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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.
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.
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 hope we still have some concrete during the apocolypse in order to seal those fuckers in.
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.
Here is a silly take:
The billionaires could use their doomsday bunker money to try and help solve the global issues we are having instead of just saying "fuck it I'm going underground."
You don't become a billionaire by caring about other people.
In fact, you can't!
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.
a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with?
Yeah, that sounds like something straight out of poorly written fiction.
Doesn't matter. They're going to burn with the rest of us. They won't be able to keep staff as it gets worse, and many of them lack any real ability to care for themselves. Pampered fucks are facing a grim future they made sure was going to happen.
The staff won't keep them. What security guard is going to agree to protect Elon Musk after the apocalypse? They'll shoot him in the back and take the keys to the kitchen.
I mean you say this but our species has a long history of people serving authoritarian monsters. I think you're vastly overestimating humans ability to say this is messed up I should do something about it. Most people just keep their heads down.
These things have been thought through. The money may be worthless, but the highly controlled access to food, guns, ammo and medicine would be adequate leverage.
I expect, at some point, a leader would emerge with more cred than, "I started a company, " but they'd need to get permanent access and they'd have the same problem: control, rationing.
All this stuff is just people fantasizing about being smart and solving hard problems. The truest hard problem is we are not meant to live alone or like Morlocks.
There are ways to have a retreat hidden in plain site.
Yeah, once the global economy collapses, their billions are worthless and the people with the guns are the most powerful. How long until their private security force is like "hold on, why are we following you again?"
There was an article where a reporter sat in on a discussion between Tech Lords, where one actually proposed shock collars on "The Staff" to keep them loyal.
"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.""
Time to start building guillotines, boys and girls.
I feel like shooting fish in a barrel:
The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew.
That would just get them tortured. While torture is normally not a good way to get information, it's different when the obtained intel can be immediately verified by trying the combination. The lock could be set up in such a way that it jams when you enter it wrong, but its unlikely that the torturers will just give up at this point. More likely, they'll keep going in hope that you have a way to circumvent the lockdown.
Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival.
Thing is, there'd be two ways the collars can fail. They can go off when they shouldn't, or fail to go off when they should. Both can be exploited by an attacker, and guarding against one makes the other more likely.
Time to start building guillotines, boys and girls.
That's a good idea.
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.
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.
Funny how that if collapse happens, only their security guards will be enjoying those bunkers.
Oh yeah he wouldn’t last a day if I was on the property. Thanks for the bunker Zuckie
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”.
"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.
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?
Have a code that has to be entered twice a day to keep airflow active
Elon is already sticking chips in brains, I think you’re on to something.
This is the best case scenario.
We the under classes scare them into their bunkers.
We cut off all forms of communication with them.
We seal them in so they can't change their minds.
We switch the rules to "Socialize the profits and privatize the losses."
There is only so many in the .0001% that need to be taken off the board and left to play with their toys inside their gilded cages. If they go voluntarily then how can they say that it is wrong, especially if no one is listening.
Congrats, you won capitalism. Please proceed to the winners bunker for your prize. Non-compliance will be met with dinner forks.
I told you guys. I've been waiting for you guys to catch up for ages, so we can go drag these fucks out of their homes, now they've gone and built moats
The good thing is that these moats need fuel to work which means they'll eventually stop burning.
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.
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...
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.
10 Zuckerfield Lane
It's a sign that they're paranoid as fuck and never learned to share or play nicely with others.
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.
Sure, seal yourself up in a bunker and deplete your very non-renewable fuel to keep you safe from the outside.
In a real case scenario they may find themselves walled in anyway.