Rich Americans Activate Pandemic Escape Plans (bloomberg.com) 257
As coronavirus infections tore across the U.S. in early March, a Silicon Valley executive called the survival shelter manufacturer Rising S Co. He wanted to know how to open the secret door to his multimillion-dollar bunker 11 feet underground in New Zealand. From a report: The tech chief had never used the bunker and couldn't remember how to unlock it, said Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Co. "He wanted to verify the combination for the door and was asking questions about the power and the hot water heater and whether he needed to take extra water or air filters," Lynch said. The businessman runs a company in the Bay Area but lives in New York, which was fast becoming the world's coronavirus epicenter. "He went out to New Zealand to escape everything that's happening," Lynch said, declining to identify the bunker owner because he keeps his client lists private. "And as far as I know, he's still there."
For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities. In recent weeks, the country has been lauded for its response to the pandemic. It enforced a four-week lockdown early, and today has more recoveries than cases. Only 12 people have died from the disease. The U.S. death toll stands at more than 39,000, meaning that country's death rate per capita is about 50 times higher.
The underground global shelter network Vivos already has installed a 300-person bunker in the South Island, north of Christchurch, said Robert Vicino, the founder of the California-based company. He's fielded two calls in the past week from prospective clients eager to build additional shelters on the island. In the U.S., two dozen families have moved into a 5,000-person Vivos shelter in South Dakota, he said, where they're occupying a bunker on a former military base that's about three-quarters the size of Manhattan. Vivos has also built an 80-person bunker in Indiana, and is developing a 1000-person shelter in Germany. Rising S Co. has planted about 10 private bunkers in New Zealand over the past several years. The average cost is $3 million for a shelter weighing about 150 tons, but it can easily go as high as $8 million with additional features like luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.
For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities. In recent weeks, the country has been lauded for its response to the pandemic. It enforced a four-week lockdown early, and today has more recoveries than cases. Only 12 people have died from the disease. The U.S. death toll stands at more than 39,000, meaning that country's death rate per capita is about 50 times higher.
The underground global shelter network Vivos already has installed a 300-person bunker in the South Island, north of Christchurch, said Robert Vicino, the founder of the California-based company. He's fielded two calls in the past week from prospective clients eager to build additional shelters on the island. In the U.S., two dozen families have moved into a 5,000-person Vivos shelter in South Dakota, he said, where they're occupying a bunker on a former military base that's about three-quarters the size of Manhattan. Vivos has also built an 80-person bunker in Indiana, and is developing a 1000-person shelter in Germany. Rising S Co. has planted about 10 private bunkers in New Zealand over the past several years. The average cost is $3 million for a shelter weighing about 150 tons, but it can easily go as high as $8 million with additional features like luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.
Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody will let you out if you keep forgetting the combination.
Re:Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:5, Insightful)
With a 1000 person shelter nobody should let you in either, at least not until you have been tested AND gone through a 14 day quarantine. All it needs is for one infected person to get in and it's no better than the outside, quite possibly worse.
Re:Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh.. much worse. An underground bunker with 1000 people in close quarters is the opposite of what is good for a pandemic situation; Although it should be OK if none of those thousand are infected and nobody comes in or out; A normal large building or compound in a fenced off or walled off area for the cost is better (Much larger than a bunker of same cost), assuming zombies are not trying to break in. if its made so everything required to live until incident is over is there and nobody comes in or out.
And when more supplies ARE eventually needed, which is inevitable.... there is enough room so that someone can bring supplies in and then isolate themselves for 14 days while inside.
In fact; in a more typical building there can be much more separate facilities for people than in a bunker.
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"do these ultra-wealthy get a pass and are allowed to build up an arms store in their bunkers, whereas the common folks had theirs taken away?" - oh dear, conspiracy theories abound. Most people in civilised areas do not have guns at home. Deaths from Covid19 will mak
Re:Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:4, Insightful)
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Murder holes are for stone age wimps. Our entrance uses ED-209s.
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There is an easy way to test your theory. If you are right the country with the most guns should be the safest from gun violence.
Turns out you are wrong, more guns equals less safe.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/upload... [vox-cdn.com]
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If we're talking mad max fantasies, you're better off with a lathe and a decent machinist.
