Bunker Buddies should be the next reality TV show where the uber wealthy are tricked into believing the end of the world is here and herded into the bunker where hundreds of hidden cameras are living. You wouldn't even need devastating edits, just sit back and watch taking bets on who kills each other first.
I recently read about Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis! One of the main points is, human societies scaled beyond small reciprocal communities and became increasingly mediated through symbolic systems, created a landscape where these parasites where able to thrive and hide their exploitative, destructive behaviors behind governance, laws, the scale of our numbers.
But in small reciprocal communities, a person who lies, exploits, deceives, or imposes repeated costs on others will not easily disappear into anonymity.
To understand that their ability to thrive and exploit is made possible in this world that we have created is crucial. So yeah, they will most likely fail. Spectacularly :D
When I read about this bunker bullshit of the rich I am always reminded of a lesson I learned when I was maybe seven years old. I had gotten into my father’s tools or something and he found out. I ran from him and locked myself in my room. My father calmly stood on the other side of the door and with a normal tone said:
“Son, you will have to come out sooner or later to eat. You will get hungry.”
I vividly remember sitting on the edge of my bed as these words rattled around in my head. The realization of the fact that indeed I was not willing to starve myself to death and I did not have provisions to last the entirety of life left before me hit me in my core. I can still feel how it felt as I type this.
Not wanting to make the situation worse I immediately stood up and walked to the door and unlocked it. My father came in and we talked about what I had initially done and my actions of running and hiding.
Those folks and their underground glamping setups I guess never learned that behind that locked door that eventually they will get hungry and they will open that door. Who or what will be waiting outside likely will not be as calm as my father.
So law and order need to have completely broken down before your bunker invasion can move forward. You need to know where it is & feel confident you can handle the robot flamethrowing dogs and drone swarms. Once you get the goods you better have a plan to keep them, because now you’re the one with the target on your back.
I know we’re mostly joking here, but I do think there is value in taking a serious look at these things because simplistic and incomplete ideas about what collapse will be like is allowing people to look away. To ignore. To minimize.
If the billionaires are in their bunkers, it's the end times. They've got physical security teams and armoured vehicles to get them there. If they are locked away, you'll have been starving for weeks as the supermarkets will be empty for you long before they run out of suppliers charging 100x or 1000x.
Luckily, Starlink only stays alive for a few months. After a year it'll be useless.
I don’t think food is the issue. With enough money and space it is fairly trivial to stockpile a life time of food and water. They can also fill their bunkers with luxury and entertainment.
A normal person might be happy. I know I would be quite happy if I just had some grow lights in a bunker and a collection of species so I could maintain a garden and play at creating a little ecosystem.
I think the issue for these people which will make them snap is that they ultimately have no interests beyond making money and exploiting their power.
Look at all these billionaires and how they fill their time. They have enough money to never need to work but they spend all their time working trying to make more money or accumulating more power. They are sick, depraved people and when money is meaningless and there are no people to lord it over they will realize how empty they are.
I agree with you that the billionaires will be their own undoing with their destructive behavior and how they fill their time. However, storing a lifetime of food and water is no trivial thing. I've watched documentaries on the construction of these kinds of bunkers. It's major, and even with all the work they put in, there are hidden liabilities and points of failure they don't talk about. So, just sayin, even the storage aspect is a fool's errand compared to building a community where you just grow and harvest.
Thanks for the reply. And you are totally correct about what would likely be the snap causing aspect. I mean, maybe their plan involves trying to remotely take command of the other bunkered folks. The next game to keep them entertained? The Hitler route, opening the door to whatever is on the other side, or eventually wasting away like a naked mole rat, the fact remains that they in the end will get what’s coming to them when/if they go in. No amount of bunker can prevent that.
It’s telling that the people that hold the keys to dynamics that would trigger the need for a bunker in the first place refuse to use their power to change those dynamics, even just a little, says it all.
It always goes to “Lord of the flies”. Because that’s who many just really are without appropriate education, without better parenting, guidance, or good governance. That last one exactly what they were aiming for 250 years ago here, and were on the right path with until this useless old extremist righty indoctrinated generation dropped the ball.
