Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich (2017)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.”
Children play with toys and video games. Adults play with sports and cars. And ultra high net worth individuals play with luxury bunkers and doomsday prep. I don't make a distinction, really. Bored people with too much money can be creative, and doomsday prep is the latest trend, the latest cool 'game' to play.
A global collapse of society is ... not a realistic scenario. If it were to happen, you'd have bigger problems than surviving a few months underground and air filtration systems.
> To Levchin, prepping for survival is a moral miscalculation; he prefers to “shut down party conversations” on the topic. “I typically ask people, ‘So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of fear that people bring up are artificial.” In his view, this is the time to invest in solutions, not escape. “At the moment, we’re actually at a relatively benign point of the economy. When the economy heads south, you will have a bunch of people that are in really bad shape. What do we expect then?”
More of this please.
Most such seem to be: We'll look ahead and plan for the possibilities that don't scare us too much.
Preparing for a time of hungry, angry, wandering people could scare the neighbors, too, of course; so some just don't talk about it.
What you're left with are the people focused on "me and mine" over "them and theirs", and couple that with the vague unease most of us have over the future...you get this.
For perspective, I've known working class preppers too. Lots of survival skill practice, storage dedicated to large amounts of shelf stable foods and water, etc. They're just not as 'interesting' to warrant as much reporting, as even though they're spending the same percentage of their income on it as the super rich, it's not as extravagant.
The super rich are just people with a lot of money. You'd find that some traits are distributed differently from the general population, but they are not cognitively superhuman or exempt from anything humans normally think. The super rich also get conned, join cults, jump on cultural or ideological bandwagons that eventually look embarrassing, have mental illness, get addicted to substances or behaviors, etc.
- humans need things to do
- rich CEOs doubly so, their drive got them to where they are; BBQs and baseball games with their kids won’t scratch that itch
- the problem that occupy the minds of the 99%, most of which revolve around money, don’t concern them
- hence they move to the next “problem” and put 100% of their effort into that. Some other rich CEO asks what they’ll do if the world collapses and suddenly that voice in their head says “find a solution”
It’s nothing more than the ultra high level of Maslow’s hierarchy. Shit us common folks don’t have time to think about.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726111/robot-dogs-with...
The problem, for them, is that no one actually knows how "doomsday" will actually unfold. What kind of doomsday, exactly, are we talking about anyway? How many different scenarios can one actually prepare for? I think there's a lot of different ways doomsday can happen, a lot of different ways, in wildly different timescales: a global warming catastrophe occurring over a span of a century and lasting forever is very different from, say, an asteroid impact or global war or the second coming or the serfs revolting and coming after you with pitch-forks.
There was a talking head on the internet about 10 years ago that spoke about social collapse and theorized upon it based on what he observed when the Soviet Union collapsed (Dimitri Orlov). A lot of what he said was just predicting a future collapse in terms of stages but that was mostly forgettable because predicting the future is, IMHO, a fool's errand at best.
The thing that stuck with me, however, was Orlov's assertion that how well you fare during collapse is all about how adaptable you are to new situations and the resiliency of your social network (your physical social network). Ultimately the "bug-out bag" people are going to run out of bullets, beef-jerky and clean socks. They'll need to adapt themselves to a new social group or just die alone in the woods. The same goes for rich people in bunkers. The fresh water, freeze-dried peaches and toilet paper will only last so long.
1.go to rich guy shelter
2. Jim who works there opens door/secret backdoor code installed at build time
3.Remove rich nerds with force if necessary
4.Move in family and friends to wait out disaster
Actually in all likelihood the "poor's" that maintain and build it are probably much better equipped to get to the shelter in a disaster and will already be there and have it locked up by the time the people that still think ownership is a thing show up.
Your millions are worthless in a truly post apocalyptic world. Think stockpiling gold bars will help? What's stopping a person, or a group of persons, from taking your gold from you at gunpoint?
These people have been so sheltered from nature and society their whole lives that some have started to seriously embrace the idea that man can be an island and prosper, ignoring the fact that none of their wealth could have been built in a more primitive place like the one they want to prepare for.
Sounds rather over-simplistic to me, but I get your point.
You can use all the charisma you want to get food but at some point someone will put a gun to your head.
But seriously, we're Hollywood territory now.
There are large swaths of Earth ruled by, essentially, gangs/warlords. Or where the people are currently at the mercy of various warring forces. There are no shortage of examples of what happens when society breaks down: might and violence rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil_wars#Ongoing_civ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...
Agreed.
I'll give Huffman a bit of credit (in some areas) for getting down to basics like being able to see without glasses, or ride a motorcycle. But I don't picture him still having that motorcycle in his possession for more than 5 minutes after he really needs it.
