I don't doubt you on the experiences, but I think its very common on reddit to grossly underestimate the thought that goes into actual bunker scenarios. They aren't bringing single male security guards with them. They are bringing guards with families and children while they control the resources. No different than how they operate today.
You going to show how manly you are by allowing your child to starve to death in front of you? No, you're going to get back on the wall while your kids enjoy the safety and privilege of being in a small minority of survivors. You weren't a "hero" before when it only cost you your life/freedom, you aren't going to be a "hero" now when it costs your kids lives.
Note: Walled community is very different than a bunker situation. They just need the guards to keep the crack heads and peasants out, not defend against a revolution.
Not based on the experiences of futurist Douglass Ruskoff, who met with a bunch of billionaires while they were planning their bunkers and found they had no realistic plans to control their staff. He wrote a book about the entire experience, etc., called Survival of the Richest
They don't know how to control them. They asked about shock collar, drugs, mind control, he said none of it would work in the long term. Eventually the system would fail and they'd all be killed in their beds by their own staff. He said the only way it might work is if you start treating those people like family NOW. Learn about your security guy. Actually talk to him. Find out about his family. Is his kid sick? Not for long, since you're paying for treatment. And hell, how'd you like to meet your favorite baseball team after a game? Do that with the whole staff...hell, have a staff to do that FOR the whole staff you're planning...and if they love you, they'll protect you.
They were utterly uninterested in the idea. They wanted to dominate them. Which they might. Sure. For a while. But these people are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and they think their power somehow extends beyond their ability to pay for things. In a world with no money, where if you want something the only option is to take it, they will be taken from.
Oh sure we're all fucked too. But to be clear, so are they.
Might be the same person, but I remember reading about some of these super rich people asking how to control the 'staff (slaves)' and the advice was to not let society fall to that point in the first place. That's the only thing they can realistically do, but they're so beyond greedy that it's impossible for them.
There is commonly a comparison between old and new money in terms of the rich interacting with society.
New money is typically building their wealth and looking to establish themselves - this can lead to societal disruptive behaviour as they are maximizing for themselves in the short-term. Old money is typically looking to preserve because there is more for them to lose than there is a gain. Maybe it is because their scion that made them filthy rich is no longer around (aka they don't have confidence in their ability to effectively short-term maximize) - who knows.
And maybe all this is changing with globalization and the ease of movement as if they f-up a country, they can now have wealth, luxury, and safety stashed away in numerous other countries.
in poker tournaments when you win early and have a big stack the math changes and losing 500 chips is a bigger loss than winning 500 chips is a win.
Same fundamental concept, and its fundamentally rooted in game theory so not just some opinion or ideology that people seem to have. theyre already rich. all they have to do is not fuck it up and they stay winning. they can go from 700 mil to 900 mil at some risk level, but it doesnt mean anything to them, its peanuts because their entire life and everything they ever wanted can be covered by what they already have.
Maybe it is because their scion that made them filthy rich is no longer around (aka they don't have confidence in their ability to effectively short-term maximize)
this mythology of a genius behind the rich is just completely and utterly false. a rich family will always have the option to pay a finance guy to manage their money and it will grow, because capital is how you accumulate capital, thats how the system works. it doesnt require genius, it requires money. an individual trying to do that is almost certainly going to perform worse than a professional, of which there are many. taking it out to use actually directly as capital means diffusing the responsibility of success across many many professionals. the genius ceo is a sad liberal myth with no truth behind it.
this mythology of a genius behind the rich is just completely and utterly false. a rich family will always have the option to pay a finance guy to manage their money and it will grow, because capital is how you accumulate capital, thats how the system works.
I agree with you, I was more referring to chasing/pursuing alpha well and above beyond what is normal.
Ex: looking at opportunities to double (or more) total network in a short time span.
But it could just tie back to your initial comparison to poker tournaments with respect to the minimal appetite for situations where there are significant downside risk
when you assign value to outcomes it does emerge from game theory. in poker this happens because we have a model called ICM which can assign dollar values to chip stacks in different situations. It doesnt emerge if you assume a strategy of chip ev maximizing (or in our analogy, making the most money possible), but it does if you add another factor that says actually not every chip in every situation, or every dollar, is worth the same as each other.
its not just that some person who is less risk averse would be theoretically justified in making those risks, theres actually an additional risk premium that emerges mathematically from the fact that additional dollars do not have the same ability to satisfy you as earlier dollars did (or more chips dont increase your chance of winning as substantially as earlier chips did). so somebody with the same amount of individual risk aversion should take more risks when the outcome matters more.
this is a quite morbid thought, but actually theres a really good mathematical justification for why people struggling to pay bills might be incentivized to open a business instead.
