Doomsday prepping is not a usual Soylent subject, but apocalypses are a staple of geek culture. Do Peter Thiel's preparations make sense?
You know things are getting risky when billionaires start making plans to flee to New Zealand on the off chance civilization might collapse. This week's New Yorker details the doomsday survival plans of Peter Thiel, and other notable Silicon Valley tech moguls.
The thing is, despite their virtually unlimited budgets, none of these guys is doing it right.
[...] In more realistic circumstances, there are 21.8 million veterans in the U.S., with various levels of professional expertise in solving problems like bunker busting. Hell, there's more guns than people in this country. Fixed locations are inherently vulnerable by their very nature, subject to siege, and allowing attackers to patiently plan ways to penetrate them. Any billionaire's hoard of survival supplies will be a natural target following the breakdown of society. Keeping them secret will be a challenge too, when contractors have been paid to construct them, delivery men have carried the supplies in, and even the armed guards may decide their friends and families could use all those tins of spam a little more desperately than their paranoid employer.
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During their investigation of the purchase of a large estate in New Zealand by Peter Thiel, Matt Nippert and Anne Gibson, reporters for The New Zealand Herald, noticed that certain processes required by the Overseas Investment Act had not been followed. The explanation: Peter Thiel is a NZ citizen and hence wasn't required to follow the procedures for an overseas investment.
If Thiel is so sure that Trump will deliver, why does he need a bolt hole and more importantly, citizenship in another country?
One question being asked was why Mr. Thiel became a New Zealander in 2011. Close behind that was how it happened.
If you like New Zealand enough to want to become a citizen, the country's Internal Affairs Department noted on Wednesday, one requirement is "to have been physically in New Zealand for a minimum of 1,350 days in the five years preceding the citizenship application." Another requirement is that you "continue to reside" there after becoming a citizen.
Mr. Thiel, 49, does not appear to have done either.
[...] If Mr. Thiel was not a resident in New Zealand for the necessary amount of time, an exception must have been made. The government has not responded to questions about whether that happened and, if so, what the reason was.
Netflix's CEO offered to resign from Facebook's board in 2016, citing his fellow board member Peter Thiel's support of Donald Trump:
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — who called his fellow board member Thiel's support of Trump "catastrophically bad judgment" in an email leaked to the Times — also offered to resign over his disagreement with Thiel, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday. Sources told WSJ that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg declined Hastings' offer to resign. Facebook declined to comment on the matter to Business Insider.
Now, Thiel may resign from Facebook's board instead in the midst of packing up and leaving the Bay area:
The founder of PayPal and a prominent investor in Silicon Valley, Thiel is reportedly moving his investment firms Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation out of the Bay Area and into Los Angeles this year, according to WSJ.
In L.A., Thiel is also reportedly planning to build "a right-leaning media outlet to foster discussion and community around conservative topics." Thiel bankrolled the lawsuits that eventually forced Gawker Media into bankruptcy, and has been trying to buy Gawker's now-defunct flagship site.
Although Thiel has called Silicon Valley a "one-party state", in the 2016 Presidential election, Hillary Clinton beat President Trump 72 percent to 22 percent in Los Angeles County.
The Guardian also has an article about Thiel's involvement in New Zealand.
Also at Ars Technica, The Mercury News, LA Times, and Vanity Fair.
Related: Peter Thiel Acquires NZ Citizenship and Large Property
Everything Wrong with Peter Thiel's Doomsday Survival Plan
University Could Lose Millions From "Unethical" Research Backed by Peter Thiel
"Black Hole" of Accountability for Drug Trials Flouting FDA Oversight?
