Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The previous discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13462865
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_settlement_of_Brit...
I'd expect the loyalty to a rich employer would last right up to the point where money becomes worthless - after that exactly what bargaining power would a rich person have? Up to a certain point in history you achieved and maintained royal status largely by being a stupendous bad-ass...
I would think the easiest way would be to start a religious sect, as this would give you non-monetary legitimacy, akin to a modern day Mandate of Heaven or Divine Right of Kings.
Or if religion isn't your flavor, then some type of philosophical/political/national organization. However, I think it works better with religion because of the afterlife component.
It would also be best to get your followers when they're young. So perhaps start an educational fund that helps underprivileged families, with one of the requirements being to study your organization's ideology. Even better would be to fund multiple orphanages and have them run by members of your sect.
Would the French revolution be a good example? Or is that event already biased against the elites? Or would a hypothetical future collapse of society be also biased against the elites?
The libertarian inclination to portray human beings prospering on their own as Randian ubermensch is one of the worst ideas to have infected tech culture.
This is a great point and I think we can even add more to it: Will your pilot even wait for you? I guess he/she will just put his/her family on your plane and take off without you!
The people in this story are still counting on quite a bit of society to exist to ferry them to their fancy secure locations.
Which, to be sure, isn't unrealistic. Just interesting.
You don't have to look far in history to see examples of this. 3rd Reich Germany kept functioning well past the point where it should seemingly have collapsed. Even as the Red Army were shelling Berlin, there were low-level people continuing their work when the sensible thing to do would surely have been to get their family and flee.
More recently, the Greek financial crisis put a major strain on institutions that were weak to begin with, but there was no rioting or major breakdown of order.
I think modern, Western societies are surprisingly resistant to a breakdown in order, simply because most people have never experienced anything other than order. As a result, acting in an anarchic, non-system way simply isn't something that would occur to them. Even in the face of an existential crisis, they would "keep calm and carry on", because they can't imagine doing anything else.
I think if there's going to be any place that a bit of society is left existing after apocalypse will be somewhere in the US, perhaps much closer to where those billionaires reside than they think (so there's no need to run to New Zealand).
I think the better investment would be to literally convert some of your 'paper' wealth to physical means of production of basic goods.
I would become his apprentice and have him teach me everything he know. What else would you have to do while you're in hiding?
Plus the risk of leaks resulting in additional people or those wishing to take your plane.
When you arrive who is feeding, housing, and this large number of people?
If you really want this to work, you better learn to be a pilot and a mechanic now, or preferably have close family members that you like who have those skills.
centi- means 1/100. So those are people whose net work is about 10k.
The author probably meant hecto-millionaires. Or deci-billionaires.
Heh, premium words. What good is a dictionary that only lists the common words? We know what those ones mean...
After piercing the paywall, I can see they've wrong. Centa, centi. Not the same.
And they charge for that?
You see these OPSEC fails in the middle class, too, with the NRA/AR-15/"Molon Labe" bumper stickers on their cars. Thanks for letting me know you have cool firearms, ammunition, and god knows what else.
A modest clandestine bunker close to but not directly in a population centre might fare a lot better than these pinatas. Especially if everyone else has run off to raid the Theil compound.
I think if i was this rich i wouldn't just build a bunker in the middle of nowhere but invest in existing town, help them become more independent/self sufficient.
Same for wherever i lived, the more people protected from a disaster the quicker they can rebuild.
I'm pretty sure many of those card carrying NRA members would love for you to show up on their doorstep to take possession of their firearms and survival stash...
It's only anecdotal, but the one thief that I knew loved handguns as they are small, have real value, and are easy to sell.
The fact that no one is going to go into a house to steal stuff if they think someone is there to protect it pairs just fine with the fact that often folks aren't home.
Total firearm homicides: 8,454
Handgun homicides: 5,782
Rifles, Shotguns, other: ~700
Which, with other stats, goes to show IMO, that "Assault Weapon Bans" are more grandstanding than anything else.
[1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
The military (or whatever it turns into) would be the ones who gain control of fortified locations, and whatever resources they contain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
The egalitarian ideal is also declining rapidly in NZ.
C.f: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/323098/'exceptional-c... and http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/323107/nz-back-at-top-of... are both headlines on most major NZ news websites today.