I especially don't picture Huffman running anything ("...I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge...") in a collapse situation, for the same reason we don't see bosses in the failed states that exist right now running tech companies. They're different skills.
Finally I can't imagine a situation where you'd need armed guards that didn't also involve the guards simply throwing the "owners" out and keeping the stuff.
The super-rich would be better off practicing fighting, starving, suffering, and learning how to survive with nothing. I can't imagine any of them being able to keep what they've prepared in a chaotic situation.
EDITED TO ADD: Actually Huffman's stupidity completely overwhelms any partial credit I just gave him. He thinks he'll have an advantage in a traffic jam because he'll have a motorcycle and he can breeze past it. "I need to own a motorcycle because everybody else is screwed". He actually believes "ownership" would still be a thing, and no one would just take it from him.
EDITED TO ADD 2: I'm surprised the parent post is being downvoted, it is absolutely correct.
I tend to agree with the other comments though - take away society and the threat of legal consequences and those hired guns have no real reason to be loyal (in most cases)
Have you noticed that despite the popular sentiment among left-leaners in America today being anti-police and anti-military, the overwhelming majority of the police and military are right-leaning? Trust of the public safety has been put into the hands of people who are not necessarily loyal to the people that are giving them the trust.
> "This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from 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."
[0]: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0...
Why should they be leading us? The only people who should be allowed to "lead" are democratically elected officials. And even then we should be very reluctant and very critical of any of their abuses.
> Compared to the elite statesmen of old, who are these pretenders?
Probably about the same. If anything it's a bit better now because we can at least see how petty, arrogant, callous etc. these people actually are.
Do you think that the owners of the banking cartels, major tech companies, and military suppliers are one-to-one comparable with the founders of the United States? I hold no cult-like reverence for them, but the founders were well-learned, multi-lingual, and believed deeply in the structure of government and felt a responsibility to control the direction of the fledgling U.S. from the spotlight rather than from the shadows.
I suppose you could quibble over the formal definition of "statesman", but the fact of the matter is there are individuals in the United States who exert great power over the directions and policy of the country who lack integrity and are dishonest, and I think it's a shame they are the ones with the influence. If you're going to control a country, do it at the helm, not from the shadows.
To see what you get without those support systems you have to look to places like East Africa.
Serious question.
Side note, this article appears to be removed from the front page now... interesting.
2. Another part of HN sees this as an opportunity. "In a gold-rush, sell shovels".
3. Yet another part of HN has been trying hard to get rich without results, and sees the super-rich as having had unfair advantage, and therefore now has an aversion against this group. This leads to upvoting to fuel discussions about survivor bias, wealth inequality, fairness of the economy etc.
5. For myself, I always find doomsday prep stuff interesting
And the proportion of preppers who are legitimately disconnected from reality is quite a bit higher than the general population.
I actually think all people should do some limited "prepping" and there are things that can be learned from the people that are really into it.
I try to think about how I might survive for a few weeks if crap hits the fan to a limited extent.
In the most basic terms that means food and drinking water for a couple of weeks. This can be done pretty simply for like, $20USD per person - rice, beans, water, maybe some multivitamins, etc.
In 6-12 months you can just eat that stuff and replace it in your "mini-prepper" kit. So in a way it doesn't really cost anything, just some shelf space. You'll also obviously need a way to cook the food, too so -- maybe $40 for a little camping stove and some propane.
If you have a large-ish chest freezer, that's an excellent asset. Fill it with ice packs, will stay cold for weeks even after the power goes out.
An emergency "go bag" / "bug out bag" is worth thinking about as well. The nature of some emergencies is such that you'll need to hit the road. IMO this is more expensive/challenging to do well but it's also the case of "literally anything is better than nothing". A $5 backback with a Leatherman, a purifying water bottle, and a blanket is 1000x better than nothing.
(I don't bother thinking about how I might survive individually in the face of complete societal breakdown. The rules for surviving that will be completely different - things will quickly coalesce into gangs/tribes/mob rule, that kind of thing)
Like someone on the docks watching cargo being loaded on one side of a ship, anyone paying attention to the increasing imbalance between the have's and have-not's is anticipating that this will not end well.
(And paying attention to this maybe is more the HN crowd?)
It's kind of a "fun" challenge to solve -- like how can I fit enough stuff to survive for $DAYS into a backpack? Or $SOMEOTHERTIMESPAN at my home? What would that stuff be? How can I do it for $X or less?
(I put "fun" in quotes because obviously, the idea of needing your prepped stuff is not fun at all)
It's the kind of engineering-ish, working-within-constraints challenge that tends to apply to HN types.
Perhaps use your resources to stop your own country sinking.
Cheers.
If the government allows rich people to purchase citizenship then yea it is