Peter Thiel Makes a Bid for Gawker.com
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @08:11AM
You want to move to areas where it's always below freezing. Zombies can't move when they're frozen. Best to get out into space, but even the ultra rich are having a hard time with that one. A space floating zombie could be attracted by your station's gravity pull, but at least it'll still be frozen when you're on the dark side of the planet.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday February 03 2017, @11:41AM
Those must not be pure aryan zombies then.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278340/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday February 03 2017, @02:46PM
I think his plan to flee to New Zealand is a pretty good one, I mean how many Americans even know where NZ is [youtube.com]? It's somewhere near Austria, the place with the kangaroos, sure, but can you point to it on a globe (without reading the labels)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @02:49PM
yea, actually, we can. After the breakdown of society how do we or peter fly there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @05:12PM
Protip: you want one with inertial navigation, radio beacons will shut down when their backup generators run out of fuel and GPS will eventually stop working without updates from the USAF. Also, on-board stairs. It would look really dumb to fly all the way to New Zealand and then break your leg jumping from the airplane because nobody was there to push some boarding stairs up to the door.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Friday February 03 2017, @06:41PM
Afaik are alle commercial airplanes required to have (inertial) navigation and are pilots trained to navigate without systems like GPS.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday February 03 2017, @11:03PM
Good point about the stairs, but you could just use the emergency escape slides.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday February 03 2017, @08:14AM
A Canticle for Liebowitz! Good read, for all you multi-billionaire survival types. There was even a audio program, done rather well, by public radio? Try here: http://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/A_Canticle_for_Liebowitz.php [oldradioworld.com] The two-headed woman will get you every time, once we rebuild our weapons of mass destruction anew!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday February 03 2017, @02:06PM
My favourite book.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:36AM
[...] In more realistic circumstances, there are 21.8 million veterans in the U.S., with various levels of professional expertise in solving problems like bunker busting. Hell, there's more guns than people in this country. Fixed locations are inherently vulnerable by their very nature, subject to siege, and allowing attackers to patiently plan ways to penetrate them. Any billionaire's hoard of survival supplies will be a natural target following the breakdown of society. Keeping them secret will be a challenge too, when contractors have been paid to construct them, delivery men have carried the supplies in, and even the armed guards may decide their friends and families could use all those tins of spam a little more desperately than their paranoid employer.
All the power boils down to hard power. Economic power is only the ploy to hide the brutality and extract extra value from people beside what can be forcefully taken away from them. But when the world becomes intrinsically a wasteland, value of good will efforts deteriorates towards nearly nothingness. However, once the wielders of brutal force get their basic needs met, they may throw a crumb or two off their tables to someone in exchange for a fantastic story or two, or some music and song ... therefore, best strategy for Doomsday survival is perhaps to become a wandering entertainer for fighters who will rule their small parts of the world, and beg for your bare necessities.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday February 03 2017, @11:31AM
I am taking a similar tack... I am in the process of building arduino-based diesel engine and E4OD transmission controllers, learning as much as I can on how to maintain such a thing given minimal/nonexistent factory support.
What I learn on this can be applied to other engine controllers.
I used to build all sorts of industrial/aerospace stuff, but have been forcibly retired for quite a few years. As a "senior citizen", I wield very little hard power, but I do have a wealth of knowledge of how stuff works, and have a collection of tools at hand to fix things, as well as the knowledge to build more tools if the ones I have are either taken or lost.
If all hell breaks loose, our capacity for making new stuff and replacement parts is apt to be hit as well. I am hoping the wielders of hard power will keep me around for the services I can render to keep their stuff working.
I feel ownership and rent-seeking would actually be a liability, not an asset, in a world turned upside down where ability to produce, not the ability to coerce payments from someone else, is considered more valuable to that society.... i.e. a good car mechanic would probably be very useful in a post-apocalyptic society, whereas a guy owning ten rental houses would probably be knocked off just to free the residents of those houses of their burden.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday February 03 2017, @12:30PM
Knowing stuff would just mean you won't be killed outright, but enslaved by some local warlord to use that knowledge in his or her services. Whether that's preferable to death is up to each of us individually.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday February 03 2017, @01:03PM
So... it'll be business as usual except a little more honest. Some general comments:
For political reasons both specifically as a Trump supporter and general anti-prepping media outlook (My god how could someone nut trust his life to Big Brother like we do?) there is intentional blindness for how this works, but in reality someone useful, like say a hand carpenter or an organic farmer doesn't need to stockpile stuff because he's quite useful in society. The value of rich guys stockpiling stuff is that's all their good for so they make the best of it. That dude can't wire up ham radio solar power stuff or whatever, but he can invest $XXX million so at least he's good for something.
I also think its hilarious when non-sociopaths correctly point out its hard for joe6pack to avoid a palace coup and somehow infer the sociopaths who currently are experts at avoiding corporate palace coups and political takeovers and the like are somehow magically not going to continue winning "king of the hill" games just because DC collapses or whatever. A rich old corporate guys who's spent 40 years winning at king of the hill is going to keep on winning even if the electrical grid shuts off. No need for crocodile tears about someone else taking over their retreat, what people should worry about is them becoming cult leaders or something without any restraints operating anymore.
Another peculiar aspect of civilization breakdown is people correctly think it would be difficult to defeat say, the Hells Angels chapter from Vegas. On foot during/after the riots, Vegas being thousands of miles away from me, I'm not to worried.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 03 2017, @07:28PM
It does depend on the definition of "rich".
A bunch of useless green paper and a few numbers with lots of zeros tied to a bank in an unreachable paradise island doesn't carry much weight when even cops are hungry and their children sick.
> A rich old corporate guys who's spent 40 years winning at king of the hill is going to keep on winning even if the electrical grid shuts off.