Re: Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:2)
Not that the US wouldnâ(TM)t top the list anyway, but that is a misleading chart. Of course you might expect fewer gun-related homicides in a country with fewer guns. What matters is the overall homicide level (which I am pretty sure the US would top anyway).
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It does. And not by a little bit. The homicide rate in the US is five to ten times the rate in most of western Europe, three times Canada, seven and a half times New Zealand.
Re: Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:4, Insightful)
Well if you're just gonna pull numbers out of your ass I guess you can make whatever argument t you like. How about some actual sources?
https://www.indexmundi.com/fac... [indexmundi.com]
The US is #55 when rated by most homicides, out of a total of 167. Or 112 when ranked by least homicides. Either way it's about the same as Greenland, and we all know what a horrificly violent shitshow that place is. But both of them are completely blown out of the water by the wonderful socialist gun-free nation of Venezuela, which is ranked #3 with a homicide rather that's more than 10 times higher. Unfortunately they lose out to the peaceful nation-state of Rwanda, which has half their homicide rate ... clearly an incredibly peaceful place by comparison! Nothing bad ever happens in Rwanda.
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Suicides should not be in the gun death numbers, as that if someone wants to off themselves, they'll find another way to do it even if no gun available.
Hell, look at the high suicide numbers in countries with virtually NO guns, like Japan.
Let''s at least get "real" numbers to compare here.
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OR, being less safe causes more guns to be sold.
You have the causation reversed.
Re: Don't accidentally lock yourself in (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying that suicides are an example of "guns being used against their owner" is more than a little crazy. It's an example of guns being used BY their owners.
Even if I were to buy that idiotic definition, though, suicides and homicides combined do not make up the majority of usage. Not by a long shot.
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I'm pretty sure that ban was summarily ignored by the population. I'm pulling this off the top of my head, but they only collected about 10%(?) of the registered guns.
Found a link: https://www.newsweek.com/new-z... [newsweek.com]
Compliance was at 18%. Unless you're going to arrest 3 out of 5 people, I'd say they'd be safe to keep their guns.
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If you read the article you link more carefully, you'll see that it was at an estimated worst case 18% hand-in rate (32000 out of an unknown number for which the highest estimate was 175000) with seven weeks left to go. The BBC reports that the final figure [bbc.com] was over 56000, so at least 32%.
If the compliance rate had been 0% and every relevant firearm had a different owner (which seems improbable), that would still only amount to 1 in 28 of the population
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I dunno if New Zealand would be the place to go now...didn't they ban pretty much all guns there just a year or so ago?
No.
I've played that game (Score:5, Funny)
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You just have to be careful, as the people who build the vaults often have ulterior motives and may be running experiments on the vault inhabitants.
Oh it's worse than that. Last time I left my vault I clipped through the floor in a reality breaking bug. I'm now sitting underneath the world staring a the skybox wondering why I still have mobile signal to post this from the void.
Oh and it turns out the earth is flat and sits inside a low-resolution cube. Looks like those guys were right all along.
Rising S is the Walmart of shelters (Score:2)
You think you're getting a good deal but it's a piece of shit that breaks as soon as you look at it funny.
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These are bomb shelters (Score:5, Insightful)
Fallout is a video game. You can take some lessons from it's themes, but you shouldn't take practical lessons.
Our ruling class has long since ceased to be affected by the things that hurt us. We need to come to terms with that because it represents a fundamental breakdown in the systems as laid out by Adam Smith. Hell, even Smith was concerned about that.
In any case we need to make adjustments to our civilization to address this. As it stands they're literally telling us to go die for the Stock Market while they sit safely in bunkers.
Re:These are bomb shelters (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct mob response to a bunkered elite is to fill in the entrance and vents with concrete.
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Yeah Fallout gives good life advice. Such as Fallout 76 has taught me that after you come out of your shelter the world will have bizarrely low resolution textures, you will constantly walk into invisible walls and there will be godrays beaming from the ground.
Re:If video games taught us anything (Score:4, Informative)
The ultra-rich can afford bunkers that you cannot open. You simply can't.
