Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t
No.
and are preparing for end times?
Yes.
They fantasize constantly about their wealth becoming even more disproportionate to the general population - even if it, in absolute numbers, collapses. They crave more power over people, and are deluded enough to think that in a crisis scenario, their wealth will mean anything.
I hope we still have some concrete during the apocolypse in order to seal those fuckers in.
Water and a couple bags of quickrete from the local hammer barn should do it.
See anything that could possibly be air ventilation or filtration, destroy it and seal it up.
I don’t think I would personally like that if I were a billionaire. Would like to prove that either way though.
It’s cute that they think the society that supports them is going to continue to support them in their bunker and they only have to worry about attacks. What are they going to do when the plumbing breaks or the canned food runs out?
Is it? Is it? Short of an utter and complete societal collapse the likes of which we have basically never seen, history tells us the billionaires will emerge from any catastrophe with even greater wealth.
During WWII the Nazis got their factories bombed to smithereens. Entire cities like Dresden got essentially wiped off the map. Can you guess what happened to the rich industrialists who benefitted from slave labor? That’s right, they came out of their bunkers and proceeded to become richer than ever and are still household names to this day. Oh, and of course while everyone was on food stamps/rations the rich were having lavish banquets.
Capital is power, by definition. Instead of hoping for an apocalypse so bad all capital vanishes and even gold and land don’t hold any value, maybe we should focus on wealth distribution through democratic means.
Yeah these bunkers would just be the homes of warlords that kill billionaires - probably the heads of their own security teams.
I’ve heard floated the idea that they will try and stop this happening by having remote detonation collars on the families of their security team.
They could store the families in a separate underwater bunker built on the ruins of a death cult’s sunken wizard tower too.
Is this a reference to the snail?
Like anyone would ever put exploding collars before shooting in the face whoever proposed it
Who are the assholes who would take that job? “But Honey, I get weekends off and dental! Just put on the decapitation collar… Please?”
I love how they think we’re going to try to break in and hurt them. We really are just going to entomb them in their bunkers and seal off any intake and exhaust.
If we as a species survives the climate collapse and finds a way to flourish again, archeologists will find these bunkers and think they where built by slaves to celebrate their rulling pharaohs.
Oh, and billionares getting bunkers is a new trend? Bill Gates has had one since he was CEO of Microsoft and HE was following the trend already.
Naw, they have wealth of supplies in there, may as well get some construction equipment and break in.
This is true. We will entomb them.
Even if the world does turn to absolute shit and many of us die, it’s the not the billionaires in their bunkers who will the last ones standing.
If there’s any hope at all it will be with the remaining pockets of communities outside who learn to abolish capitalism and just live and support each other in a sustainable way. No one can survive long alone.
Any billionaire in their bunker will be entombed, and if they come out they’ll just get lynched.
This just proves how capitalism rewards the inanely stupid - these parasites cosplaying as doomsday preppers (who already are not known for their firm grip on reality) don’t realize that any event which would cause them to need such a bunker would also most likely destroy the very thing that attributes any kind of value to the power-coupons they’ve been hoarding - ie, the economy that only exists thanks to the working class.
Also, good luck to them when the well-armed rent-a-goons they hired to protect their little bunkers finds out the money they are being paid is all of a sudden completely worthless and that the governments that guaranteed private property rights is no longer around to protect them from the very same well-armed rent-a-goons. It would be a shame if nobody was around to film the anarcho-capitalist comedy that would ensue…
Naaaaaaaaaniiiiiiii?? You’re telling me the people with guns will call the shots in an apocalyptic event because money will lose its value??? IMPOSSIBRU!!!
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I dunno, but could you email your congressperson this? I imagine you’re seeing previews in Ukraine.
My best guess is lines of AI controlles guns with dumb bullets firing at the sky. The first wave will be painful depending on scale, but a country in need should be able to have their best and brightest have something up and running in a few days.
This occuring to the USA would likely result in an awfully strong response with whatever they’ve been coming up with.
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Maybe we can just let the drones shoot at each other and everyone else just has a picnic and watches?
There’s a book about that- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel) where the Ai war is held on the Moon.
As all wars should be held. Preferably with giant robots.
Edit: That’s a Lem book I was unfamiliar with, so I’ll check it out. Thanks!
They should build an inflammable moat instead.
Very under rated comment
And then toss the billionaires in to see if it works according to specifications.
bunkers are terrible in general because of air/exhaust problems. If you know where they are you can just tape all the vents shut. What they should be investing in is submersibles.
Either way this a grotesque squandering of society’s resources.
If.
I say we convince them society is collapsing, let them hide in their bunkers, wait for the flaming moat fuel to run out, then wall them in.
No need for a wall, just grade over it all with some bulldozers, plant some trees, and make a park where my dog can have a nice place to shit while I read a book.
I don’t know… do you want to risk them finding a way to dig themselves out?
Pour concrete down the ventilation shafts before making the park. They won’t realize what’s happened until they’re too oxygen deprived to do anything except panic for a few minutes and then asphyxiate.
I have Great Danes, they’ll never dig through that much dog shit.
How? There will be no working class down there to wipe their arsses for them, never mind dig for them.
Doesn’t hurt to make sure. You put the soil over the wall and still have a very nice park.
Anyway, don’t you think it’s about time we did the real-life version of The Cask of Amontillado?