It didn't work out too well for Kim Dotcom either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Arrest_and_extradit...).
So no, focusing on the actual problems is actually less foolish than "doomsday prepping".
This is a question of altruism, or of whether all of these possibilities are too small to be worth spending spending time on.
I am pretty sure there are lots of people in my city who are watching my back because of kindnesses I have extended.
Also, changing your community is the first step to changing your city, is the first step to changing the region. At each step my same assertion applies: there is a path for having an effect. Consider changing your community "changing the world by induction".
I think Bill Gates is a flawed example, since he is focused on philanthropic charity, which is unlikely to have a transformative/exponential effect on societal survivability proportionate to the effect his wealth could have on his personal survivability. But, if he were more focused on potentially transformative "moonshot" investments then I think it might be close.
In any event, I don't think you can really assert either way with confidence, so for any individual it's a more or less blind choice between being optimistic and altruistic or pessimistic and selfish. Unfortunately capitalist logic pushes us strongly away from altruism and towards maximizing individual outcomes. Of course as many have pointed out it's not actually a binary choice if you're sufficiently wealthy, the survivalism is just a form of hedging, but it does have a potentially significant opportunity cost.
I have yet to hear even a vaguely plausible story about how total societal meltdown in California would occur.
It's slightly foolishly arrogant to prepare for a doomsday scenario that fucks everyone else over when it's far more likely that you'll get killed by something you never saw coming - like that car coming down the street.
I feel like we're more likely to die from old age than anything from space or zombies. Maybe I just can't do the level of paranoia that some people take on. It seems an unnecessary waste of your brain space to always be on alert.
or maybe i'll just be the first to die. shrug
It would be interesting to have the same perspective in, say, 1913. In that period virtually no one expected the catastrophe that would become World War I, which led into the catastrophe of WWII. Really, really bad things can happen; because they haven't since 1945 doesn't mean they won't again. The 1913 mindset is part of what I channeled when I wrote this: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/11/28/trump-fears-and-the-nucle...
> "This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century."
World leaders had known conflict was possible for a long time and had been preparing for it - the build up of alliances both was an example of this and the ultimate cause of war. Conflicts in the Balkans preceded WWI by several years. If you think Trump is crazy try Wilhelm who was widely known as an egomaniac.
The shopkeepers may not have known what was coming but the world leaders certainly did. We don't have anything that could jump start a world war in the same way. In fact, it's more likely that we'd have seen conflict with Russia via Clinton than we would with Trump, and that would be our main threat of nuclear war today. As far as conventional war goes, there's nothing like pre-WWI in place with America being the clear global hegemon. Neither China nor Russia have the military to engage in anything but localized conflicts.
I've known a few prepper types. They had plans for escape rooms, a significant cache of weapons, some ammo, and a few MREs in the closet.
Nobody had more than maybe a few liters of water per person in the home, and when I asked about an escape plan (e.g. there's a fire, get out and meet at John's house on the next street over) they looked at me like I was insane. Oh, and of course they're all in fairly bad shape.
In my opinion, most of the "prepper" stuff is about fantasy role playing. I see it as related to the "middle aged man porn" we see lately in the form of the Taken franchise of movies. It perhaps it gives a feeling of smug satisfaction in a chaotic life. You're angry that you were cut off in traffic on your way to a job that might have layoffs tomorrow, but at least you can tell yourself that when the apocalypse comes, you'll succeed while that jerk will be fodder. Sort of a tough guy variant of the classic "ass pennies" comedy sketch.
The 2nd best investment is to invest in your community and friends, because survival as a group is much easier than being a loner.
Stockpiling supplies I don't think is very relevant until signs of the collapse are obvious. A lot of medicines and some fuel don't last very long either, afaik.
Also, stockpiling should be done smart. If fuel doesn't last long, make sure you're using things like fuel extenders to keep them usable. And ideally, make it part of your daily life. Stockpiling 5 or 500 gallons of water in your apartment or house is a great idea (when the water main breaks after an earthquake, would you rather be the person who can help others because you know you're taken care of, or the guy who's fighting off dehydration while he waits for the red cross to arrive?), but keep using it. Don't buy one of those blue tanks and just leave it in a corner, buy 10 and use them, replacing them as you use them. Same thing with food, and fuel.