I don't need to get in. Not a single one of the bunkers Rising S builds comes with an internal air supply or CO2 reduction, not even the $8 million model. I can weld the door shut and weld a light steel plate over the air intakes (or air intake; the cheapest only have one), cut the cable to the solar array (yeah, zero internal power storage either) and walk away. It'll all be over in a couple of hours. A couple of days, tops. In a few thousand years, it'll be an archeological curiosity. Those things aren't survival bunkers. They're death traps. If I can think of it, so can Bubba in that angry mob, and Bubba has his welder in his truck right now.
But then, we're not talking about ultra-rich in this case. This schlub hiding in New Zealand is barely rich if all he can afford is a death trap from Rising S. The ultra-rich can afford a proper bunker with a decade long air recycling system, with repair components, a completely subterranean geothermal power supply, multiple hidden entrances, and a last ditch buried entrance with included excavator to dig their way out. There aren't more than a few thousand people in the world who can afford that, and there aren't more than a few hundred who could get it built secretly. Most of those few hundred are in positions of sufficient local political power that they didn't spend a dime of their own money and still have access to such a bunker. They were built during the Cold War and are actively maintained by the military.
I would be astonished if there's even 5 privately built, privately held actual survival bunkers on Earth and I wouldn't be surprised if there are none at all.
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The best No True Survival Bunker fiction I've read.
If there aren't any "real" ones in the world, your definition isn't very useful for discussing what does exist.
My second paragraph described both my requirements for a survival bunker and explicitly states that some exist. I didn't call out NORAD by name but the whole world knows that if they can get the blast doors of the Cheyenne Mountain complex closed in time, they can survive pretty much anything short of the convicts on Luna pounding the whole mountain into rubble with an orbital bombardment of rocks. It's been featured in enough movies and TV shows that even the illiterate masses know this.
Survival bunkers
Usual stupid hybris of the rich (Score:2)
Re:Usual stupid hybris of the rich (Score:4, Funny)
What do they plan to do if their money all of a sudden loses value?
Then they'll have plenty of toilet paper.
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People like you seem to miss an important fact. If their wealth drops by 90%, so does yours. If they had 1000x more wealth than you, they still have 1000x more wealth than you after a crash.
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People like you seem to miss an important fact. If their wealth drops by 90%, so does yours. If they had 1000x more wealth than you, they still have 1000x more wealth than you after a crash.
OK you win, back to the pitch forks and guillotines. On a day to day level the uber rich contribute little and if they are second generation likely nothing. The middle class run all important systems and keep them working. The working poor run the restaurants and more menial tasks. The non-working poor are a complete drain and generally make life bad for everyone above them between their cost and crime. All the uber important people should be allowed to flee on the condition that they surrender what th
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They make , or inherit money and then start thinking to be immortal beings. What do they plan to do if their money all of a sudden loses value ? I don't think many of them will be good at becoming self sufficient pioneers to survive in a world devoid of people willing to serve their needs. Good luck when their food stashes are gone, when their stuff needs maintenance and needs to be fixed, when they need medical assistance but drugs nor physicians aren't around any more . Then they'll finally grasp that without other people around they are just a bunch of spoiled idiots good for nothing sitting over a pile of banknotes.
People like you seem to miss an important fact. If their wealth drops by 90%, so does yours. If they had 1000x more wealth than you, they still have 1000x more wealth than you after a crash.
People like you seem to miss an important fact. If money loses 90% of its value assuming all of the the rich will be unaffected and stay rich is naive. In an economy where money is worth 10% of what it used to be ,purchasing power has plummeted to the point where you are better off growing your own food than working for the kind of pittance you get paid in that kind of an economy and a whole bunch of rich people will wiped out. But then again, he wasn't talking about the mother of all depressions. He was as
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Which brings me to the other important fact people like you miss which is that in this case my extensive stockpile of guns, ammo, dry foods and water purifiers will rise exponentially in value and my neighbours will no longer be laughing at my wind generator, solar array and fleet of armoured electric trucks with provision for a turret mounted M2A1, a few of whom I might have stashed away in my bunker/cellar along with some RPGs and a flame thrower.
Sarah Connor posts on Slashdot?
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I don't think the World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV servers will still be up in case of world-wide economic collapse.
