It seems to be a thing nowadays, to build bunkers for the super rich.
There are rumours that are saying that the 1% are preparing for some apocalypse scenario.
Do they know something we don’t?
Or are they just idiots?
Some videos from Vice about the subject
Comments on these videos are priceless.
Many bring valid points but in a funny way.
Fear
Greed
The 2 prime reasons that persuade people to take action.
Well known and used by politicians, salesmen, and “religious” leaders.
my 2¢,
Not every “prepper” is rich. For some people I think it’s something of a hobby. I wouldn’t be against the idea of building a small bunker someday. It could double as a man-cave and theater!
I wonder what flashlights, batteries, and chargers those “Preppers” have stocked up.
I assume one of their assumptions is that there will be no more regular supply of electricity during the doomsday. 
Not sure, but I know some of them are thorough enough to include a Faraday cage to protect some of their gear from EMPs in case a nuke is dropped.
A Faraday cage is about the cheapest option in my program of requirements.
This has been going on with some gusto over the past 2 decades, mostly precipitated by the 9/11 attacks. The wealthy certainly want to survive. I’ve read a couple of articles about this. First one was about 10 years ago. Some elites pooled their wealth together and build a “survival compound” in a midwestern state. Basically like an independent town, on the grid but also capable of running off the grid for very extended periods of time—probably completely at this point, given technological advancements.
A lot of wealthy people have simply bought 2nd homes on very large tracts of land in midwestern states, where $/acre is (was) cheap. So, while not geared up as doomsday bunkers, some have “enhancements” to weather difficult times. Stuff like food stores, water, weapons, ammo, and other necessities.
Frankly, they’re wasting their money. Such enclaves only delay the inevitable. We’ve simply orchestrated a very fragile living environment with many dependencies. Society needs the lower & upper classes to coexist. The upper ones do rely upon the lower. Their money would be better spent helping to come up with viable solutions to our social and environmental problems. Spending millions to cruise in low Earth orbit just to say “I’ve been to space” is such glaring folly. Do you know how long Bezos was up there? 12~15 minutes total (depending on what you include), there and back. Which meant maybe 5 minutes total in low Earth orbit. It’s such a short-lived event. Bezos, Branson, and Musk couldn’t look to experiencing much more than that, unless they spend the time to get trained as astronauts. They won’t because they’ve got too many other priorities. They go as passengers only…
The idea of “space tourism” is all well and good, but for now it’s SO premature. Every egotistical billionaire wants to make a name for themselves in one way or another. Branson is never going to make a profit with Virgin Galactic. And really… “Galactic?” Even a trip to the moon and back is WAY out of the question right now, and perhaps for a few dozen more years (and by then, even the wealthy will be more concerned about spending money for survival than going to space).
If one of those guys worked hard on solving the real problems here on Earth, like coming up with a viable way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and provide some kind of retractable shielding of the polar ice caps to help keep them from melting… they’d end up with a far greater legacy than simply claiming “I went to space.”
The odds of a nuke being dropped are VERY remote. And really, if we get to that point, well… just forget about surviving. I wouldn’t want to be around in a nuclear waste world.
No, the real danger these days is dirty bombs. There’s no EMP pulse to worry about, but radiation? That’s the weapon choice of terrorists.
Frankly, another more looming threat than EMP is something like a nation as North Korea deciding it’s time to put the 1st world on par with the 3rd world and launch a shrapnel rocket into orbit. This is something that would detonate in the orbital path of most major satellites, sending shrapnel flying at super fast speeds, several damaging or totally tearing apart our communications satellites. They’re already perfecting ICBM technology… and going to space is not much harder, especially with one-way-trip in mind. That’ll be worse than any nuclear threat North Korea has in mind.
That’s nearly a certainty if NK isn’t liberated, or decimated.
Either way, this will eventualy destroy AT LEAST the satellites (possibly everything electronic) and billions will starve when our fragile interdependent systems stop working.
The question is not if, but when.
Also, good luck to the wealthy in those condos depending on security personnel. That’s hilarious.
I think the chances of one of the so-called “superpowers” dropping a nuke is probably low. They are too intertwined financially. It’d be like a bank (literally) nuking their collateral. That doesn’t mean that noone will ever drop a nuke though. Terrorists or a small idiotic country like North Korea might do it. But like I said before, for some this is kind-of a hobby. The whole point is to be super over-prepared. I doubt you’d convince anyone who already has a Faraday cage that they don’t need one.
I have a bug out bag and and i carry a bit of EDC gear, plus i have some hunting and other survival gear, no bunker unfortunately. Great time to be a prepper seeing how easy people turn on each other when times get tough, its amazingly scary. Also thanks to C its good to see how easy divide and conquer works.
Apparently the earths magnetic field has weaken enough that if we got hit with the same CME that took out all the telegrams back in 1859 it could possibly send us back into the stone age. Plus the rumors of the pole reversals as the magnetic poles are moving at a greater rate then ever before. This might explain why Gates wants to bloke out the sun?
Back to the stone age? Maybe if all the electrical engineers spontaneously died at the same time. Otherwise it is just a matter of time before things get fixed and production comes back up.
That reminds me of why I hated the movie Transcendence. The lack of the internet would certainly be difficult but I doubt that the lack of it would result in a break-down of society. And there is nothing stopping humanity from building a new network with new security protocols. Or even a lower-tech network that facilitates communication but which would be unsuitable for an AI to reside in.
Depends how bad it was, possibly could melt all the wires and transformer plus all connected equipment which would take many many years to rebuild. Sure you could probably have a small grid up in a short while maybe but i doubt it as we could have to remake everything by hand. No water, no sewage, no fuel, no food at shops.
Wind, Solar would be life saving as it can be placed in close proximity to people and infrastructure fairly easily.
If another carrington event happens, you won’t be rebuilding the internet any time soon lol
It’s almost like I put that bit in a separate paragraph about the movie Transcendence on purpose. Hmmmmm….
haven’t seen it.
the electical engineers won’t die spontaneously, the vast majority will die from starvation, and starving people don’t put much time into building networks. there will be zero manufacturing capacity for any components. there will be fires everywhere and little capability to put them out.
maybe if our governments weren’t busy fleecing their people and instead had a plan for such an event, starting with a stockpile of power transformers, we’d have some chance of the total blackout not lasting decades.
not the stone age - more like the iron age.
edit: this was tiny in comparison to the power of the carrington event and the storm that missed us in 2012. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html
I believe the urge to “prepare” is an instinct in our genes. Many of our ancestors stored food for winter or prepared for battle/invasion. Those who didn’t probably died and did not pass on as much genetic material.
When people live in relatively safe times, they still have the urge to prepare, so they imagine outlandish scenarios
Well, I wouldn’t bother; it’s not a good movie.
Even the prediction of iron age sounds a bit extreme to me. I’d expect some kind of second Industrial Age as factories reverted to more analog processes until enough computer chips could be manufactured. Electricity would probably be region dependent initially because the less-updated the power plant is, the easier it would be to adapt it to run without computers and with more employees. (not to mention geographical proximity to natural sources of energy) And we can’t underestimate the motivation of the rich and powerful to stay rich and powerful. They’d be trying their hardest to facilitate a return to normal before the masses got too disgruntled. Food companies would be looking at huge losses so I imagine they would Macgyver together some kind of supply chain.
The economy would be a hot mess though, that’s for sure.
I think maybe you’re not aware of what a powerful solar storm like the Carrington event would actually do to electronics. As I said, most of the world will starve.