If the system collapses while they are inside DC, our most competent bullshitters won't make it alive to the Potomac. They're old and surrounded by people who don't like them now, even before they let the system collapse.
It would actually be hilarious to watch them work together for -short- survival.
(Score: 4, Funny) by gringer on Friday February 03 2017, @10:17AM
I've taken the much cheaper doomsday survival option, namely being born in New Zealand.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @02:25PM
Hah! You didn't read the summary. New Zealand is a stationary target for all us roving, gun-laden veteran types! Your tins of spam will be mine!
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Friday February 03 2017, @11:10AM
People acting like the breakdown of civilization would mean that the 7-11 closes are pretty comical.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 03 2017, @04:45PM
It doesn't take much disruption to the status quo to cause panic. After Hurricane Sandy knocked out power in large sections of the Tri-state area people were desperate to charge their cellphones. They camped out in malls that were running off generators so they could charge at the outlets used for floor waxers. Checking your updates on Facebook is not anything like a critical need, really, but they sure thought it was.
Maybe it's a function of making people ever more dependent on government and corporations. Nobody fixes their own stuff anymore and few have any idea how any of the things that enable their lifestyles work. It's all just "tech." I see it on a deeper level than that, too. I grew up in the rural Rockies and even after 20 years of living in NYC I am struck by how helpless and pitiful urbanites are. We would regularly pick berries in the mountains or fish and hunt or garden and think nothing of that being a regular part of our diet, but here people could be standing next to an apple on a tree and would not dare touch it until somebody picked it and offered to sell it to them for $10/lb. And I'm sure I seem the same way to a Kalahari bushman.
I figure in the wake of a global collapse people like the Vietnamese would take over, because those people waste nothing and stop at nothing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by WillR on Friday February 03 2017, @05:49PM
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday February 03 2017, @10:56PM
You have it the wrong way round. The breakdown of civilisation doesn't close the 7-11, the closure of the 7-11 is what breaks down civilisation. All you need is a major interruption to the food supply chain, coupled with a major distraction to hamper the government's efforts to provide relief. Say, a big war and/or a series of very well organised attacks on major fuel depots.
Shops and supermarkets carry enough food to last the communities they support just a few days, maybe a week at most. Most homes carry enough to keep their occupants going for a couple of weeks, give or take. Less if the power goes and the freezer starts to thaw. You're looking at about a month before people start eating cat food, a month and four days before they eat the cats. None of that even takes into account the inevitable panic-buying and hoarding, which would of course hugely exacerbate the problem and move the doomsday timetable forwards significantly.
Obviously it's not not so much of a problem in rural areas, where food can be readily found in nearby farms and wild places, but in cities (you know, where the majority of the population actually are) then an interruption of even a fortnight to the supply chain could really cause problems. Even more so for places like America, where people can't even get to a shop without petrol in their tanks. (The interruption to the supply chain is almost certainly going to involve fuel shortages, heightened by folks simultaneously panic buying fuel and driving for miles in search of food.)
If for whatever reason the trucks ever did stop arriving, you'd be looking at panic buying and stockpiling in urban areas within a fortnight. Looting within three weeks, and food riots within four. Your 7/11 would be closed due to empty shelves by Tuesday of the second week, broken into by Friday and in flames on Sunday. Somewhere around week two or three you'd see an exodus (slow at first, building up quickly) from the cities to the countryside. I give it a fortnight of that before the country people start turning the refugees away at gunpoint, and then you are then looking at looting, raiding and violence at the source of the food production while the cities crumble. Need I go on?
TL;DR - don't take your local 7-11 for granted, it's the only thing between you and catburgers.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 03 2017, @11:29AM
What kind of doomsday plan doesn't account for zombies? I mean, fuck. That's a basic apocalypse staple there.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday February 03 2017, @11:45AM
How will he defend against Sauron and army or Orcs? New Zealand just doesn't sound like a good place to bunker down.
If you build a bunker you have to do it yourself or everyone else involved have to have some kind of fatal "accident", dead men tell no tales. You can't just buy 50000 cans of SPAM all at once. You have to slowly stock up.
But if the Apocalypse depends on me surviving on SPAM I think I'll just pass and join the zombie horde.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday February 03 2017, @02:13PM
Spam, macaroni and tin tomatoes with salt, fresh cracked pepper and sriracha sauce!