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...in this case my extensive stockpile of guns, ammo, dry foods and water purifiers will rise exponentially in value and my neighbours will no longer be laughing at my wind generator, solar array and fleet of armoured electric trucks...
If your neighbor knows about all that, you have already failed.
And you don't have any of that, do you. Fleet of armoured electric trucks. Ha. If that existed, it would be headline news around the world.
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People like you seem to miss an important fact. If money loses 90% of its value assuming all of the the rich will be unaffected and stay rich is naive. In an economy where money is worth 10% of what it used to be ,purchasing power has plummeted to the point where you are better off growing your own food than working for the kind of pittance you get paid in that kind of an economy and a whole bunch of rich people will wiped out.
Yes, because rich people store all of their billions on pallets of cash in a barn behind their house. That's not how things works. Did you even go to school?
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The difference is that we peasants can actually do things and would thus have a fighting chance at surviving such a crash, while the useless spoiled idiots sitting on banknotes that are only good as TP (well, the ones they have on hand, as most of it is just numbers in a computer!) would be more helpless than their own spoiled housepets if they can't quickly leverage that contaminated TP stash to do the one thing they know how to do: pay other people to actually do things for them while they sit on their as
Living the dream (Score:2)
Vault-tec (Score:2)
Better hope you at least get one of the control vaults, and not one of the experimental vaults.
New TV show (Score:5, Funny)
Doomsday Preppers - The 1%.
You've seen the hillbillies. You've seen the rednecks. Now witness something normally seen only on C-SPAN, dumb 1%ers. Watch in awe as the rich people who own the country's wealth spend it on ill conceived doomsay plans which fail when they simply are unable to get cellphone service because they can't remember the combination to their own safe rooms. Marvel at the glory of rich white folk whose disaster plan for a pandemic involves driving to an airport and hoping no one coughs on them while they walk past common folk in their priority line. Be amazed at how these dumb people are still somehow smart enough to realise America can't get it's shit together and they have a better chance of surviving among the sheep and people who you assume are overly friendly when in reality they are trying to say "six" and not the "sex" you heard.
Available now for common folk to watch on CBS.
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I wonder how these galaxy-brains mostly settled on New Zealand as a hideout location. If the shit ever really hit the fan, there would be ambushes waiting for them at their landing strips in NZ. The guy who wanted his bunker hidden deep in the Alaskan wilderness is the only smart one.
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Funny but untrue. He called now, long before any breakdown in anything. That's not stupid.
Also, if you're in the 0.01% (1% is a misnomer - you are possibly in the 1% if you post on /. and have a nice tech job. There's very likely 99 waiters, factory workers, cleaning and security people and others earning considerably less for each of us here). So if you're in the 0.01% then you don't go past the common folk on the airport. The priority line is for the wannabes. The 0.01% never enter the terminal building -
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Funny but untrue.
Most comedy is.
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CBS: Common Broadcast Shit.
Underground bunker math (Score:5, Funny)
Underground bunker + beard + guns + beans = unhinged religious nutjob, probably racist.
Underground bunker + tech support hotline + New Zealand postal code + supply of Evian = tech entrepreneur.
New Zealand is becoming the Ark Fleet Ship B.
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Underground bunker + beard + guns + beans = unhinged religious nutjob, probably racist.
Underground bunker + tech support hotline + New Zealand postal code + supply of Evian = tech entrepreneur.
New Zealand is becoming the Ark Fleet Ship B.
I always love the irony of how bigoted people project that on others. Of course anyone religious is an unhinged nutjob who is racist, as if other varieties could exist.
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Of course anyone religious is an unhinged nutjob who is racist, as if other varieties could exist.
He did say probably.
I always love the irony of how bigoted people project that on others.
It was a joke, son. Did your leg come off in his hand? Your clue was the phrase "supply of Evian." Jokes frequently involve amplifying stereotypes. It's called exaggerating for effect. It's commonly done in something called humor. Perhaps you've heard of it? If you haven't, you might be an unhinged religious nutjob.
Re: Underground bunker math (Score:2)
You see, New Zealand is in fact a spaceship. The navigation computer is locked. The screen reads 'Destination: Zenu'.