I keep wondering who exactly they think is going to bail them out when they inevitably have infrastructure issues. Clogged drains and toilets, electrical, ventilation issues or HVAC outages, etc. Of all the skills Zuck is learning, like hand to hand combat and shit, I'll bet it hasn't occured to him to learn how to snake a drain or troubleshoot an electrical panel or generator failure. What if a fire breaks out? Is an extinguisher going to get the job done before he suffocates on the smoke?
They're going to learn very, very quickly how much they rely on the peons to serve their every whim just by snapping their fingers. What happens when they ring the bell and no one responds. Not to mention, how do they ensure their staff's loyalty over time as resources begin to grow scarce or inevitable problems occur? I mean, obviously they have to have at least one person to do the menial labor in order to live as they've become accustomed to.
I'm almost gleeful at how little thought most of them have probably put into this.
Oh, the plan seems to be robots and shock collars... I don't think it's any coincidence that they employ psychologists to learn how to better control their (security) staff, and when they realised they couldn't, $billions went into humanoid robots...
They >might< be able to store a lifetime of sustenance, but make no mistake about it, they won't be dining on Chateaubriand. Maybe in the first few weeks, but after that?
Is anyone watching “Silo” on appletv? They are about to run out of lightbulbs. Not only are they necessary to light an underground bunker, but critical to grow food in the farm areas.
(I have not read the books. I had a bad experience with Will Trent. I love the series, but the book I tried to read was so bad, I gave up after a few chapters.)
without a doubt they are trying to be the envy of the peasants and serfs. last place I want to be is trapped underground with these f***s when the ground starts shaking. I don't even want to be sharing the same air with them. it'll blow up in their faces maybe literally.
There was an episode of Doomsday Preppers which featured the ‘survival condos’ in the old missile silo. The owner made a big deal about how the location was secret and would only be revealed to serious prospective buyers.
I took that as a challenge. I figured I should be able to find a map of old silos in the state, check them out on google maps and compare the scenery and find the location. I didn’t even get to step 1 of that before I found it. Someone had already put it on Google maps and dozens of people had left joke reviews.
That project was hilarious because they went on and on about their private security detail yet those security personnel do not have accommodation in the bunker. So during the apocalypse you expect these people to stand outside your bunker guarding you until they die? Why wouldn’t they just shoot you and go and get their families to move into the bunker instead?
Oh, I remember that episode. Hilarious you found the site. Those were the guys building a giant steel tank to house something like a million gallons of water. I wonder how long that thing lasted, lol...
Thank you for the insights, Jessica. During the white settlement of the Midwest and West, there were incidents of "cabin fever." It was psychological distress induced by prolonged isolation and confinement in a small dwelling. While the bunkers may be large and luxurious, the wealthy probably haven't planned for the distortion of their reality that will be caused by the drastic change in their living conditions. You described some of that.
Yeah, the more you get into the whole prepping/survivalist topic, the more you find that the ones who are serious about it are already trying to live as they would during whatever scenario they anticipate. If these rich folks have already started pulling guns on each other, it's a pretty clear indictment of the whole concept.
huh so building something so you can selfishly ride out the terrible consequences of your actions leads to more terrible consequences because the entire culture of the thing is wrapped up in selfishness, scams, and power plays? huh, who would have thought...
While I occasionally ran across a “bunker” article I never paid much attention to it as the idea of life in a “bunker” seemed a worthless idea. Little did I imagine it was pre-Armageddon dangerous as well.
Yeah. There's sort of a paradox here. The more you prepare, the more you make yourself a target. Fingers crossed they kill each other before they get to us! :) More serious thoughts a bit later.
I started writing a piece titled “So You Want To Be A Marauder” that attempts to explore the variables and decision trees the collapse boogie men will be dealing with. Everybody just assumes it will be a successful strategy. “They” will take your stuff. I decided to become they.
I stopped writing it because if you take a serious look at some likely scenarios, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. Much more stressful to contemplate than typical prepping scenarios. It seems clear to me that being a villain will be far more difficult and dangerous than learning how to grow some potatoes.