OH MAN!!!!! It's like heaven in a bowl...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @04:02PM
Don't forget the Vegemite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @07:11PM
Absolutely. Kiwis just LOVE IT when they're mistaken for the Aussies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday February 03 2017, @12:19PM
Step 1: Find some town where your face isn't well known, and using an array of different intermediaries to do the following:
Step 2: Set up a heavily armed and well fortified compound at the edge of town. Stock it with loads of food, water, guns and ammunition, plenty of fuel and a couple of armoured vehicles. Employ a group of overly paranoid ex-military types and wild-eyed nutball survivalists to drop everything and come live in the compound the moment the alarm sounds. They are expecting some millionaire boss they've never met to show up on doomsday and identify himself with a password.[1]
Step 3: Set up another compound, very much like the one above, on the other side of the same town. They are expecting a different boss with a different photo.
Step 4: Set up a third, just to be sure, on another edge of the town.
Step 5. Buy half an acre of land on a dead-end road a mile or two outside out of town, on the fourth corner of the map. Build a modest but sturdy house on it, surrounded by a modest but sturdy fence / wall. Stock the house with food, water, medicine, books, practical clothing, farming gear, solar panels, rechargeable batteries, high-quality booze, one or two guns and some ammo.[2]
When the shit hits the fan, go live in the house and leave the compounds the fuck alone.
The various gangs will be so busy watching / fighting each other and eliminating every other potential threat within an eighty mile radius they won't even think to come and bother you. If they do come to visit, cultivate the image of a harmless, scruffy eccentric who is friendly and occasionally useful[3], and certainly not worth shooting.
[1] The boss they are expecting is actually just a photo of some random person off the internet.
[2] Obviously the vast majority of your stockpile should be stashed in a cellar under the house, exclusively accessible via a secret door that only you know about.
[3] For added sneakiness, be sure to leave a few essentials items or skillsets out of the supplies/ staff of each compound - Medical books/ knowledge, for example. Then you can "just happen" to have such essentials readily available in your own house, which you can gift to them at opportune moments in order to gain their favour.
Actually, I think this would make a great TV series...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 03 2017, @12:35PM
Although it increases your personal risk, what's living in a fortress without your own cult of adoring worshipers? Boring, that's what!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 03 2017, @07:22PM
The main problems with taking your harem with you are the maintenance of said harem, the distraction required to keep them off each other's throats if there is no media, and how having a harem will attract every crazy ass in a 200-km radius...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @09:26PM
The obvious solution is to use electro-shock aversion therapy to gradually reprogram yourself to find only cabbages sexy. Then you can keep a huge harem of cabbages instead. Much lower maintenance.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday February 03 2017, @11:07PM
There's nothing in that plan that actually requires a zombie apocolypse. Why not start now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @11:27PM
This is the type of intelligent and quality advice I want to get out of a tech site like this. Thank you, I'll start tomorrow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @02:54PM
That's why I keep my escape rockets on rail cars. Each rocket is monitored by a Nest Cam (specially modified to disable the remote destruct feature). I keep several helicopters gassed up at all times. Redundancy plus mobility equals survival.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @03:31PM
I can think of one SHTF scenario you haven't thought of.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 03 2017, @03:16PM
Wow, these guys. Wouldn't it be better to invest in making sure the ship doesn't sink? Instead of prepping to be the rat with the best odds of surviving the sinking? Where's the sense of community, the feeling that we're all in this together?
On airplanes, does their carry on luggage consist mostly of parachutes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @08:23PM
How would that allow them to get so wealthy they couldn't spend it over several lifetimes? These are people that are so narcissistic that they believe they're entitled to be mega-wealthy with millions going without decent food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04 2017, @02:53AM
Would you want to waste you money trying to save a bunch of people who just let you treat them like they do?
(Score: 1) by corey on Friday February 03 2017, @11:44PM
Lot of money required but that's not the issue for a billionaire, but buy a nuclear submarine. They only need to come up for food. But if you learn some botany you could grow stuff onboard.
Live at the bottom of the ocean, no concern for what's going on up on the surface.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Saturday February 04 2017, @12:57AM
Interesting idea. However I imagine a nuclear sub requires some pretty specialised maintenance involving and high tech tools and spare parts from time to time, probably in dry dock. How long could it operate? A couple of years? A decade? Or is the sub just a short stop-gap until things clam down? How long are you planning to be cooped up in there? It raises the question of "surviving" vs "living". If I had the choice between a short, perilous life under the sky or a long, safe one in a metal tube, I'm not sure I'd pick the sub.
However, why not use nuclear sub technology to build an underwater base? Designed properly, it could be a lot more comfortable, and your on-board cabbage farming would be a hell of a lot more practical. Additionally, if you're fixed in one place, you could live off the "land". Plant crops of edible seaweed around your underwater base. Not to mention fresh fish every night. Hell, design and market it right, you wouldn't even have to keep it secret, and could get some help paying for it. Call it an experiment in environmentally sustainable future living or something, and you could get a government grant. Just make sure you have your own set of keys and a private submersible to get to it.