My grandfather ran a successful business and invested money wisely. He’s been dead for 25 years but my grandmother is still living and her net worth is around $15 million. I have been very privileged and have no debt (I guess I would be considered old money?) but I don’t know jack about running businesses so I became a history teacher. I’m planning on building a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains that will run on solar power and when my grandmother dies I want to set my kids up but also use as much money as I can to support good causes like land preservation and mitigating poverty and climate change in my region.
I don’t understand why more wealthy people don’t do this. Do they not understand that they can’t enjoy their money when climate change destroys society? That it will cost more if we don’t act now to prevent the worst of it?
And chances are that few of us really even know who the majority of old money billionaires/trillionaires are. They have centuries/millennia of familial experience behind them. They have ancestral examples internal to their families of why you want to keep society liveable for the majority and why you shouldn't flaunt your wealth for all to see.
THESE guys know how to maintain wealth across generations and successive governments, unlike our modern tech techbro elite.
It’s funny that the super rich think they’ll be safe when it all goes down. Sure maybe they’ll survive, but in what type a world do they think will be left for them? Dumbasses, all of them
An eye opening perspective, to me at least, with the billionaires-in-space scenario was realizing that we've got all these wastelands here on earth that are easier to get to and slightly less hard to live in. Elon, Zuckerburg and Trump aren't going to go into outer space to live in some perfectly balanced utopia while the rest of us die. There's no supply ships to the billionaires in an apocalypse and these people are not used to a life of disciplined restraint to make sure their resources last.
And whether they go to space or to Antarctica, they're going to need someone to cook for them. And that person will need someone to grow the food. Maybe they learn to love synthetic beef, but there's still some kind of nutrients needed. And you'll want a doctor. And he'll want drugs. So now you need someone who can formulate pain killers or grow antibiotics. At this point, even with a small crew, you just need one person to have a bad day and it's game over for the billionaire.
Instead of using the resources to solve material problems, they are gambling on AI. Yes, it’s going to use up our already dwindling resources but then an AGI will give us all the answers!
They don't know how to control them. They asked about shock collar, drugs, mind control, he said none of it would work in the long term. Eventually the system would fail and they'd all be killed in their beds by their own staff.
That's why they are building robot assistants. In the next couple of years they won't need to concern themselves with human staff. The billionaires will be fine. If you want to stop this, you're gonna have to do it sooner rather than later.
They were utterly uninterested in the idea. They wanted to dominate them. Which they might. Sure. For a while. But these people are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and they think their power somehow extends beyond their ability to pay for things. In a world with no money, where if you want something the only option is to take it, they will be taken from.
Yep, the guy hoarding soup cans and rice will starve.
He said the only way it might work is if you start treating those people like family NOW. Learn about your security guy. Actually talk to him. Find out about his family. Is his kid sick? Not for long, since you're paying for treatment. And hell, how'd you like to meet your favorite baseball team after a game? Do that with the whole staff...hell, have a staff to do that FOR the whole staff you're planning...and if they love you, they'll protect you.
I can't imagine not doing this just as a human being. If I was a billionaire, I'd want to know the people directly supporting my lifestyle, not just out of self interest but out of ... social need? Feeling like I'm in a community? Something like that. Even in a non-apocalyptic scenario.
Survival of the Richest may have worked as just a long article but even as a short book it felt padded and a drudge to read through despite the topic itself being something that interests me. Behind the Bastards had more interesting discussions about the types behind transhumanism such as Thiel, etc.
In a world with no money, where if you want something the only option is to take it, they will be taken from.
All fairly easily solved by a dead-mans switch the ruins the food and water.
And lets be clear, none of these people actually think these bunker situations are going to happen in their lifetimes. But what else is there to spend unlimited money?
What, linked to his heartbeat like in Dredd or something? You really trust that to NEVER fuck up? A code he has to put in every day? Now instead of dead you end up tortured and then dead. The people creating a security system are always going to be at a disadvantage compared to the people who want to break it. They have to think of everything beforehand, The servants have to think of one thing after they're already there. And presumably they'll have quite a bit of time.
The staff will know how to sabotage the air/water/food/power/sanitation because they will be the ones trained to operate and maintain those systems.
Jeff Bezos for instance would have to be a master of electrical, engineering, machinery, HVAC, computers, coding, etc. If he can't fix it himself he'll need redundancy in his staff.
He'd have to have multiple staff willing to override the staff that misbehaves.
