on March 12 [11 favorites]

A thing I'm enjoying quite a bit today is the absolute certainty that my grandchildren will be able to buy tickets to tour the armored enclaves of ultrarich the way they can tour the Diefenbunker today, as historical artifacts, aesthetically frozen monuments to the vanity and fear that have no place in the world as anything but historical curiosities.
posted by mhoye at 7:17 AM on March 12 [9 favorites]

In a general sense I can't really fault anyone for wanting to escape from other people.

Specific to this situation, it doesn't really bother me because if society really does go down the tubes for real anyone who survives, no matter how rich they are, will not be living a relaxing life of luxury with the added benefit of not having us Poors around. They'll be welcome to what's left of the place. Have fun.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:19 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]

I think if history teaches us anything, when there is collapse they are more likely to have to deal with heavily armed and organised gangs of criminals, military, and paramilitary.

part of me wants to think otherwise, but war lord economy does seem like a good bet
posted by elkevelvet at 7:55 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Well, at least they are burning through some of their ill-gotten gains and creating a few jobs in the process. And don't forget the amusement value for the rest of us...
posted by jim in austin at 7:57 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

My main objection here is that if this catches on among the ultra wealthy it means they've completely checked out of the project of holding the planet together and may in fact be actively working to accelerate "the collapse" becuase they think the sooner it happens the lower the total damage will be.

I said it in the last thread we had about this and I swear I'm not just a raging leftist with a hate on for the billionaires: we need to make a very public organization with the explicitly stated goal of destroying every billionaire bunker that exists if "the collapse" really does happen. Not out of spite for them, but to discorage them from imagining they can live through "the collapse" and thus get them and their billions onto the project of keeping society going and preventing mass extinction events.

Project Fuck Your Bunker would be caching explosives, heavy building equipment, concrete, gravel, and so on near to the bunkers as a reminder that if the end DOES come we'll blow up their crap, plug up their air holes, and let them starve in the dark if their air doesn't run out first.

Mind you, I think that "the collapse" will be more of a drawn out expansion of current trends. Not so much bunkers, but walled off communities of the ultra rich surrounded by the hovels of the poor in a dystopian hellscape of authoritarianism, xenophobia, and bigotry to keep the poor from banding together by turning us against each other.

We're moving rapidly away from Capitalism and towards a system that looks a lot like Feudalism 2.0.
posted by sotonohito at 8:43 AM on March 12 [16 favorites]

"A fallout shelter for everybody," he said, "as rapidly as possible." Calling the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 "the great testing place of Western courage and will,"

-John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
posted by clavdivs at 8:49 AM on March 12 [2 favorites]

These idiots have spent 20-40 years (depending on the billionaire) gutting US regulations and they want to build this stuff with US materials, using US requirements and safeguards? They're already dead they just don't know it.

They'll have skipped on something like that blue argon trap liquid or someone will have just filled it with blue dishsoap to wrap the project up on time. To say nothing of concrete quality, air flow, water, and sewage. God, and the electrical how could I forget.

"We spared no expense" well I'm sure the engineer, contractors, sub-contractors, and suppliers are VERY aware of that and are sure you'll never really know. And in the event that it's utilized and they do figure out that everyone involved cheaped out and stuffed their pockets? It's the apocalypse! It's literally too late.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:55 AM on March 12 [21 favorites]

If climate change makes our planet uninhabitable, our only hope for survival as a species is to build our own biospheres.

The wealthy and powerful are already doing this.

Whether they consider it their only hope or a backup plan, they're accounting for the possibility that climate change can't be stopped.

We should probably consider that possibility.

Fortunately, there's been a ton of research lately on how to build biospheres that can support human life with minimal environmental inputs. The terms to search for are bioregenerative life support systems and closed ecological life support systems.
posted by MrVisible at 9:01 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

The meek will inherit the Earth, sure enough. It’ll be a worthless shithole once the brash are done with it, but the meek will inherit it.
posted by notoriety public at 9:15 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

Bunkers won't work.

Community is the technique by which human beings survive disasters. When whatever disaster befell our ancient ancestors and drove the population of human beings on Earth below 5,000 people, it wasn't the law of the jungle which let them survive. It was living in community.

Cf. The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival, Chris Begley, 16 November 2021
posted by ob1quixote at 9:26 AM on March 12 [9 favorites]

Preppers aside….Some of the followers of Christ are super into all this chaos because surely this means the rapture is nigh! In fact, why not just stoke the chaos a bit just to make things good and ready for the Savior of (white, Christian, heterosexual) mankind? I know this is a massive oversimplification but some of the Republican hullabaloo re: Israel is about the excitement for the holy war and rapture. There’s a looooooong journey of pain before they lock themselves into their bunkers. I suggest we go ahead and take their money now so that the children won’t starve, the mad have safe places to lay their head, and the elderly can relax a bit in their community of generations.
posted by amanda at 9:28 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]

I've always thought of "the meek shall inherit the earth" ('shall' for its KJV allusiveness) as a savagely sardonic joke because "the earth" is all they ever will inherit, and that inheritance will come in the form of a few cubic feet of soil atop a shallow grave.
posted by jamjam at 9:38 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]

I figure that anything I can think of in 10min a contractor building and designing those can, but goddamn, just maintaining a house HVAC + appliances requires so many contractors, tools, parts, etc it's hard to imagine those thing will last for the long run. Not to mention the array of medical professionals/equipment necessary to keep up with the perceived level of care a billionaire surely gets.

