The Winning Mindset: Billionaires in Bunkers

An article from a year ago came my way, about how the super-rich 'preppers' are planning to save themselves from the apocalypse. Douglas Rushkoff was hired by some über rich men to field questions about, basically, what they need to do to survive in a bunker. One of their biggest concerns was how to ensure that their security--vital to keep out the masses-- doesn't turn on them! Plato had a similar concern. He solved it with an excellent education that provokes the warrior class to care more about the city than themselves. It's too late for that here. 

"The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where 'winning' means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust. Yet this Silicon Valley escapism – let’s call it The Mindset – encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind. . . . The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making."

Then he met J.C. Cole:

"Here was a prepper with security clearance, field experience and food sustainability expertise. He believed the best way to cope with the impending disaster was to change the way we treat one another, the economy, and the planet right now – while also developing a network of secret, totally self-sufficient residential farm communities for millionaires, guarded by Navy Seals armed to the teeth. . . . 'I am less concerned about gangs with guns than the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food.' He paused, and sighed, 'I don’t want to be in that moral dilemma.' That’s why JC’s real passion wasn’t just to build a few isolated, militarised retreat facilities for millionaires, but to prototype locally owned sustainable farms that can be modelled by others and ultimately help restore regional food security in America. The 'just-in-time' delivery system preferred by agricultural conglomerates renders most of the nation vulnerable to a crisis as minor as a power outage or transportation shutdown. Meanwhile, the centralisation of the agricultural industry has left most farms utterly dependent on the same long supply chains as urban consumers. 'Most egg farmers can’t even raise chickens,' JC explained as he showed me his henhouses. 'They buy chicks. I’ve got roosters.' JC is no hippy environmentalist but his business model is based in the same communitarian spirit I tried to convey to the billionaires: the way to keep the hungry hordes from storming the gates is by getting them food security now. 

So for $3m, investors not only get a maximum security compound in which to ride out the coming plague, solar storm, or electric grid collapse. They also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event in the first place. His business would do its best to ensure there are as few hungry children at the gate as possible when the time comes to lock down. . . . 

So far, JC Cole has been unable to convince anyone to invest in American Heritage Farms. That doesn’t mean no one is investing in such schemes. It’s just that the ones that attract more attention and cash don’t generally have these cooperative components. They’re more for people who want to go it alone. Most billionaire preppers don’t want to have to learn to get along with a community of farmers or, worse, spend their winnings funding a national food resilience programme. The mindset that requires safe havens is less concerned with preventing moral dilemmas than simply keeping them out of sight. . . . 

On closer analysis, however, the probability of a fortified bunker actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim. For one, the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle. . . . Just the known unknowns are enough to dash any reasonable hope of survival. But this doesn’t seem to stop wealthy preppers from trying. . . . They were working out what I’ve come to call the insulation equation: could they earn enough money to insulate themselves from the reality they were creating. . . . Maybe the apocalypse is less something they’re trying to escape than an excuse to realise The Mindset’s true goal: to rise above mere mortals and execute the ultimate exit strategy."

Here's a problem right off the bat: bunkers are meant for severe storms or a flurry of munitions. They're far less effectively used hiding from an event that might last for decades or centuries: a nuclear blast that makes the area radioactive for years or climate change that floods the valleys and fills the air with smoke and unbearable heat. Personally, I'd rather die than live below ground for the rest of my life, never seeing the sun or feeling the wind; the bunkers are just an expensive prison and later a coffin. 

They're not worried about escaping Covid, of course -- all their events are Davos Safe, and they have access to the very best medical care 24/7. 

They're worried about climate change. 

Opening travel without maintaining precautions ensured that Covid variants would continue to spread worldwide as we destroyed our climate - just the very small percentage of people who have ever been in a plane. We're not going to do anything to avoid the new variant running wild right now in Japan. Almost 20 years ago, George Monbiot warned about flying. In a nutshell, just don't--unless there's a family emergency. There's no such thing as eco-tourism. A two-hour flight creates 20% of a typical Canadian's yearly carbon emissions per passenger. A slow train is a better option, but staying within city limits is best. He put it bluntly, 

"If you fly, you destroy other people's lives."

We can't keep living like this, but we don't know how to stop; many of us are doubling down on destructive lifestyles. We haven't been raised in a cohesive culture that encourages sharing. I've lived with a relatively tiny footprint my entire life, denying my children juice boxes and lunchables for all the plastic in them, walking or biking them to all their lessons and summer camps, and avoiding buying a car until I was 53. And none of that mattered. Except the kids might have a bit more concern for others and the effect they have on the world. Maybe. And they might have some bitterness for not getting the more luxurious, pleasure-filled life that all their friends had as children. Definitely. 

But consider this question:

Is it unreasonable to think that the powerful ended all mask mandates - even in healthcare -- and are making it hard to find vaccines (paying almost $350 million to throw the best of them away) in order to reduce the number of people trying to get into their climate change bunkers?? They won't need security if we're all too sickly to fight them. 

Or dead. 

We couldn't do a much better job to ensure loss of lives than what they're currently doing: removing all protections from a fatal disease, closing hospitals, overworking healthcare workers, bulldozing unhoused encampments, allowing the use of cluster bombs, and making MAiD more easily accessible. In the states, they're defunding childhood vaccinations, so we'll see more measles and polio in the mix too! There's also speculation that Covid was manufactured and possibly even intentionally leaked, but that might be going too far.

It's all absolutely unconscionable. But it makes perfect sense.

We've all been suckered in to save the economy instead of our own habitat. Environmentalists have been on about it since at least the 1970s, but it's too hard to believe. Our habitat can't really be affected by us, can it?? Surely we're not powerful enough to actually change the climate enough to wipe ourselves out!! 

Maybe we can beat the rich at their own game: Stock up on water and dried grains, grow a garden in the backyard, and wear a mask in public, and actually take care of each other. 

Well, it wouldn't hurt to try.

ETA: Zuckerberg allegedly building an underground bunker!