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Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

newyorker.com

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Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#101

Post by Spooky23 »

Karunamon wrote: post #41
bambax wrote: post #25

I was afraid this article was going to upset me, but in fact it doesn't shy away from the more difficult questions, namely A/ the reason we're "skating on really thin cultural ice right now" is in no small part due to the emergence and dominance of social media, so it's quite rich that the people responsible for chaos are trying to protect themselves from it B/ it's quite morally repugnant to want to survive alone if…

Would you elaborate on B a bit? I don't quite see the moral value judgment in surviving while society collapses.

What do you do in your bunker? Sit around, eat canned food and watch DVDs? What happens when the beer runs out?

It's one thing to seek shelter. It's another to go live in a hole. The other issue is that billionaire or not, once everything goes poof, your billions go with it.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#102

Post by Arizhel »

maxerickson wrote: post #81
VLM wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic is example number 258726 of the most photogenic controversial clickbait not really having much to do with the reality of anything. "Society doesn't break down like that." Unfortunately it does, in the USA. See the aftermath of hurricane Katrina for an example of how well we get along when things are temporarily bad. Also the geography of the USA frankly sucks. We're rich and its not because our weather is u…

So compared to the actual storm, how much damage did looting do, and how many people were murdered? You are claiming that they are clear evidence of how terrible we are, so I think it is fair to ask you to show the work. Because another aftermath of Katrina is all the help and aid that poured in over the following days, months and years.

Katrina only affected a relatively small area: a small portion of the Gulf coast. So of course help poured in. It's not like the entire US was hit by a Category 5 hurricane!

An economic disaster is different: it hits the whole country at once, and then other parts of the world because of trade disruption and other economic ties. There aren't going to be any places left to "pour in" help; they're all going to be suffering.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#103

Post by Arizhel »

ryandrake wrote: post #91
jps359 wrote: post #45

So did I miss the boat on getting rich off of selling survivalist gear?

Survivalism, prepping, militias, whatever you call it now, is pretty much just Military Cosplay. It's just another hobby for people with disposable income. Instead of golf clubs they're spending it on AR-15s, bunkers, and canned food.

Well at least the canned food can just be eaten eventually, so it's not really a waste.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#104

Post by bootload »

“I typically ask people, ‘So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of fear that people bring up are artificial.”

I like Max Levchins idea behind this statement. The underlying anxiety shown by a lot of the characters interviewed in this article display a real human dis-connect. There is nothing in the US (and other countries for that matter) that cannot be fixed with hard work, a bit of luck and investment in the right things. Maybe that is the real eye-opener. One of the things I have observed, in crisis the way individuals act, reflects their mental state.

"The growing foreign appetite for New Zealand property has generated a backlash. The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa—the Maori name for New Zealand—opposes sales to foreigners."

NZ, a colonised country with a treaty, has all the same problems the US has in terms of inequity. Way more tribal and dangerous than the tourist brochures suggest.

"The original silo of Hall’s complex was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to withstand a nuclear strike."

The traces of hydrazine (H4N2), you get for nothing. ~ https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents...

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#105

Post by qball »

virmundi wrote: post #19
blhack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean...I guess arrows are reusable and much more easily created by hand than bullets? I guess?

They are an a lot quieter. But don't be fooled. Even with shitty long guns (not even riffles since they weren't riffled), the American Indians swapped bows for guns. They still used bows, but took to guns due to their power.

>They still used bows, but took to guns due to their power.

Not necessarily. Early guns were inefficient; one shot every minute is nothing compared to what a good bowman can do and you couldn't place an accurate shot outside of a few yards.

The reason an army switches to guns is because they require very little strength (and consequentially, training time) to use. In fact, for a musket, the limiting factor would be the user's height (they're 5 feet tall; being much shorter than that would make reloading much more difficult).

For American Indians, it would make sense to switch as their stocks of trained bowmen were depleted. Not before then.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#106

Post by manarth »

Spooky23 wrote: post #100
manarth wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No way. If civilization implodes, a brisk trade in AK-47's would develop.

  a brisk trade in AK-47's would develop
Sure, popular gun, available in large numbers (outside most western countries).

How long would it take for them to become commonplace in western countries/Europe?

Hypothetically imagining a trade in AK-47s between Turkey and the UK (around 3,000 km), how quickly could those guns (and ammo) be moved, in enough numbers to be significant? Would the traders be threatened along the way?

Would that trade be on foot (maybe 20-25 km per day), or would they still have the advantage of car/truck/air transport? Would the trade give enough value to account for the traders' risk?

I think that an immediate, catastrophic societal breakdown would give a year or two of extreme regression, during which archery might be useful.

Given a couple of years for the reappearance of traditional techniques (such as hand-crafted blacksmith work) or the redistribution of AKs, things to change.

All that said, it's all guesswork…for all I know, one week without electricity and we could all be Mad-Maxing.

On the one hand, our guesses are based on little except media dystopia fiction like Mad Max and Waterworld, on the other hand, our exposure to those genres could influence our actions to bring about those very outcomes.

So, er, I'm just going to fill up some waterbottles and go stock up on cans of corned beef and archery kit. Although they're definitely not stored at my home, no sirree.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#107

Post by sjg007 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #10

> To protect his wife and daughter, he said, “I don’t have guns, but I have a lot of other weaponry. I took classes in archery.” This whole article reads like some surreal parody of what eccentric SV mil/billionaires would do. Although I suppose there is probably some truth that in a post apocalyptic / post rule of law world... the person in the big house with the expensive stuff to loot probably has a huge target on…

Can't wait for Silicon Valley Season 4.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#108

Post by sjg007 »

lawless123 wrote: post #3

>lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, A post apocalypse in which internet survives seems far fetched.

Well.. Darpa designed arpanet (the precursor) to the internet to persist in the event of a nuclear holocaust. All of those bunkers probably have ham radios (thanks Jon Conner) and redundant internet connections.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#109

Post by sjg007 »

VLM wrote: post #67
Alex3917 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A post apocalypse in which internet survives seems far fetched. The apocalypse is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.

And disasters / apocalypse are distributed by a power law or exponential. The lead subject in the linked article is almost certain to live long enough to experience the inevitable next San Francisco earthquake, at which time he will absolutely die if his glasses are broken and he can't get around, so his prepping by fixing his eyes makes sense. Most prepping means your survival on the "oops" scale goes up. The media…

Well... in California when it snows, everyone freaks out. In Minnesota, it's a Monday.

Re: Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich

#110

Post by 1812Overture »

fallingfrog wrote: post #72

How many paid people does it take to maintain these huge compounds?? These people don't seem to understand that all of their wealth and possessions only belong to them because there is a big organized power system that says so, with lawyers and cops with guns and people that are required to obtain cash money every month. 5 seconds after things go south, that helicopter belongs to the pilot, not to you. That land you'…

I think this is what a lot of libertarian types don't get (a lot of overlap with prepper types). Taxes aren't the government stealing money that you willed into existence out of thin air, you're paying to live in a society built to protect your wealth.
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