Who wants to stick around through the apocalypse? What event would be a) well in advance with time to transit to NZ or Hawaii b) require a bunker rather than just isolating in your estate and c) what is the long game assuming society collapses?
To your last point, I think the long game is actually the same as all the typical end of the world movies and fantastical zombie apocalypse things - just survive. Assuming some sort of societal collapse, regardless of how long it lasts, the idea is just to survive another day and that's going to be a hell of a lot easier behind some thick concrete walls in an island in the middle of the Pacific than it is in suburban California.
In fact his security would be the ones with all the power, he would have none.
That all depends on how you are creating this fantasy narrative in your head.
1. pick guards he likes and who like him,
2. be really nice to them,
3. make peace with becoming their peer after the apocalypse.
He can probably buy survival, but he can't keep his power after the legal system (and his money) is useless. I'm guessing the required characteristics of post-apocalyptic warlord and a tech CEO have important areas of non-overlap. Zuckerberg certainly lacks the necessary charisma.
You know these people look for technical solutions to social problems.
Edit: Here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
> ...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 event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.
> This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. 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”.
Personally, I think there needs to be a citizen mapping project to document the precise location of these billionaire bunkers, to make sure the quantity of looters in an apocalypse will overwhelm any guard force.
The one in the article will apparently include 30 offices, so I imagine he'll make sure social media will emerge from the other side of the apocalypse, so expect lots of selfies with people holding their enemy's head and howling at the moon?
The last thing is I bet these guys at least feel connected enough to get more advance warning than the normals.
I struggle to understand where you are coming from. Do you want to die in squaller with the rest of the masses? If you are in a tower on fire, do you not want to leave and survive?
The oligarchs and plutocrats might have the collective power to put out that fire, but they'd rather take a fire escape. I say that, but I bet they donate more to different causes than I'll see in a lifetime. So -- who am I to fault them for hedging their bets right?
Me. I have kids that I love, and I want them to survive, not die.
I find it interesting that there seems to be such a big cultural divide on the topic.
Yes, I noticed my typo and fixed it.
Iirc not rarely a ruler met its demise after failing to pay their mercenaries.
By being the centre of a network of long-term two-way relationships with 'nobles' who had delegated authority to control the wider population (and who in turn delegated power downwards). Ultimately the base provided food and other essentials, and in turn the monarch maintained / enforced the necessary social constructs, by violence if necessary. If the monarchs lost the support of their immediate subordinates, they were toast. The wider population had very little power at an individual level, and lacked the means to sustain widespread uprisings.
None of these monarchs were oligarchs in a bunker.
[Edit]. Control of vast tracts of land was essential: your ability to maintain a powerbase depended a lot on how well you could marshal the necessary natural resources (primarily food). It was common for the nobles to be rewarded with large tracts of land from which luxuries could be skimmed off, and armies raised if necessary. Again, this is nothing like a bunker. The rulers (and their subordinates) had to maintain a continuous strong presence across their land to ensure the continual flow of raw material and manpower, which they couldn't do while hiding.
The past tense in your sentence is telling. Basically when people realized the reasons for absolute monarchy are all invented, they did away with it, often decapitating the rulers or sometimes delegating them to a representative position.
You're just a soft, privileged, formerly rich asshole in a desperate world full of actual cartels, gangsters, mafias and rogue armies sitting on a pile of dollars that are only fit to burn for warmth. Or would be, if you could find a bank to cash you out. All of the power you had depended on the existence of a state, its laws, its currency and culture, all of which are gone. You aren't taking over anything. In the real world you either get traded as a hostage or shot in the back within a week.
You don't really get to accuse anyone else of comic book logic while missing basics like that.
Their whole point with the bunkers and stockpiles is that those assets don't need the state to be valuable and confer power and security. The asset itself provides the power and security that the state no longer does.
And they don't need the state to define and assert who is the owner and protect the asset. They use one asset to protect another asset.
They get other people to work for them the same way people have always done.
Or it's better exposed by phrasing from the other direction: People participate in organizations for the same reason they always have. They get something they want from it. At the top and at the bottom it's both just variations of the same thing which is the structure gives them safety that they can't get on their own. And they overwhelmingly value that more than freedom.
At the top they defend the leader because the leader is what grants the legitimacy of their own high position within the organization. I don't mean that they think the leader comes from god and actually has some higher authority and right to grant other authority, I mean as a #3 or #12 etc, you have a much easier time justifying your own position and authority and privilege when it came from some larger structure. It removes the focus and blame from yourself. So you love the structure and you defend it and enforce for it and rat out any subversive talk you overhear about it etc.
At the lower end, a lot of people, maybe even most people, value the safety of being within any structure way more than the freedom of being outside it. They don't have to like the guy at the top at all.
Why do you abide by civilized norms right now? Everyone in an apartment building could totally overpower the landlord at any time. 50 to 1 no contest. The biggest problem really is just getting the others to go along, but let's say the landlord is such a dick that you manage it. So the next problem is what, the police will come and you'll all go to jail? But what makes the police do that? Why do they agree to follow orders from just one pudgy little chief?
It's no different "after the fall" just at a smaller scale. The big structure broke down, but most people still want what it provided and will latch on to whatever smaller structure is available to replace it, and it's all the same interlocking dynamics of everyone holding each other in place, not any one magic person holding everyone else in place by mind force or something.
Even if the actual guy at the top is detestable, they will be surrounded by people who benefit from having that guy at the top. Do you really think all the politicians who supported Trump actually considered him superior to themselves? They universally think they themselves are superior to everyone else. Yet there they all were defending him like crazy, for years.
I can't see Zuck, or any of the others, lasting too long after they set up their own Praetorian Guards.
But yeah, the power comes from the bunker and other hard assets sheltered in it. The apocalypse bunker would in effect become a modern castle on the hill. It's funny the commenter accused me of "comic book logic", but seemed to think that I thought the bunker owner would be paying their personal in dollars (or crypto) over the internet in a post-apocalyptic world...
If civilisation collapsed and now everyone outside the bunker is starving and killing each other for food then your best bet is to pledge your loyalty to the dude with food, guns and a bunker. You're not going to try to kill him and take what he has because under his protection in the bunker you're safe and being fed. What the commenter is missing is that the arrangement is actually extremely good relative to the suffering outside of the bunker.
I also don't buy the idea that it would be easy to revolt. In fact if the dude with the bunker is protecting you and feeding you you're more incentivised to report any potential revolts to prove your own loyalty rather than want to participate. It's the same reason people generally don't bad mouth their employers in public because even if you hate your job, having a job is generally better than the alternative.
Moreover, if they're fed and safe I'm not sure how they'd even benefit from trying to steel – would they want more food or more safety or something? It seems like a great way to great either get yourself killed with little to no practical gain.
Obviously the bunker alone isn't enough though... You'd need ample food, guns and resources as well as some social structure to ensure everyone understands their place and that rebelling against the social order wouldn't be in anyone's best interest. People wouldn't be paid in cash, but like in feudal Europe people would instead be paid with food, safety, and status. So long as the bunker leader could provide some combination of these resources then people will be willing to serve for them in a world in which those resources are otherwise scarce.
I think what's most unrealistic about what I'm saying is an outcome where civilisation totally collapses yet some percentage of humanity continues to survive. If there was a nuclear war today the US president would be unlikely to be killed and I'd assume a lot of military equipment would still be operational. What you'd probably see is localised pockets of lawlessness and famine directly after the nuclear exchange, but with time I'd assume that the government would be restored.
what happened to feudal Europe? what do you think the serfs are going to do when the crops fail that year and half the bunker is projected to die and the god-king refuses to input his password to his personal food vault?