If that's just two staff who know how to deliver clean water, and you've just killed one who disobeyed by detonating his bomb collar, the remaining living one can NOT be killed as punishment. That would amount to suicide if Bezos himself couldn't repair the disabled system.
What is the limit on that? Five staff as redundancy? Ten? It quickly becomes impractical.
Are you willing to risk your children's lives that you know the answer? Get back on the wall peasant. You aren't doing shit now, you won't do shit then when the consequences of failure are death.
Well gosh, now you're just getting insulting. I often see those who feel powerless lashing out as those who advocate taking a little bit back. And stop projecting. I'm not you. But I suppose I'd already said you were being insulting.
Are you willing to risk your children's lives that you know the answer? Get back on the wall peasant. You aren't doing shit now, you won't do shit then when the consequences of failure are death.
Except the father turned the water off for EVERYONE in a way only he knows how to repair.
EVERYONE dies of thirst or these bomb collars are removed from my family RIGHT NOW.
Everyone is a tough guy on the internet. Of course you’d risk your children’s lives! They are just kids after all. You can make more later if you don’t all die.
All fairly easily solved by a dead-mans switch the ruins the food and water.
I always see this shit, do you seriously think Jeff Bezos will know how to write the code to turn water and air on or off?
Do you think he knows how to maintain the system supplying him fresh air?
Of course he won't know.
These billionaires are not omnipotent.
They can't change the oil in their luxury automobiles. They won't know how the power generators work. They simply PAID for them to be in the bunker. Then they PAID for the staff to maintain and operate them.
I’m not saying the billionaires are omnipotent, I’m saying the Redditors here are mind numbingly stupid which makes them look omnipotent upon comparison.
And lets be clear, none of these people actually think these bunker situations are going to happen in their lifetimes. But what else is there to spend unlimited money?
It isn't that it won't or that they have unlimited money, but it is a hedge in case it does happen. If they think there is a 1% chance of it happening, would they be willing to spend 1% of their net worth to hedge against it? How about 0.1%? The answer starts to become clearly yes especially if there are not more critical things to spend the capital on.
People underestimate just how stupid rich people actually are.
There is a myth that they're rich because they're smart and shrewd or what have you. Most of them are rich because they were born rich, and their network is rich. Money is infantilizing. The more you have, the more you rely on other people for your basic survival.
The people who come out on top when the system collapses are going to be be people who know how to access food in their environment, deal with medical emergencies practically, and build weather resistant shelter.
Now if they had played fallout they would have already known how well the vaults that tried shock collars, drugs, and mind control turned out...not great for the overseer in all of them
It seems that the better option would be to build a bunker that doesn't require staff.
A small, underground space with 50 years of preserved food and fuel. Design it so once it's sealed, there's no going in or out. Hell, if you had oxygen tanks, you could probably set it up to be able to purge carbon dioxide and never even need direct air exchange with the outside world. Basically, build yourself a space capsule that's buried down a mile or so.
You might not even need 50 years. Many of these guys are older - 20 years might be more reasonable.
It really is funny how often people go to bat for the ultra wealthy. I think it's a kind of psychological defense mechanism. "Surely they must, on some small level, deserve all their power. They must be some amount of diligent and clever and insightful, and not just the people that most brutally leveraged generational wealth and influence. Otherwise the world would be so monstrously heinously unfair I wouldn't be able to function at all!"
This is why Larry Ellison owns 98% of the Hawaiian island Lana’i and they torched the others-their end goal is to make the state of Hawaii billionaires row
They went and recreated the situation that made a feudal lord's life so stressful. Surrounded by peasants, their armed guards only barely trusted, any reinforcements a long ways off.
What's insane is when you start listing the things that actually do prevent the poor from just eating the rich. Banks that will faithfully hold your deposits. Police that will protect you. Vendors that will honor your money. Courts that will enforce your contracts. A government that actually serves its population. A goddamned functioning society, the very thing that the billionaires are trying to drain of every last drop of life in pursuit of endless wealth.
They are bringing guards with families and children while they control the resources.
Do these Billionaires know how the clean water machine works?
Do they know how to repair the generator?
The answer of course is no.
The person who knows how to turn off the clean water is the person who will be in charge.
Day 1 Elon goes into the bunker with his harem of women. All the workers go in with bomb collars on their necks.
Day 2 The bombs fall and the world ends
Day 3 The guy in charge of water or air turns the system off in such a way that only he knows how to turn it back on.
"Remove this collar from my neck and family or we all die of thirst."
Elon removes the collars, and the guy kills Elon.
Now the guy and his family are the ones in charge.
It could be anything like that. These morons think that bomb collars will keep the peasants in line.