I'd have more confidence in a homesteader with a very simple house that can be maintained with simple tools and materials you can source locally (aka what our grand grand parents did). But that's a hard life, requires skills & effort, and as everybody mentioned works better in a community context. You can still stupidly die of an appendicitis, or have to suffer through kidney/gallstones (gotta love modern healthcare), but the housing/food situation is more sustainable.

For sure the homestead won't survive a nuclear blast and a bunch of other disasters, but what good is it to survive even a few decades and emerge out in an unlivable hellscape? War, plagues, climates change these are problems we must work collectively to solve, not weasel away from with money. But hey, most people don't reach billionaire status by being team players, but the hubris is striking, if they're really afraid (versus throwing pocket change at this just in case), they should pour all their resources/influence into solving this.

If the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan I'd rather be with a bunch of mefites than in a billionaire's bunker.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:44 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]

Bunkers won't work.

Community is the technique by which human beings survive disasters.

I'd argue that building shelters is how human beings survive period, but your point is well taken. We'll definitely need bunkers big enough for communities.

Fortunately, astrosociology has spent a couple of decades working on the problems involved in getting people to work together in survival situations, and that research should translate well to earthbound bunkers. Here's a fun paper:

To Each According to Their Space-Need: Communes in Outer Space

Heck, even the makers of the cheap knock-off bunkers in the article talk about the need for a diverse set of skills in a robust community.
posted by MrVisible at 10:51 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]

A good read on the topic: Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

I figure once these folks are ensconced in their shelters they are likely to be wiped out by a contagious disease. Probably from dirty telephones.
posted by TedW at 11:00 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I figure once these folks are ensconced in their shelters they are likely to be wiped out by a contagious disease.

Noradvirus
posted by notoriety public at 11:11 AM on March 12 [12 favorites]

I can think of no better place for the rich to be, than under the ground. Maybe we can brainstorm a faster way to herd them to where they belong.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:50 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I just had a brief fantasy of a lefty infiltration of online MAGA groups - "When the Apocalypse comes, follow the red arrows - TRUMP has organized the billionaires to build shelters for YOU! Bring your family! Bring your guns!"

And then putting red arrows pointing to every bunker known or suspected. Let the wealthy parasites try to fend off an entirely different kind of ravening horde than the right wing media imagines.

While the rest of humanity works together to survive (those that wish to, anyway).

I know. It's not realistic, and when if it were I hope for the sake of my niece and nephews that we never get there.

But it was a fun little fantasy.
posted by Vigilant at 12:35 PM on March 12 [13 favorites]

A couple of questions always bug me when these discussions come up.

Why do you think that the billionaire bunkers of the future would be undefended, when you couldn't crack one presently without Seal Team Six and/or a bunker-busting missile?

If you think that habitable bunkers are too large and complex a problem for humanity to solve, why do you think we can solve climate change, a much larger and more complex problem?
posted by MrVisible at 12:39 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Even during the cold war I never saw the point in bunkers. If an all-out nuclear exchange ever happened, the living would end up envying the dead, so if I could have my druthers I would take instant vaporization instead. Why would I want to hide in a hole only to emerge to die in a horrific wasteland?
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:41 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]

It's a great marketing hook - fear of the poor, now that you're one of the rich. Because the poors, the poors holy smokes are they ever savages. Probably never even heard of Gewürtztraminer! Yikes!

Then get a back ho, some contractors to slap in the usual and bob's your uncle. Get some nice surfaces - that's the expensive part - and rake it in.

Who knows what the future holds - it doesn't look great, but who the fuck knows. I saw an airplane fly into a building once and if that wasn't fucking crazy enough, about twenty minutes later it happened again! Global, societal collapse? Sure! Run to the bunker! (Holy fuck, someone's already in it!? Isn't that the contractor's truck out front?!) Sky-net wakes up? Yeah, bunker's probably closed itself down. If you make it to your bunker... there's no getting out without getting skinned alive because you made it clear, you don't care about anyone else.

Gravel and plastic bags... if you're lucky.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:45 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]

Why would I want to hide in a hole only to emerge to die in a horrific wasteland?

Hey now, you gotta stay positive
posted by elkevelvet at 12:46 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Oh, you're still thinking about emerging. No, once we go into the bunkers, that's where we'll live. We'd better make them as habitable as possible to start with, because chances of finding or making a planet-sized human-habitable biosphere again any time soon are pretty slim. We'd better get good at living indoors.