When is the launch date and can we get all celebrities to NZ on time? Particularly those that sing silly songs from their mansions while the world burns...
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I keep struggling to solve your differential equation because when I set tech entrepreneur = unhinged religious nut-job, probably racist the two sides of the equation don't solve...
unless beard = new zealand postal code
and beans + guns = tech support hotline.
Never mind your math checks out, it solved.
Its all good I guess (Score:3)
Here is my problem with any of this. If its really so very bad you need to cower in your bunker or drift in the deep ocean on your private yacht for the better part of decade what will be eventually opening up back to?
Sure maybe you will avoid the worst of it. However it also probably means you will be 10 years older and likely not even know what happen to the people and things your cared most about.
In some not strictly physical sense; I think many maybe even most of us would be happier riding out a catastrophe of that magnitude with the rest of the rabble or simply dying along side those we care for.
Re: Its all good I guess (Score:2)
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Viciously torture and kill everyone you ever cared about, poison your nearest major civilian area, then mutilate and disable yourself and we'll let you ride out the apocalypse; if you'd take me up on that offer then I really hope you live a long way away and have very little power. "The journey" should be about more than extending its length by any means possible.
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I'd rather have 10 years alive under any conditions imaginable than die next week in a doomsday scenario. Life is about the journey, not the destination.
And to the inevitable AC who thinks they are creative enough to come up with conditions that would have me wishing for death, yes I'd still prefer to live, even then.
If every single post-apocalyptic book- and any time in recorded history where civilization has seen massive, extreme drought/famine/violence/death-has taught me one thing, it's that Long John Silver was right when he said "Thems that die'll be the lucky ones". Don't underestimate what humans will do to each other when the fabric of society is ripped away.
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Same here.
I just don't get where people think it "better to die for..." or sacrifice this, etc.
As far as I know, I only get this ONE shot at life and so far, I really like this living thing.
Of course I care for others and have loved ones, but if it comes down to the absolute you or me scenario...I'm choosing me.
I have a hard time believing so many peo
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Same here.
I just don't get where people think it "better to die for..." or sacrifice this, etc.
As far as I know, I only get this ONE shot at life and so far, I really like this living thing.
Of course I care for others and have loved ones, but if it comes down to the absolute you or me scenario...I'm choosing me.
I have a hard time believing so many people do not have what I would consider to be a 'normal' level of self survival instincts.
While I laud people the greater good over themselves mentality, I just don't see it and in the world when it comes down to it, I ONLY have myself and my life and that's worth fighting for with everything I have.
I"m actually shocked that that many others do not have this instinct.
It's about levels of identification and the strength of those bonds within the group you identify with. The base level is the individual-any rational individual will, all other considerations removed, fight for its own survival. But as you go higher up the hierarchy of identification: family, tribe, city, state/nationality, species, etc, things change. Someone might risk their life for a family member, maybe a friend, but not their neighbor. Tribal bonds tend to be strong (and can often mirror ethnic li
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You know, in nature, you see parents that eat their young in some situations, right?
What's so different in all humans as far as the kid vs myself thing?
Just saying in general....kids don't take the absolute #1 position in everything in every situation in the world.
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You know, in nature, you see parents that eat their young in some situations, right?
Sometimes. It can be situational-eat some of the young to conserve resources for the rest of the offspring. Or a new male mate will come in and kill the offspring of a previous male mate so that the female has his own offspring and resources aren't wasted on offspring that aren't his. But you also see parents in nature that will starve themselves to death making sure their offspring are fed.
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Not criticizing your feelings but really stop and think about it.
You, and lets say your wife and child go secure yourselves in some tin can some place for a decade.
Your toddler becomes a teenager having never interacted with any other children or adults for that matter except "possibly" by telepresense with some other tin can occupants. (Of course transmitting EM exposes your location to discovery by possibly disparate survivors who might want to take your stuff). He or she never sees more of the world tha
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The pandemic will be over when everyone catches it, and thus herd immunity kicks in. That will take roughly two years, without a working vaccine. So, you won't have to sit in the bunker for 10 years; it will be only two.
Also, if you can comprehend basic epidemiology, only 1-3% of the population will die due to coronavirus, and most of them will be elderly, with a smattering of health compromised. Its not going (significantly) change society; it barely qualifies as "deadly".