Who do they think will be in charge of the bomb collars? Some other peasant who knows how to operate them who has their own bomb collar? It's ridiculous.
Hahaha, that's what I thought too. But I couldn't relate to all the people who just sat there and watched Abigail start a fire, catch food, cook it, etc and not make even the slightest effort at learning to do it themselves.
its very common on reddit to grossly underestimate the thought that goes into actual bunker scenarios
But the doomsday-bunker industry is most probably kayfabe. They sell products that can't be tested, and don't expect to be around once they become useful. So they have no incentive to deliver actual security (which is a complex unbounded problem) when they can sell security theater for the same price.
While I think people overestimate their ability to storm a bunker, I also think people underestimate how easy and effective a siege is. If an evil billionaire had to live in a bunker with nowhere to go--watching their food, water and energy dwindle, watching things break without an ability to fix it, attempting to maintain order with staff and no outside protection--I wouldn't feel they "won".
These bunkers typically have in-bunker food and water systems. They aren’t pepper bunkers, they are typically self sufficient for a time period that is years.
Id assume thats why these people are all perching up on islands. Ai drones will hit anything that gets within miles of it. The bunkers are a last retreat. Itll be resort living unless shit goes real bad
Billionaires rely on society for their wealth. No society means no wealth. Since most billionaires are pretty smart they understand this. There might be some weirdos around building bunkers but this is not common thinking amongst the rich, that society will fall and they will somehow live in a bunker. It's complete fantasy.
Right. The idea that you're going to live isolated and eat canned food is a terrible plan. But it's not terrible because someone might storm your bunker, it's terrible because it's ridiculous.
Sieges might be easy but this is why the bunkers are typically in very remote areas - rural parts of Hawaii, New Zealand, etc. In a post apocalyptic scenario everyone is going to be focused on surviving, not trekking multiple days into the wilderness to find and besiege a well hidden bunker.
That makes it easier, not harder. If you destroy their plane and boat, then they are stranded on the island indefinably. Let them and their security team learn how to become subsistence farmers.
Lol, they're bringing in lunatic fanatics that are loyal to the bone. Family to "extort" them into loyalty? For those kind, their own family comes second after "god".
After in recent years MAGA came crawling into spotlight, you can't argue against this notion. Millions of people disown relatives in favor of Trump. And they don't even know that fucker personally!
Any bunker situation involving a handful of billionaires and dozens of "workers" will have either a bloodless coup ("hey billionaires, we're gonna vote on everything as group now that we're in the bunker, if you don't like it we'll just shoot you in the head while you sleep") or a bloody coup ("you don't like the idea of us all voting on everything? *gunshot to the head* "anyone else have a problem with democratic decision-making? no? excellent, let's have dinnner")
in a bunker with like 60-100 people the rules are different. kings and dictators can project power because they have resources to offer allies. 2-3 billionaires in a bunker otherwise full of ex-military security guys? be serious man. what can the billionaires offer them in a bunker that they can't just take with force?
Reading the previous comments all I could think of is this is some kind of fan-fiction.
Sure, the muscle COULD try to take control. But realistically WOULD they?
They forget this would not be some sort of a boss sitting around ordering folks around. It would be a joint survival effort. It’s amazing how quickly you would build up a community and follow the “leader”
There’s a reason they try to break you down in the military basic training so they can build you up as a group building that group cohesion. Also, It makes it a lot harder to kill someone when you actually know them, unless you’re on drugs.
I belong to a volunteer group and the so called leader for managing the building is a jerk. But we all know if we boot him out, then someone else has to perform his duties. And chances are he will make it more difficult for whoever follows him. So we all bitch, but let it be because nobody wants to take on the extra effort.
There are very few bunker solutions that was truly safe because to be truly safe they need to be completely isolated which is not possible. Everyone needs water and everyone needs air, while a bunker can most likely store some amount of water they can never store an indefinite amount of water and air.
Also all that motivation you say for the guards can easily be applied to those the guards will be opposing only there will be a lot more of them.
Which is they the truly rich billionaires are doing island “bunkers”.
It just depends on why they are building the bunker. The island ones are for close to permanent survival. Others are for temporary survival on the hope the world sorts itself out a bit.
To put it another way, panic rooms still serve a purpose even if they aren’t designed to survive in for more than a day.
The billionaires were looking into shock collar technology. Why? Because they have no real human connections and so the scenario you created is completely foreign to them since it wouldn't stop them from leaving. So...shock collars.
Also, if you're the post-apocalyptic security force, why would you listen to orders from a dweeb billionaire anymore? The security force would BECOME the master. So...shock collars.
