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.
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.
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.
Sounds perfect until the security team takes your wife and children hostage.
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.
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.
This is not a new trend or something specific to billionaires. Home fallout shelters were popular during the Cold War.
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 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.
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?
This is the best case scenario.
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We the under classes scare them into their bunkers.
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We cut off all forms of communication with them.
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We seal them in so they can’t change their minds.
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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.
Surely we can switch up point 2 and use AI as their sole communicator. Let them think they’re speaking to real people, but isolate them from the society that they think they control.
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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.
An enterprising person could siphon off the fuel to power their own survival and leave the paranoid billionaire without as much protection.
Lava moat is better, stops zombies and creepers
Can also stop any invading group of goblins if you create a lava waterfall, or a couple of lava dams to let loose at the flick of a switch
10 Zuckerfield Lane
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.
They could store the families in a separate underwater bunker built on the ruins of a death cult’s sunken wizard tower too.
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?”
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.
I hope we still have some concrete during the apocolypse in order to seal those fuckers in.
See anything that could possibly be air ventilation or filtration, destroy it and seal it up.
Water and a couple bags of quickrete from the local hammer barn should do it.
I don’t think I would personally like that if I were a billionaire. Would like to prove that either way though.
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.
he is also feeding cows macadamia nuts on a remote island hoping it would make good doomsday food
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
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
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”.
Special combination locks really, nothing can stop a determined man with a crowbar indefinitely.
“slight click out of one…click out of two…”
The combination is only as secure as how much torture they can withstand.
Or brutal torture to force the code out of zucky’s mouth
“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.
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.
“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.
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.
I think the AI drone war is going to be in the next 10 years. The way drones are already being used with FPV, the next step is AI image recognition. At $600 a pop for FPV, we are nearing the point where AI can take over. The FPV drones are effective at 1 in 3 targets. That is far far cheaper than artillery or any other weapon system in all of modern military history. Millions of autonomous drones could be a hard thing to stop and a loss economically. Every time some major shift happens like this, it seems someone always pulls the trigger and tries to use it. The US arms industry is too focused on their high end stuff. What is the response to wave after wave of hundreds of thousands of drones that target indiscriminately and are released?
Maybe we can just let the drones shoot at each other and everyone else just has a picnic and watches?
There’s a book about that- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel) where the Ai war is held on the Moon.
As all wars should be held. Preferably with giant robots.
Edit: That’s a Lem book I was unfamiliar with, so I’ll check it out. Thanks!
I dunno, but could you email your congressperson this? I imagine you’re seeing previews in Ukraine.
My best guess is lines of AI controlles guns with dumb bullets firing at the sky. The first wave will be painful depending on scale, but a country in need should be able to have their best and brightest have something up and running in a few days.
This occuring to the USA would likely result in an awfully strong response with whatever they’ve been coming up with.
The problem is that every step I can think of to use against AI drones is also a more potent weapon when they control it too.
Like okay, it is easy to set up a high power diode laser that can target any image sensors. The laser can move fast and target objects far faster than any weapons system and do so cheaply. However reversing this, that same system can target all human eyes exactly the same way, permanently blinding thousands of people in under a minute.
Anyone who thinks the end times are near in any capacity is some flavor of moron.
You’re either one of the rich fucks or one of their useful idiots if you go about doomsaying like you’re Rorschach from Watchmen.
We have the means to destroy ourselves, and there are a lot of truly stupid people who have power over those means. I don’t say I personally believe we will all die soon, but I can see how someone might.
Mate it’s not going to be atomics. It’s climate change and we’re just at the beginning of it. Atomics will only be a consequence of climate change.
Yea I didn’t only mean atomic war, the same stupid people who have power over that means to an end also are important factors in if we will all die of climate change.