So while I agree than being too obviously successful at prepping will paint a target on your back, I feel confident that the number of successful gangs will be low and also self limiting.
I know they’re going to fail spectacularly because Dr David Brin was invited to (he didn’t identify who invited him) to speak at a “conference” that turned out to be a bunch of billionaires asking him, an astrophysicist and futurist writer, his predictions of our future, and questions directly about how to control security teams once the collapse happens.
These sociopaths can’t understand that survival depends upon cooperation. If you treat everyone around you like objects, yeah, it’s NOT going to go well for you once any potential punishment goes away.
Also, these are the exact same entitled assholes who couldn’t quarantine for less than a week before they went stir-crazy and went out to spread the pandemic 🙄 No way they’re going to last 3 weeks in their bunker…
Imagine being locked in a bunker, with like-minded sociopaths, after we've lost the birds and the bees and the flowers in the trees.
Only pathological sociopaths and psychopaths would find it 'appealing'.
Lots of these monsters are buying their way into Aotearoa NZ to bug out, from the carnage they have accelerated.
Musk wants to go to Mars because he knows that habitat is collapsing on his home planet, go figure.
I have a high voltage switching and protection certification from the London Electricity Board, I've never met a complex electrical system that never failed.
Over 100 complex civilizations have previously collapsed, none had a fraction of the complexity we rely on, but they did have parallels with our predicament.
Overshoot, climate change due to deforestation, psychopathic rulers, all the ingredients are locked in.
I delved into this aspect of our predicament in my blog post titled: "A Tsunami of Climate Change Refugees heading to Aotearoa New Zealand".
Indeed. I agree with 100 percent of this. These people are mentally ill. They have quite a combination of narcissism and psychopathy, fed by a range of other neuroses they inflicted on themselves. It takes that kind of mental illness to think it's better to spend your wealth on space colonization, robots, and bunkers while destroying the only planet we know can sustain life.
I always wonder about all the support staff they're used to - these guys and their families are the weakest imaginable people to try to live in bunkers, much less for a long time and without personal chefs, nannies, estheticians, body guards, doctors, stylists, etc. Where are they all going to live? Do they expect their employees to give up their families? How will they be compensated? Who cares about money if the planet is blowing up?
So many questions! And at the end of the day, I wouldn't want to live in the world they survive!
There is no version of this timeline where they live a good life in their bunkers. No version of the future works without a full embrace of nature and repairing what we’ve done.
Bunker Buddies should be the next reality TV show where the uber wealthy are tricked into believing the end of the world is here and herded into the bunker where hundreds of hidden cameras are living. You wouldn't even need devastating edits, just sit back and watch taking bets on who kills each other first.
Yes!
Billionaire Big Brother House on TV would be hilarious to watch. Never watched the actual show when it was around but would watch that 🤣🤣🤣🤣
You might like the (dubbed) Spanish show on Netflix literally called “Billionaires’ Bunker”.
I was just going to mention this show, or Silo.
this is already on netflix.
That is GOLD!
I love this idea!
Hilarious!!! I generally hate reality shows, but I’d watch your show for sure!!! 🤣👍
"Smile. You're on candid camera!"
I recently read about Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis! One of the main points is, human societies scaled beyond small reciprocal communities and became increasingly mediated through symbolic systems, created a landscape where these parasites where able to thrive and hide their exploitative, destructive behaviors behind governance, laws, the scale of our numbers.
But in small reciprocal communities, a person who lies, exploits, deceives, or imposes repeated costs on others will not easily disappear into anonymity.
To understand that their ability to thrive and exploit is made possible in this world that we have created is crucial. So yeah, they will most likely fail. Spectacularly :D
Oh, that's fascinating!
Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier looks at this exceptionally well, FWIW.
Interesting!
I called religion a parasite, but it has succeeded spectacularly. Go figure?!
When I read about this bunker bullshit of the rich I am always reminded of a lesson I learned when I was maybe seven years old. I had gotten into my father’s tools or something and he found out. I ran from him and locked myself in my room. My father calmly stood on the other side of the door and with a normal tone said:
“Son, you will have to come out sooner or later to eat. You will get hungry.”