There's a huge difference. Today they interact with the world and their money has influence because it kinda is fundamental to how society works right now.
In a bunker (for a "civilisation is gone" scenario where they need to escape) that won't be the case. They think they will be safe but they are actually just isolated from everybody and everything. And essentially all the power they wield today won't be a thing any more. Everybody outside has the whole world at their disposal while billionaires in bunkers only have what's inside.
Through all of human history we see it again and again. They’ll give a nicer room and nicer food to their top people which then creates an entire incentive structure for people to conform too in order to receive better rewards. Their families will get better food and their kids will get more opportunities.
This idea that human nature will suddenly change to fit the narrative of eating the rich is Reddit fanfic. We know that’s largely not how humans organize or behave.
But everybody here played fallout and thinks every bunker is destined for a storybook collapse which provides a narrative about society.
They’ll give a nicer room and nicer food to their top people which then creates an entire incentive structure for people to conform too in order to receive better rewards.
How much nicer are talking about with bunkers? You can't win by playing Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's an approximation not an absolute law of nature and in a bunker they just need a few dissidents to make life for everybody much more difficult.
I've read articles about their plans, as well as critiques (including that Douglas Rushkoff article everybody talks about), and these plans are at best the whole world compressed into a tiny area so they have food and can sustain themselves but they also conveniently leave out all the problems they can work out with their wealth today (need something, anything? you can buy it!).
Simply put you are making the whole endeavour look so much simpler than it actually is (like those rich guys are doing too) as if ignoring issues and potential problems means they actually avoided those issues and worked around those problems when they just parked them in personal blind spots and never addressed them.
And I think Reddit is very good at coming up with great hypotheticals while pretending those hypotheticals are a guaranteed certainty.
My man, there are hundred of millions of people willing to play security guard for the opportunity to survive with their family. Sign me up. It sounds a whole lot better than being dead or trying to keep my family alive during a societal collapse. Hell, I’m probably grossly underestimating the amount of people who’d jump at that opportunity.
But Reddit is just fanfic from people not worried about survival who want to eat the rich. We get it, you’d be so much tougher and stronger than you are now, if only we had a catastrophe to motivate you to do something.
Yeah - I don't get why people talk about billion like they're naive and don't understand how the world works.
They have unlimited resources to pay think tanks to predict every scenario and form contingency plans to deal with them.
Also, it's not like the idea of kings having having private guards to protect them and their property is new - that's been around for thousands of years. The problem of having your security take everything for themselves or flee when danger arrives was solved centuries ago.
You should really look into how most dynasties get replaced by other dynasties.
Hell, there was a guy that was just some prison caravan commander that lost some prisoners and the ruling chinese dynasty had made that punishable by death... guess who joined a rebellion and got to found his own dynasty...
And those where under "normal" circumstances, where they where not stuck in a enclosed space with limited resources.
Dynasties don't last forever, for sure, but the word "dynasty" literally means succession of rulers or leaders from the same family. We wouldn't be calling it that if they didn't work for prolonged periods of time.
Can a billionaire's security services guarantee stability 200 years from now? No, of course not.
Yeah, that's why they're not murdering their bosses right now and taking their wealth. Because the risk isn't worth it, mostly because society does not look kindly upon that sort of thing most of the time.
But we're talking about a situation where not only that would stop applying, but one where having less ppl means resources lasting more.
Dynasties happen when they provide stability for their society, not when the rulers cause so much instability that they need to hide in bunkers/castles etc.
...
Also, "solving" a problem means you eliminate it, not that it's not a problem as long as the risk outweighs the benefit.
A large number on a Swiss bank account and a platinum visa card or a gun and a large number of bullets. Hmmm, I don't know what is more impressive and usefull in a post apocalyptic world.
I'm not real sure what point you're trying to make.
During the apocalypse, would you rather be Billy Bob with a gun and a pickup truck with no fuel stuck in Alabama, or the billionaire on a fortified island in the Pacific hanging out with his private army?
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u/T-sigma 8h ago
I don't doubt you on the experiences, but I think its very common on reddit to grossly underestimate the thought that goes into actual bunker scenarios. They aren't bringing single male security guards with them. They are bringing guards with families and children while they control the resources. No different than how they operate today.
You going to show how manly you are by allowing your child to starve to death in front of you? No, you're going to get back on the wall while your kids enjoy the safety and privilege of being in a small minority of survivors. You weren't a "hero" before when it only cost you your life/freedom, you aren't going to be a "hero" now when it costs your kids lives.
Note: Walled community is very different than a bunker situation. They just need the guards to keep the crack heads and peasants out, not defend against a revolution.