They always do this (Score:2)
There is a long history of the wealthy escaping plagues in the city by fleeing to their country estates - and bringing the plague with them to previously uninfected remote rural areas. Idaho had an outbreak from Californians bringing it in with them to the ski resorts. During the Black Death - yes, that one - wealthy fled the city to the country and we know this because they wrote about it. A famous book, The Decameron, was written on a country estate while the world died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]
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During the Black Death - yes, that one - wealthy fled the city to the country and we know this because they wrote about it. A famous book, The Decameron, was written on a country estate while the world died.
Based on your wikipedia link, the book in question is fiction and was actually written after the epidemic in question. The stories in it are also not about the world at the time (unless they were updated by the author--as many apparently were--to reflect current culture to be more accessible to and enjoyable by the reader).
Boccaccio borrowed the plots of almost all his stories (just as later writers borrowed from him). Although he consulted only French, Italian and Latin sources, some of the tales have their origin in such far-off lands as India, the Middle East, Spain, and other places. Some were already centuries old. For example, part of the tale of Andreuccio of Perugia (II, 5) originated in 2nd-century Ephesus (in the Ephesian Tale). The frame narrative structure (though not the characters or plot) originates from the Panchatantra,[citation needed] which was written in Sanskrit before AD 500 and came to Boccaccio through a chain of translations that includes Old Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin. Even the description of the central motivating event of the narrative, the Black Plague (which Boccaccio surely witnessed), is not original, but is based on a description in the Historia gentis Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon, who lived in the 8th century.
Some scholars have suggested that some of the tales for which no prior source has been found may still not have been invented by Boccaccio, but may have been circulating in the local oral tradition, of which Boccaccio availed himself. Boccaccio himself says that he heard some of the tales orally. In VII, 1, for example, he claims to have heard the tale from an old woman who heard it as a child.
The fact that Boccaccio borrowed the storylines that make up most of the Decameron does not mean he mechanically reproduced them. Most of the stories take place in the 14th century and have been sufficiently updated to the author's time that a reader may not know that they had been written centuries earlier or in a foreign culture. Also, Boccaccio often combined two or more unrelated tales into one (such as in II, 2 and VII, 7).
Moreover, many of the characters actually existed, such as Giotto di Bondone, Guido Cavalcanti, Saladin and King William II of Sicily. Scholars have even been able to verify the existence of less famous characters, such as the tricksters Bruno and Buffalmacco and their victim Calandrino. Still other fictional characters are based on real people, such as the Madonna Fiordaliso from tale II, 5, who is derived from a Madonna Flora who lived in the red light district of Naples. Boccaccio often intentionally muddled historical (II, 3) and geographical (V, 2) facts for his narrative purposes. Within the tales of The Decameron, the principal characters are usually developed through their dialogue and actions, so that by the end of the story they seem real and their actions logical given their context.
Another of Boccaccio's frequent techniques was to make already existing tales more complex. A clear example of this is in tale IX, 6, which was also used by Chaucer in his "The Reeve's Tale", which more closely follows the original French source than does Boccaccio's version. In the Italian version, the host's wife and the two young male visitors occupy all three beds and she also creates an explanation of the happenings of the evening. Both elements are Boccaccio's invention and make for a more complex version than either Chaucer's version or the French source (a fabliau by Jean de Boves).
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No more than Chaucer wrote his famous book on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury. That's the framing narrative. It's fictional.
(Also, while the disease may be "that one", the most salient pandemic of bubonic plague for English-speakers is probably the one in the 1660s, not the one in the 1340s).
The govment can just take over the (Score:2)
The govment can just take over the shelters. Hell if things get really bad then the army can take then over for there own use on there own.
New Zealand... (Score:2)
The proverbial pound of cure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the ironic thing about being so rich you can build a bunker to ride out the collapse of civilization. If it ever does happen, when you emerge you'll only be as rich as your ability to hunt or farm food. Even supposing you pick an enclave like New Zealand that holds together, they aren't going to treat you like a prince; your asset portfolio will be meaningless in that world. You hold a million shares of Facebook... so what? Can you castrate a ram, mate?