We've destroyed the only biosphere we can live in. Now we'll have to build our own, or die.
posted by MrVisible at 12:48 PM on March 12 [3 favorites]

Why do you think that the billionaire bunkers of the future would be undefended

Defended by who? Where are they going to find a private army willing to sit outside in a theoretical apocalyptic scenario to protect rich assholes hiding in their hole? And for what? If everything really goes so far to shit that people need bunkers, then money is meaningless.

Anyways, much easier just to seal them in then to crack one open to get them out. Time is on the side of the besiegers, not the besieged.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:49 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

Defended by who?

By the people whose families are inside.

Plus, killdrones.
posted by MrVisible at 12:51 PM on March 12

Oh, you're still thinking about emerging. No, once we go into the bunkers, that's where we'll live.

No thanks, if it comes to that I've had a good run.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:51 PM on March 12

Those who inherit the earth on each go round are meek at first, but industrious.
Just watch what they make from that little bit of dirt.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 12:54 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Every few years, a new batch of young journalists find out about Rushkoff's work and report on it. It's adorable.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:56 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

No thanks, if it comes to that I've had a good run.

But humanity is a young species, we've only been at this for ten thousand years. And we've been doing pretty well building the first technological civilization in the known universe without any instructions, examples, or idea of what it's supposed to end up looking like. Yeah, we screwed up, but that's to be expected.

It'd be a real shame if everything everyone ever did was in vain.

So I'm glad some people are trying to survive.

I'd much rather that the billionaires not have the power to decide who gets to live or die, again, so I'd like to see some other groups get busy building bunkers, though. That'd be nice. Diversity is, after all, our greatest strength as a species.

Where there's life, there's hope.
posted by MrVisible at 12:57 PM on March 12 [4 favorites]

It'd be a real shame if everything everyone ever did was in vain.

But it is, isn't it? Or it will be. Ten thousand years of civilization, fifty million years of civilization: on a universal timescale, there's no difference. Finite is finite.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:34 PM on March 12 [7 favorites]

Ask the dinosaurs...

Shit happens
posted by Windopaene at 4:19 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

I want there to be generation after generation of human children born. I want them to learn from our mistakes. I want them to create societies that rise and achieve astonishing things. I want them to write poetry and make art and create music, because we still don't even know why we do those things, but we know they're important.

I want there to be a future for humanity. This would be a terrible, tragic end for us. Let's write a better one.
posted by MrVisible at 4:44 PM on March 12 [5 favorites]

Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

In the event of a world ending apocalypse, sheltering down with the uber-rich is the second worst thing to sheltering down with Republican Senators and Representatives. I'll be at the dinner table holding hands metaphorically with Leonardo DiCaprio's and Jennifer Lawrence's "Don't Look Up" characters, thank you.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:23 AM on March 13 [2 favorites]

“An astonishingly good idea”
posted by cybrcamper at 4:04 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]

> None of these fuckers have ever played Fallout, or The Last of Us, or Horizon Zero Dawn

They should try Death Stranding. Everyone is living in bunkers hiding from invisible terrors from beyond the grave, but your job is to help them reconnect to each other for no reward other than a thumbs-up.

Those promo videos have got to be a joke though. The Oppidum one has a freaking Cybertruck in the garage, and the Vivos one depicts mayhem with the super-photoshopped Iranian Missiles.

I personally don't really see the point of long-term bunker living though. If things are so disastrous you need to spend more than a month in the shelter, there's probably not going to be a world to come back to. But at least it has rich folks spending their money instead of hoarding it.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 4:33 AM on March 13 [1 favorite]

posted by fimbulvetr

Deserves an "eponysterical" callout, surely?
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:52 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

The Achille's heel of the rich has always been their servants. Somebody has to clean the toilets, tend the crops, maintain the machines, fend off the starving hordes at the gates. I don't see how being ensconced in a super bunker makes that any easier to arrange. If anything it makes it harder. For a start there is nowhere left to run. Those inside the bunkers are pinned down and easily identified and located by the billions of starving hordes outside whose lives and futures they have trashed, and left with nothing to lose, and a righteous burning desire to slit their throats for what they have done to us.

The only real long-term protection against that, which the rich seemed to have wilfully forgotten again, because apparently history cannot not teach that lesson harshly and often enough, is to forgo a little of their distended ill-deserved wealth and power so that the hordes may have adequate shelter, food, healthcare, education, freedom, and lives.

I think the hell that will unfold for those inside the bunkers will be at least as bad as the one outside from which they are trying to escape.

By necessity, a society built on cooperation and trust - all the data shows that when things go to hell, that’s what people do.
posted by caution live frogs

Social cooperation is our most powerful survival tool, it is what has built human civilisation. The whole individualist schtick is a complete crock. The Great Man theory of civilisation is The Great Fraud.
posted by Pouteria at 8:43 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

This Bob the Angry Flower cartoon never ceases to be relevant.
posted by sotonohito at 6:23 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]