Going to extremes, of course, give you diminishing returns (like anything). So stockpiling several million rounds of ammunition and more medicine than can be used before it expires doesn't make much sense.
Also, (nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines|jet aircraft engines) can be (very|relatively) quickly brought into duty producing electricity locally in every city, way before any pandemics and mass starvation.
Longer term, converting from the refrigerated fresh food system of today, to a system based on pickling/curing/canning/iceboxes/etc. is hardly black magic.
Coronal mass ejection
>Also, (nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines|jet aircraft engines) can be (very|relatively) quickly brought into duty producing electricity locally in every city, way before any pandemics and mass starvation.
That doesn't scale.
>Longer term, converting from the refrigerated fresh food system of today, to a system based on pickling/curing/canning/iceboxes/etc. is hardly black magic.
>In the short term hundreds of millions would starve or die from heat or cold. Cities only keep on hand weeks worth of food.
However, this response does not scale well.
Or maybe you just settled on different hobbies. I'm not being facetious, we all spend our time and money on different things, and from my POV many put together a narrative that "requires" them to buy fun gadgets. For you, perhaps home automation. For others, prepping for an end-of-world scenario that they themselves know is unlikely to happen.
Or maybe they are all a little nutty, I dunno.
That would end our civilization.
It would, obviously, be a long, slow, agonizing, random and exceedingly chaotic process.
Hopefully that's not what will happen.
Diesel is good if collapse doesn't go all the way down. If it does, plain old horses are better.
While self-defense has its place I wonder which attitude would prevail.
I agree. Where disaster preparation matters is in that period between "catastrophe" and "recovery". How long before things are normal again? Is that period a week? A month? A year? How bad will it get in between? That's what you need to survive.
If this concept is not clear anymore after too many seasons of Walking Dead then I don't know.
In fact, I suspect that once you're in that particular wealth bracket, it's no longer about people who have contingency plans versus the ones who don't. I'm pretty sure that almost every Fortune 100 CEO has private security parked in front of their house and a plan to get out quickly something bad were to happen. There are many security consulting companies that cater exclusively to this segment - and they are doing very well. It's just that most of the CEOs won't talk about it to The New Yorker - partly because of opsec concerns, but partly because such revelations would make it even easier for us to vilify them.
And before we assume that their plans are lopsided and irrational, I think it's worth keeping in mind that the article is written to be entertaining. The author wants to tell us about the stuff that is out of ordinary and out of reach of mere mortals. That doesn't mean that the people featured in the article don't also have a fire extinguisher and some tarp and nails in their garage. Heck, perhaps 95% of their prepping goes toward more pedestrian risks? Perhaps they practice defensive driving and situational awareness? Perhaps they go camping or hiking every other week? Perhaps they take EMT courses and participate in community preparedness drills? Who knows... that stuff is boring. ICBM silos and helicopters are fun.
We should also remember that unlike many many of the stars of "Doomsday Preppers" who seemed inexplicably frightened by the prospect of social unrest in the US, the ultra-rich may actually have something to worry about. When angry masses take it to the streets, it's not the cookie-cutter, mixed income, urban sprawl neighborhoods that are going to be set ablaze. We had quite a few big revolutions, and it's usually the heads of the variously defined aristocracy that roll. It's not ancient history, too.
Lastly... one viewpoint presented in the article is that it's somehow immoral for the CEOs to worry about self-preservation instead of trying to give back to the community. I think that's a non-sequitur - is it also immoral for them to buy a fire extinguisher or install sprinklers before making the world a better place? - but more importantly, the two goals are not mutually exclusive.
PS. Disclaimer - I'm the author of http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/, so I might be not entirely impartial.
Every dollar you spend on your bunker is a dollar you don't spend helping the world keep out of the sort of trouble that would make your bunker necessary.
I'm not saying you aren't entitled to spend your time and money however you like, but there is a mathematical sense in which the goals do conflict, even if only via opportunity cost.
Especially if you don't have any political clout or an army to back it up.
Would donating $5 million really help in some catastrophic event? Especially when compared to the multi-billions that nations spend each year?
Money is probably at peak value: more valuable than it has ever been, but people are realizing its limitations and it will probably never again be as valuable as it is today.