There is only so far you can separate your fate from the rest of society. Throughout history civilizations have collapsed, and after the collapse their aristocracies became nobodies.
Re: The proverbial pound of cure. (Score:2)
I wonder, what good will money do in a Mad Max setting? None, I suppose.
I'm particularly entertained by the idea of the survival of celebrities.
While it would be prudent not to kill Elon Musk so that he can fix and improve your vehicles what benefit can you get from say, Natalie Portman?
'Images of hot grits flying through mind'
Oh, wait!
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Oh please.
If you are so rich, there is a couple pounds of gold, jewellery and some valuable art hidden either in your vault or in places you can easily get to. Stuff that doesn't lose value and replaces currency whenever that breaks down. Most likely other stuff as well. A bundle of nice automatic weapons are sure to fetch a good price if society really collapses completely, and those shares not in Facebook but in mining and oil companies are likely to retain value if its only a crisis.
Throughout history civilizations have collapsed, and after the collapse their aristocracies became nobodies.
And just as often the
Civilization isn't collapsing (Score:3)
This is a huge problem, because the fundamental control we have on them abusing the power we gave them has always been that if they fuck the world up they'll suffer too.
Private jets, private islands and bunkers, private medical systems, hell even private electrical grids break _all_ of that. And you can bet they have their own farms and food supply Skywalker ranch anyone?
I mentioned this elsew
Vault-Tec (Score:2)
We all know what happened to Braberton in Fallout4 when he got in bed with the US Military and Vault-Tec...
All the while they're urging us to go back to work (Score:3)
I couldn't figure out why Trump kept picking fights with the governor of Michigan (a swing state no less) until Seder pointed out that she's on Joe Biden's list of potential VP candidates.
Basically it's the Tea Party all over again, where you have "spontaneous" protests announced on Fox News weeks in advance with the full support of the President and T-Shirt sellers, porta potties and multi-angle press cameras set up well in advance. Astroturfing.
Re: (Score:3)
Worse still, you have to wonder who is running the propaganda arm that mobilizes the Useful Idiots. I recently saw an excellent term for one certain class of agents provocateurs: cosmoturfers.
Indeed (Score:2)
"The tech chief had never used the bunker and couldn't remember how to unlock it,"
So no filter had ever been replaced, checked, disinfected in _years_ if ever, no cleaning, no maintenance, no tests, nothing.
Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Hush! You're spoiling the fun we're gonna have with the CCTV footage!
redistribution mechanism (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why heat it? (Score:2)
asking questions about the power and the hot water heater
Its a water heater. Check the labels on the boxes the next time you are in a building supply store.
Why the fuck would you heat hot water?
Re:Why heat it? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Technically it is “Domestic Water Heater” vs a “Hydronic Water Heater”... but who really cares.
Any remember Y2K? (Score:2)
Step one: Complete (Score:2)
Step two: Get the address and a metric ton of quick dry cement.
Re: How luxurious is the food I wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
Do these folks have that? At a place 3/4s the size of a large city for only 1000 it would be stupid not to have a huge warehouse including seed bank.
Are these dainty flowers of humanit
Re: (Score:3)
For super-wealthy people, with a relatively small number of mouths to feed, it's easily feasible to have decades of emergency food handy. Supplemented with some fruit trees on the grounds I suppose.
And sure, if rich people can survive nuclear winter they can probably do a bit of plants. Why are wealthy people dainty?
Re: (Score:3)
Give him a break, he's 300 years old. It was really like that when he was young!
He'll be dead of COVFEFE within a few weeks, let him have his last few fever dreams before he kicks over.
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They're not "end of the world" preppers. They're prepping for a situation like WW2 or the US Civil War or some other ~5 year breakdown of civilized society. They just want to sit it out in a safe place and wait for it to be over, not survive on their own indefinitely.
Re: How luxurious is the food I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems obvious, but even just a semi-rich-person entry level private shelter villa would have indoor greenhouses with LED lighting, power generation, and power storage.
And it isn't "hard farm labor," it is "light garden labor." Farm labor is hard because the farmer expects you to make him lots of money. If you're growing your own food in planters that were prepared in advance, it isn't hard labor even if you work hard! And they have power tools, if they wanted to till a field, that isn't hard labor either. If the tractor has some minor problem, they don't have to jump down and bust ass trying to get it working ASAP like on a profit farm, they can just get an engineer on a video call and step through the troubleshooting slowly and safely.