I vividly remember sitting on the edge of my bed as these words rattled around in my head. The realization of the fact that indeed I was not willing to starve myself to death and I did not have provisions to last the entirety of life left before me hit me in my core. I can still feel how it felt as I type this.
Not wanting to make the situation worse I immediately stood up and walked to the door and unlocked it. My father came in and we talked about what I had initially done and my actions of running and hiding.
Those folks and their underground glamping setups I guess never learned that behind that locked door that eventually they will get hungry and they will open that door. Who or what will be waiting outside likely will not be as calm as my father.
Wise words. Yeah, the ones I've read about can sustain a group for 3-5 years. They'll have to come out of those bunkers by then.
Or sooner, when air vents are closed off.
If things are bad enough that the billionaires are fleeing to their bunkers, I doubt you’ll have surplus time/energy/safety to go bunker hunting.
But is fun to fantasize about…
Oh, but you know what's inside the bunker, and you're starving...
So law and order need to have completely broken down before your bunker invasion can move forward. You need to know where it is & feel confident you can handle the robot flamethrowing dogs and drone swarms. Once you get the goods you better have a plan to keep them, because now you’re the one with the target on your back.
I know we’re mostly joking here, but I do think there is value in taking a serious look at these things because simplistic and incomplete ideas about what collapse will be like is allowing people to look away. To ignore. To minimize.
If the billionaires are in their bunkers, it's the end times. They've got physical security teams and armoured vehicles to get them there. If they are locked away, you'll have been starving for weeks as the supermarkets will be empty for you long before they run out of suppliers charging 100x or 1000x.
Luckily, Starlink only stays alive for a few months. After a year it'll be useless.
Psychopaths will have no qualms about cannibalizing each other.
Apparently even outlandish, wishful thinking gets "analyzed" on Substack. Tiring. I think I'll drop out and read a book...
Please let me know what book you’re reading so I can analyze whether or not it’s a good use of your time…
Every day 🙏
By the plebs.
No man is an island...some are peninsulas, though.
I don’t think food is the issue. With enough money and space it is fairly trivial to stockpile a life time of food and water. They can also fill their bunkers with luxury and entertainment.
A normal person might be happy. I know I would be quite happy if I just had some grow lights in a bunker and a collection of species so I could maintain a garden and play at creating a little ecosystem.
I think the issue for these people which will make them snap is that they ultimately have no interests beyond making money and exploiting their power.
Look at all these billionaires and how they fill their time. They have enough money to never need to work but they spend all their time working trying to make more money or accumulating more power. They are sick, depraved people and when money is meaningless and there are no people to lord it over they will realize how empty they are.
I agree with you that the billionaires will be their own undoing with their destructive behavior and how they fill their time. However, storing a lifetime of food and water is no trivial thing. I've watched documentaries on the construction of these kinds of bunkers. It's major, and even with all the work they put in, there are hidden liabilities and points of failure they don't talk about. So, just sayin, even the storage aspect is a fool's errand compared to building a community where you just grow and harvest.
The strength of the wolf isn't in the jaws, teeth or claws. It is in the pack.
They'll be dining on MRE's. Can spoiled billionaire psychopaths live that way?
Thanks for the reply. And you are totally correct about what would likely be the snap causing aspect. I mean, maybe their plan involves trying to remotely take command of the other bunkered folks. The next game to keep them entertained? The Hitler route, opening the door to whatever is on the other side, or eventually wasting away like a naked mole rat, the fact remains that they in the end will get what’s coming to them when/if they go in. No amount of bunker can prevent that.
It’s telling that the people that hold the keys to dynamics that would trigger the need for a bunker in the first place refuse to use their power to change those dynamics, even just a little, says it all.
It always goes to “Lord of the flies”. Because that’s who many just really are without appropriate education, without better parenting, guidance, or good governance. That last one exactly what they were aiming for 250 years ago here, and were on the right path with until this useless old extremist righty indoctrinated generation dropped the ball.