Other forms of value are ascending. That's why people who rely on money and armies for their livelihood are so scared.
If you want to help the world, money and armies are not the tools to use. Start with your time, human time will never be less valued than it is today.
But it's also a dollar that's been spent - paying for school supplies for the daughter of the welder employed by the manufacturer, the medicine the truck driver's mom needs, and a few drinks at the bar for the retired vet who ran the backhoe for the bunker.
The economy isn't a closed system, so anything that gets the super rich to spend their money rather than stockpile it will benefit the economy as a whole.
True, especially in less-developed or stable countries where kidnap gangs are a real problem.
> it's not the cookie-cutter, mixed income, urban sprawl neighborhoods that are going to be set ablaze
It tends to be the dense, liminal, downtown areas that are set ablaze. Being well off certainly does help you get away from the fires.
But I think a lot of people dislike preppers because of the implication that this effort is a substitute for being involved in preventing the disaster in the first place - or, on the nuttier fringe, seemingly trying to accelerate it. Especially political involvement.
Remember, for many people having insecure accomodation, food supply, and access to medical care is everyday life.
(your advice page seems to be from the sensible wing of "preparedness", assigning sensible probabilities to risks)
That's only at first. Once all the food is gone, they'll go after the rich in their compounds.
I had literally never heard of this criticism until I read this article and the ensuing discussion.
It seems a little odd, too, like saying, 'why hedge the risk of an unfriendly regime when you can vote?' Even Bill Gates or Carlos Slim can't ensure that a disaster won't happen to him or his family; while I'm sure that they take steps to prevent them, I'm equally sure that they also have plans in place for how to respond to unprevented disasters.
The thing that I don't like with this reasoning is that it implies there is a limit of wealth and that above that line, the benefit of regular economy stop applying and the rich person, on a voluntary basis should just have the decency to invest back directly into the community instead of through the regular means.
I somewhat agree with that on principle, but if people really share that thinking then it should really become a law: punitive tax level, maximum salary, don't know of any practical mechanism, but that's not the point, it is not even discussed by any party.
Otherwise there is no reason you can criticise the rich for buying the stuff he wants than the poor (relatively) for doing exactly the same.
Yes, but then I'd do what I already do, spend most of my energy and passion on thinking about and working on fixing problems I didn't cause and that hardly affect me. Which I'm sure plenty of wealthy -- the best of them -- already do. I agree it's not mutually exclusive, for what it's worth. That is completely true, and there are empathic, responsible super rich people just like sociopathic, reckless poor people exist. But let's not use people we can imagine to exist to excuse the detached clowns we see with our own eyes and who make sure we get to hear about their every brain fart, too.
> We should also remember that unlike many many of the stars of "Doomsday Preppers" who seemed inexplicably frightened by the prospect of social unrest in the US, the ultra-rich may actually have something to worry about.
I know what you mean, but really, think about you just wrote. For every person, for every living being, their life is an ocean in which you, your wealth and all your ancestors and offspring are not even a tiny speck, and when they die, "their whole universe" dies with them. So, does having a lot of material, or things to worry about, really increase the intensity of that attachment? Is that not also at the very least orthogonal? When it comes to intensity of live, of being at ease with who one is, of not being on the run from oneself, then little kids and dogs and a million "types" of people come to mind before the super rich do. But of course, that's all very subjective. I just know who makes me think "good for them" and who makes me feel sad for them.
> When angry masses take it to the streets, it's not the cookie-cutter, mixed income, urban sprawl neighborhoods that are going to be set ablaze.
Whenever catastrophy strikes, or war or other things are done by people, it's the elderly, the children, the poor, the sick and so on who suffer first, last, and the hardest throughout, make no mistake. Besides, so far various elites have been doing great at polarizing angry masses and having them at each other's throats. They might also be the ones who have the drones and whatnot, so angry crowds taking to the streets would be the perfect excuse to fast track totalitarianism even harder, but I'm sure there will be ways to goad them into it anyway. To me, that's the greasy old man showing his junk in front of the curtain, I can't even imagine what is behind it.
