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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!
It’s too late. The billionaires are well aware it’s far too late…
The climate change and insane weather patterns that we’re experiencing are a byproduct of the carbon that was emitted into the atmosphere in the 1970s. That’s 50+ more years of carbon accumulation that we haven’t even really been able to measure. In another 50 years, the feedback loops will be very underway and the acidification of the oceans, the collapse of the AMOC, and massive heat domes will probably kill most people on Earth.
It may be too late to avoid the damage of excess carbon in the atmosphere but these fucks have enough resources and political connections to try and make the lives of us that will be very much negatively effected by all of this slight less shitty. Instead they double down on the only thing they know to do which is ‘fuck you I got mine’
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.
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?
I have Great Danes, they’ll never dig through that much dog shit.
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.
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?
Urge to build guillotines intensifies.
Bonjour !
Bonjour, Madame Guillotine!
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.
Usually because those authoritarians have the power to kill them. Armed guards have the power to kill Elon.
And how do they have that power? Where does it come from?
By holding the purse strings (the economy will have collapsed) and by making the laws (which won’t exist anymore).
Also, I think you underestimate the loyalty of a paid security staff when they stop getting paid.
What makes you think they’re not being paid anymore? Of course they are. Just the coinage that’s changed really.
What would they be paid with?
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.
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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?”
You section off the food and booze, so that only you can access it and then have two security teams that never intermingle. Nothings guaranteed, but it would be harder to coup you.
Sounds perfect until the security team takes your wife and children hostage.
I’m not sure what never intermingling will help with. I doubt they’d shoot at each other when they know that if they do the prisoner’s dilemma thing and both kill the billionaire to get to the booze and food and then they can share it.
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.
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.
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.
I’m reading that book right now.
Special combination locks really, nothing can stop a determined man with a crowbar indefinitely.
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.
“slight click out of one…click out of two…”
“In time” is the funny part. They’re really just as fucked as we are.
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.
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.
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 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?
Elon is already sticking chips in brains, I think you’re on to something.
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
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 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.
Lava moat is better, stops zombies and creepers
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.
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.
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.
10 Zuckerfield Lane
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.
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.
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.