Rich people often garden. If you ever visit a high income neighborhood, you might notice that in addition to the landscaping that they hire people to maintain they also have vegetable and flower gardens in the back that they maintain themselves. For entertainment.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not a prepper, eh? Trust me, if you have the money there are some very good food alternatives out there for survival situations. Normal canned goods may only last a few years but there are companies making high quality canned meals that last for decades and maintain decent taste, quality and nutrition. A year's worth fits easily on a standard pallet. These rich assholes could have twenty years worth of food hoarded away down there.
It's ok, but not really desirable (Score:2)
there are companies making high quality canned meals that last for decades and maintain decent taste, quality and nutrition.
I've had some of them, while not really a preppier I've looked into various long term food options... to me none of them seem that great compared to food I can get as takeout from any restaurant still today.
So why would I want to pay a ton of money, to live somewhere that is more remote and isolated, but your quality of life is essentially an upper-end prison?
If I'm getting takeout ju
Re: (Score:2)
So, what's your plan if the food chain gets interrupted?
We've already seen a pork processing plant that I believe they said is responsible for close to 1/3 of all the US production is shut down due to internal virus spread within workers....and now we're hearing news of problems with fi
you thought those films were fiction (Score:3)
Release the BALROG!
Re: (Score:2)
A freezer worth of food only costs 1 trip or 1 delivery, if done properly, you don't even need to be exposed.
Re: (Score:3)
Got plans for if the power goes out?
Not sure where you live, but pretty much every place in the world is at some threat from Mother Nature in some form or other which often is seasonal.
I mean, for a large swath of the US, Hurricane Season starts up June 1 for one example.
What happens if one or more areas gets slammed hard by a hurricane?
Wild fires in other places?
Earthquake ?
River flooding?
To
Re: (Score:2)
Either they are actually sheltered away from the world, meaning they are eating all of staples usually found in rations - rice, beans, and so on. Or if they are eating fresh chicken and vegetables, how isolated are they really?
When the rations run out . . . they'll be eating each other.
So it's Soylent Green, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Bon appetite.
Re: (Score:2)
If I was a rich guy with with a rich guy bunker, I would have a super-insulated walk-in freezer with meat and other perishable items, suitably extra-protected with mylar, oxyen absorbers and/or argon purging.
Based on my own pedestrian experience vacuum sealing and freezing meat, that would give you a year of pretty good eating without many compromises in terms of food quality. Maybe even longer, but I generally eat up my vac sealed and frozen meat within about six months, but it's still excellent at six mo
Re: (Score:3)
Corn , potatoes , tomatoes, onions, Squash, peppers. All of these pretty much grow themselves with little care needed in California climate. Same for carrots, beets, broccoli , cabbage and peas during winter.
Chickens are easy to keep in backyard coops and give you eggs and meat.
This can be done in any backyard in Silicon Valley and is a great destressor from IT work.
You overestimate the difficulty of growing your own food.
Grains and pulses stay for a long time so those you can store in bulk and even sprout
Re: (Score:2)
They are preppers who basically decide to imprison themselves for decades. Then they are survivalists, who learn about the edible food in the area and when. Knows how to hunt without guns and live off the land.
Preppers need more stuff to survive, while survivalists know how to deal with less stuff, as well they are more apt to be flexible to unplanned conditions. As locking a hundred people in a bunker to avoid a pandemic, having one person being a carrier, could just infect everyone. While the survivali
Re: (Score:3)
Right.
I'm sure that the invention of the wheel, the lever, navigation by the stars, and the idea of irrational numbers were all motivated by the notion of monetary profit.
Re: (Score:3)
No, actually... while the actual details behind invention of the wheel is lost to prehistory, what we might recognize today as a wheelbarrow was probably one of the earliest uses of the wheel (and the lever too, for that matter), and was likely used to cart stones or animal carcasses that were otherwise too heavy to easily transport from the location they were obtained to their domicile, which may have been some distance away. Numbers had not even been invented, and you are seriously thinking that peopl