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So did I miss the boat on getting rich off of selling survivalist gear?
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Not to mention a Civil War, World War II and the Cold War. I think we'll all be alright.
Those were all human-created events. What happens when we have a super-volcano eruption and the world has another mini-ice age, and there are famines across the globe? Or the coastal flooding that is predicted to happen by 2050 if we continue current warming trends. We can't just force nature to give up through a superior show of force (unlike winning a war).
Food shortages caused by climate change, on the other hand...
So. You're not one of the 0.1%. Society "collapsed", whatever than means. You did go through hardship, hunger, lack of Instagram, pain, loss of loved ones, loss of property but also amazing feats of solidarity and human compassion. It still doesn't really look OK and you're daily mourning the life you and society lost. Then there lands a Gulfstream, out climbs a well fed billionaire straight out his fancy bunker. The…
How would the gulfstream land without a crew properly maintaining the landing strip, clearing it of debris, providing air control, etc? Not to mention that fuel spoils fast. Gasoline lasts only a few months in normal conditions, up to a year in optimal conditions. A small detail that almost all apocalypse movies seem to ignore...
In general however, most of these HNWIs' plans assume a resumption of status quo ante, or at the very least that they will find a spot on the planet where that happens. A Roman Empire-type civilization-wide collapse where knowledge outright disappears is extremely challenging to prepare against; at our tech level, you are essentially figuring out how to build much of a space habitat or generation ship. The population infrastructure to maintain the operational knowledge to sustain and produce at that tech level (not to speak of advancing it) is vast: tens of millions at a minimum.
If you prepare for that kind of end-of-civilization catastrophe with private resources, even billionaire resources, then you necessarily are building at a far lower tech level (a mix of 1800s and later periods' tech that can be recreated with more primitive tech, like transistor production), creating small villages and towns, and I have yet to hear of someone even doing that. Sid Meier's Civ series only barely nods at a hint of the vastness of the challenge to completely decouple indefinitely from civilization and keep going at a specific tech level: the skill tree to my knowledge hasn't been mapped out even for 1800s-level tech, such that a group of people with basic literacy can recreate the skill bases required.
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Most of it is due to Fundamental Christian beliefs along with extreme right wing political beliefs.
> Most of it is due to Fundamental Christian beliefs along with extreme right wing political beliefs. I haven't read the methodology, but supposedly over 40% of Americans believe the rapture is coming by 2050. And the rapture and the apocalypse should be mutually exclusive, in the sense that if you really think Jesus is going to save you then there isn't much reason to be stockpiling cans of spaghettios.
That's so perfect.
Anyway, these people are insane. Its hilarious to see some wealthy, liberal hedge fund manager consider with complete seriousness the prospect that donald trump will turn out to be a ruthless dictator. It is something that many liberal people are doing now -- comedically grave comparisons to hitler and concentration camps abound on the left. Werent these people around in 2008 when the right went through the exact same hysteria? Cant they look at the videos of right wingers furiously assering that obama was a muslim terrorist and see themselves?
Glamor-prepping, glepping: the ultimate fuck-you-I-got-mine to any young people still struggling to come up in the society that these wealthy people wield an undue influence over. What happens when everybody at the top has their private island sanctuary but still holds power in the society we all have to live in?
How will they enforce that power? It will either require humans (of a different social status) or robotic weapons/mercenaries.
Resources invested in creating these bubbles are resources not invested in the wider economy.
What if that $mil you spent building a bunker to hide from the future could have been the $mil that funded the battery tech that saved that future?
Yes, even in the 21st century, (although this is in the Philippines, this shows what humans are capable of given certain conditions), you can kill someone if they are suspected of using drugs and Duerte will give you a medal. The astute among you can see that you can kill any person, sprinkle some crack on them, and not only will there be absolutely no investigation, you will be regarded as a patriot and a hero. It seems that if you kill a poor person, absolutely no one cares.
This is one of the first major purchases I would make and I do have a rather large emergency kit should disaster strike. Like me, they're in California along a known fault line way overdue for a major earthquake. Unlike these "smart" execs, I'd hone my survival skills. I'm not overly concerned about a 21st century peasant revolt, but we live in an area where it's not a matter of if, but when a major disaster will strike. If people are without electricity and running water for an extended period of time and/or there is a breakdown in security (police, national guard, etc.), it gets ugly quick. For example, in Los Angeles, there was a mentally ill person who threatened to jump off of an overpass on the 405 (possibly the world's busiest freeway). His antics caused such a slowdown in traffic, the freeway became a literal parking lot for a few hours. Because a man inconvenienced their time, people began to goad him into killing himself saying things like "What are you waiting for you fucking pussy, get it over with!!!" This wasn't one person, a significant part of the traffic jam was saying this or wishing it.
When you are malnourished and/or dehydrated, you lose compassion and reason, gain paranoia, and become more focused on your own survival. For people with such resources this is like paying a few pennies for apocalypse insurance.
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I mean...I guess arrows are reusable and much more easily created by hand than bullets? I guess?
The reality is that there are enough firearm cartridges in the world, and particularly in the US, to last a very, very long time without manufacturing any more. Americans currently buy more than 10 billion cartridges per year and cartridges have an extremely long shelf life, upwards of a century if stored properly. Given that there are probably a thousand cartridges for every man, woman, and child in the US today, it…
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Post apoc. things like bows and crossbows would be more valuable, but I can't see weapon tech falling much below the 1850s. Its much easier to make a lead ball than an arrow and making blackpower is less about infrastructure than knowledge. I have a replica Remington Model 1858 black power revolver. It shoots lead balls which are easy to make, same with its percussion caps. The kicker is, once loaded, its tactically…
I can't see weapon tech falling much below the 1850s. I can imagine short-term or more localised effects. The USA could be viewed as an outlier, given the amount of gun-ownership: 22% of the population (and as some people own many guns, the total number of guns is more than 1 gun per person). By comparison, less than 1% of the UK population own a gun. So in some countries, there may be guns around for the taking, but…