Podcaster Christina Randall, who has over 1.58 million subscribers, thinks so. Randall recently observed that Zuckerberg’s reported bunker is one of approximately 15 end-of-days projects being undertaken by billionaires worldwide and said the Biblical Book of Revelation, which predicts the end of the world, is being fulfilled. “Revelation 6:15 says that the kings of the Earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains,” Randall said.
Okay, the guardian
The best defense is a strong community that loves you. Literally living around you.
Lol I came here to comment the same thing. What a fucking joke. Has the guardian always been so trashy? I don’t recall it.
I wonder if this is part of a cyclical history and this is how we ended up with kings/nobility in the first place? Like we’ve been in this situation before where the Earth’s climate goes to shit and the only people with the resources to make it through the Dark Ages are this class of wealthy individuals who were also the cause of the Dark Ages, but were able to build bunkers/castles to make it through their obscene wealth that they had accumulated.
So at some point in a few hundred years, we’ll have these kingdoms carved out, all centered on these new tech billionaires and other families that were able to carve out their own fiefdoms. I’d love to see a “fantasy” series that starts out as sort of typical Fantasy, with maybe medieval technology, but then gradually over time it’s revealed that they’re survivors of a post-apocalypse (though I’m sure it’s been around for decades, I know Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series kind of fits in that realm, along with Dungeon Crawl Classics for an RPG). The “Great Families” will be revealed to be the Musks, Gates’, Bezos’, Zuckerburgs, Ballmers, Ellisons, Pages, and whoever else has been building their own bunkers in secret.
he is also feeding cows macadamia nuts on a remote island hoping it would make good doomsday food
Something about the apocalypse makes that A5 Wagyu steak that much more indulgent.
Funny how that if collapse happens, only their security guards will be enjoying those bunkers.
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I suspect they’re looking into ways to keep their staff loyal, they’ll be considering things like controlling the supply of an addictive drug, implanting behaviour modification chips in their brains, explosive collars, holding their kids hostage. Shit like that. Because why else would anyone be loyal to these vermin?
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I think the main reason he’s into Neuralink is because he hopes to be able to transfer his consciousness into one of his brood, or into a machine. 1950’s immortality hyper-nerd shit.
Have a code that has to be entered twice a day to keep airflow active
But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?
The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.
Special combination locks really, nothing can stop a determined man with a crowbar indefinitely.
“slight click out of one…click out of two…”
Or brutal torture to force the code out of zucky’s mouth
The combination is only as secure as how much torture they can withstand.
Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.
This is how you can tell they’ve seriously thought things through and definitely have a good plan.
“Disciplinary collars”. JFC, that’s some Cyberpunk 2077 bullshit right there.
How fucking appalling that anyone other than a fantasy writer trying to create a dystopia hellscape would even float that idea as reasonable.
You can also find articles about one prepper that raided another prepper’s bunker, and killed the dudes daughter, in an attempt to take the other guy’s bunker. Another dude killed his entire family, and tried to hide in their bunker. It’s not just the ultra rich, and they’ll get raided by rightwing doomsday nutjobs as well.
Christ predicted the end of the world in the 1st century, and these god of war worshippers have been predicting “the end of the world” ever since.
The craziest part it that The Baha’is have a pretty good argument that the world ended in the mid 1800’s. The old world did anyway. How many horses do you deal with on a daily basis? Have you managed to travel more than 10-20 miles from your birthplace? Do you happen to have access to the sum total of human knowledge, available in your hand?
That world is already over. Biblical Scholars are also pretty sure that the events described in Revelations, were talking about things that were supposed to have happened in the 1st or 2nd century.
I’m reading that book right now.
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more fucked really. If the government collapses the #1 thing Elon Musk knows how to do is suck the G-man’s teat. The second the government has better things todo the guy is a dying cow surrounded by vultures.
The core premise is ridiculous. They’re trying to survive an apocalypse in luxury using technology, but maintaining our level of technological luxury requires a global supply chain. The author is right, the best way to survive would be to establish a community that helps and protects each other.
10 Zuckerfield Lane
This is not a new trend or something specific to billionaires. Home fallout shelters were popular during the Cold War.
The idea of a doomsday bunker being dumb and mostly pointless aside, a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with? In a doomsday scenario, why would someone waste precious good fuel to set a moat on fire for a few days? Instead of using, say, booby traps?
And of course Yudkowsky, the writer of the world’s most boring Harry Potter fan fiction had to chime in with an even worse take.
They clearly didn’t read Leiningen vs The Ants.
Yeah there’s no way mines aren’t a better worse idea.
Explosives or hole in the ground? Not that it really matters, both could be better worse ideas
I was thinking anti-personnel mines, but yeah, either are better than fire moat.
a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with?
Yeah, that sounds like something straight out of poorly written fiction.
Anyone who thinks the end times are near in any capacity is some flavor of moron.
You’re either one of the rich fucks or one of their useful idiots if you go about doomsaying like you’re Rorschach from Watchmen.
We have the means to destroy ourselves, and there are a lot of truly stupid people who have power over those means. I don’t say I personally believe we will all die soon, but I can see how someone might.
Mate it’s not going to be atomics. It’s climate change and we’re just at the beginning of it. Atomics will only be a consequence of climate change.
Yea I didn’t only mean atomic war, the same stupid people who have power over that means to an end also are important factors in if we will all die of climate change.