* needs shortening (it's too long-winded)
* a note that it mainly applies to the US when it comes to economy/lack of social safety net; e.g. you mention that governments won't help you in case of a financial crisis and big increase in unemployment, but you also point out this happened recently in Greece and Spain - obviously all those people weren't preppers, yet they are still surviving
* for several of the natural disasters you mention (e.g. Katrina and the European heat wave), most fatalities were old and sick people, which you can't really prep against (being old)
* the Fukushima mention is weird - at least 100x, maybe 1000x more people died from the earthquake and tsunami than from the nuclear accident, even when you take into account future cancer deaths
* needs more discussion of how to prepare for/handle situations when no water, toilets and toilet paper are available - how to build a latrine outdoors, how to conserve limited toilet paper supply, the hygienic setup and use of slop buckets indoors, and how to manage without toilet paper, water and soap
* no mention of learning how to conserve food and keeping jars and salt/sugar/vinegar/etc around for this purpose
* no mention of stockpiling diaper rash cream (can be vital when you can't shower for weeks), Vaseline, and blister bandages as well as womens' stocking socks (for avoiding blisters on long hikes)
* no mention of getting a high-durability water filtration system (like the Sawyer water bottle, 3.7 million liters durability of cleaning bacteria and parasites from river water)
* AM/FM radio should be crank powered
Wealthy capitalists and other top elites most usually use their resources to protect themselves and relocate before, during, or shortly after the collapse, rather than hanging around to lead militia groups for any extended period after the collapse.
But that still takes resources of the right kind at the ready.
(Though it's often the wealthier of those remaining behind -- usually middle to upper-middle class -- that end up leading groups.)
In the Christian vision, the important thing is to prepare by living a life in correspondence with the double-precept of charity, "love God, love your neighbor" ~ cf. Matthew 22:35-40, Matthew 25:31-46 and the preceding text, to the beginning of chapter 24; also Romans 2:1-11. Jesus describes "the end" in a manner that is quite frightening (earthquakes, wars, famines, lots of suffering), but it's clear that those who are well-prepared will be able to rejoice when all is said and done.
But, for a start, take a look at the verses from the Christian Bible referenced above.
Mat 22:35-40 :: https://www.blueletterbible.org/rsv/mat/22/35/
Mat 25:31-46 :: https://www.blueletterbible.org/rsv/mat/25/31/
Mat 24:1-51 :: https://www.blueletterbible.org/rsv/mat/24/1/
Mat 25:1-30 :: https://www.blueletterbible.org/rsv/mat/25/1/
Rom 2:1-11 :: https://www.blueletterbible.org/rsv/rom/2/1/
I didn't really know who the target audience for those meals was, but this article explains it nicely.
I guess there's a market for exclusive, private, lessons about repair and maintenance of generators and air filters and etc.
Steve1989 MRE Info: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA
The review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjCiEjZaw0
Who wants to keep on living, in a sheltered compound, for any length of time, if the world around them has collapsed?
Especially if your lifestyle up to then consisted of jet-setting to different locales, eating all kindsa fancy food, listening to DJ sets or seeing Broadway shows.
So you've got your gilded, gunned-all-to-heck compound, but there's no Internet, no culture being produced for you to consume or take part in, nothing left of the day-to-day human experience. Your life is now canned food and worrying about the zombie hordes knocking on your door.
What, at the end of the day, is the point of living?
Elon Musk stated many times that he wants to colonize mars in order to prevent a collapse of human civilization. I've always found this idea ludicrous as in my opinion for this purpose it makes much more sense to prepare for the meltdown on Earth, and as far as I understand that's precisely what survivalists do, even if their motives are probably much more selfish than Musk's.
Here in Alaska the small towns fall into a few categories: native villages, churchy types, and fishing towns. The native villages and churchy communities are extremely close knit and wary of outsiders. Nearly everyone is armed to the teeth up here too.
While the logistics of defending a single large apartment building might seem beneficial over a few houses in the middle of nowhere, the big difference is the apartment building is in the middle of the city where all the unprepared people are. In a huge crisis it would be difficult to justify the expense of gas to reach the remote village for a raid. (especially those off the road system).
Also, if you live in the woods you have easier access to wild game with less competition.
Take stock. Pizza box and half a bottle of ketchup in the fridge.
Close tab.
Trust that Silicon Valley will come together and science its way out of disaster scenario.
I thought this was common sense. You need to survive a maximum of 3 days by yourself after a disaster.