I keep wondering who exactly they think is going to bail them out when they inevitably have infrastructure issues. Clogged drains and toilets, electrical, ventilation issues or HVAC outages, etc. Of all the skills Zuck is learning, like hand to hand combat and shit, I'll bet it hasn't occured to him to learn how to snake a drain or troubleshoot an electrical panel or generator failure. What if a fire breaks out? Is an extinguisher going to get the job done before he suffocates on the smoke?
They're going to learn very, very quickly how much they rely on the peons to serve their every whim just by snapping their fingers. What happens when they ring the bell and no one responds. Not to mention, how do they ensure their staff's loyalty over time as resources begin to grow scarce or inevitable problems occur? I mean, obviously they have to have at least one person to do the menial labor in order to live as they've become accustomed to.
I'm almost gleeful at how little thought most of them have probably put into this.
Oh, the plan seems to be robots and shock collars... I don't think it's any coincidence that they employ psychologists to learn how to better control their (security) staff, and when they realised they couldn't, $billions went into humanoid robots...
They are addicted to money/power. Perhaps they are pathologically afraid of being poor/powerless.
They >might< be able to store a lifetime of sustenance, but make no mistake about it, they won't be dining on Chateaubriand. Maybe in the first few weeks, but after that?
Oh, I doubt they'll be able to open the door at all...
Yikes. I felt what you must have felt and I panicked a little.
Is anyone watching “Silo” on appletv? They are about to run out of lightbulbs. Not only are they necessary to light an underground bunker, but critical to grow food in the farm areas.
(I have not read the books. I had a bad experience with Will Trent. I love the series, but the book I tried to read was so bad, I gave up after a few chapters.)
Cement mixer. Exits.
without a doubt they are trying to be the envy of the peasants and serfs. last place I want to be is trapped underground with these f***s when the ground starts shaking. I don't even want to be sharing the same air with them. it'll blow up in their faces maybe literally.
There was an episode of Doomsday Preppers which featured the ‘survival condos’ in the old missile silo. The owner made a big deal about how the location was secret and would only be revealed to serious prospective buyers.
I took that as a challenge. I figured I should be able to find a map of old silos in the state, check them out on google maps and compare the scenery and find the location. I didn’t even get to step 1 of that before I found it. Someone had already put it on Google maps and dozens of people had left joke reviews.
That project was hilarious because they went on and on about their private security detail yet those security personnel do not have accommodation in the bunker. So during the apocalypse you expect these people to stand outside your bunker guarding you until they die? Why wouldn’t they just shoot you and go and get their families to move into the bunker instead?
Oh, I remember that episode. Hilarious you found the site. Those were the guys building a giant steel tank to house something like a million gallons of water. I wonder how long that thing lasted, lol...
Thank you for the insights, Jessica. During the white settlement of the Midwest and West, there were incidents of "cabin fever." It was psychological distress induced by prolonged isolation and confinement in a small dwelling. While the bunkers may be large and luxurious, the wealthy probably haven't planned for the distortion of their reality that will be caused by the drastic change in their living conditions. You described some of that.
Yeah, the more you get into the whole prepping/survivalist topic, the more you find that the ones who are serious about it are already trying to live as they would during whatever scenario they anticipate. If these rich folks have already started pulling guns on each other, it's a pretty clear indictment of the whole concept.
That is exactly how they plan to live when the roof falls in. Shoot each other.
I plan to eat acorns and cattails, and travel by donkey. I figure if I have little enough, nobody will want to take it from me.
I'm not a Christian, but I do believe blessed are the meek.
Me too....
huh so building something so you can selfishly ride out the terrible consequences of your actions leads to more terrible consequences because the entire culture of the thing is wrapped up in selfishness, scams, and power plays? huh, who would have thought...
Sounds like a bunch of rich idiots in a submarine, but on land.
Perfect description.
While I occasionally ran across a “bunker” article I never paid much attention to it as the idea of life in a “bunker” seemed a worthless idea. Little did I imagine it was pre-Armageddon dangerous as well.
Yeah, a danger to themselves and others.
Obviously “it’s the others” part that bothers me.
People such as yourself and fam (and others) who have wisely prepared will without doubt be targets of the entitled reckless vultures.
Yeah. There's sort of a paradox here. The more you prepare, the more you make yourself a target. Fingers crossed they kill each other before they get to us! :) More serious thoughts a bit later.
I started writing a piece titled “So You Want To Be A Marauder” that attempts to explore the variables and decision trees the collapse boogie men will be dealing with. Everybody just assumes it will be a successful strategy. “They” will take your stuff. I decided to become they.
I stopped writing it because if you take a serious look at some likely scenarios, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. Much more stressful to contemplate than typical prepping scenarios. It seems clear to me that being a villain will be far more difficult and dangerous than learning how to grow some potatoes.
So while I agree than being too obviously successful at prepping will paint a target on your back, I feel confident that the number of successful gangs will be low and also self limiting.
The armed lifeboat is a miserable one
No kidding.
I don't suppose it's occurred to any of them to NOT fuck up the planet?
Now let’s talk about the bunker that the failing devil incarnate wants to build under his big, beautiful ballroom.
Fingers crossed it goes the way of xPoint. Could you imagine being stuck in a bunker with the great orange one?
The smell alone...
Jinx, you owe me a Coke!
I was just going to say that!
Including a golf course 🙄
I know they’re going to fail spectacularly because Dr David Brin was invited to (he didn’t identify who invited him) to speak at a “conference” that turned out to be a bunch of billionaires asking him, an astrophysicist and futurist writer, his predictions of our future, and questions directly about how to control security teams once the collapse happens.
These sociopaths can’t understand that survival depends upon cooperation. If you treat everyone around you like objects, yeah, it’s NOT going to go well for you once any potential punishment goes away.
Also, these are the exact same entitled assholes who couldn’t quarantine for less than a week before they went stir-crazy and went out to spread the pandemic 🙄 No way they’re going to last 3 weeks in their bunker…
Imagine being locked in a bunker, with like-minded sociopaths, after we've lost the birds and the bees and the flowers in the trees.
Only pathological sociopaths and psychopaths would find it 'appealing'.
Lots of these monsters are buying their way into Aotearoa NZ to bug out, from the carnage they have accelerated.
Musk wants to go to Mars because he knows that habitat is collapsing on his home planet, go figure.
I have a high voltage switching and protection certification from the London Electricity Board, I've never met a complex electrical system that never failed.
Over 100 complex civilizations have previously collapsed, none had a fraction of the complexity we rely on, but they did have parallels with our predicament.
Overshoot, climate change due to deforestation, psychopathic rulers, all the ingredients are locked in.
I delved into this aspect of our predicament in my blog post titled: "A Tsunami of Climate Change Refugees heading to Aotearoa New Zealand".
https://kevinhester.live/2020/01/13/a-tsunami-of-climate-change-refugees-heading-to-aotearoa-new-zealand/
Imagine how much poverty could be alleviated with a quarter of a billion that he's spending on his bunker.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/04/tech/inside-plans-for-mark-zuckerberg-massive-260m-bunker-on-secluded-hawaiian-island/
Indeed. I agree with 100 percent of this. These people are mentally ill. They have quite a combination of narcissism and psychopathy, fed by a range of other neuroses they inflicted on themselves. It takes that kind of mental illness to think it's better to spend your wealth on space colonization, robots, and bunkers while destroying the only planet we know can sustain life.
Couldn't happen to a *nicer* bunch of bros, lol.
I always wonder about all the support staff they're used to - these guys and their families are the weakest imaginable people to try to live in bunkers, much less for a long time and without personal chefs, nannies, estheticians, body guards, doctors, stylists, etc. Where are they all going to live? Do they expect their employees to give up their families? How will they be compensated? Who cares about money if the planet is blowing up?
So many questions! And at the end of the day, I wouldn't want to live in the world they survive!
Egads!!! Who will clean the toilets???
There is no version of this timeline where they live a good life in their bunkers. No version of the future works without a full embrace of nature and repairing what we’ve done.