The BBC published a rambling report on AI and Tech billionaires building large fully-autonomous "basements" in different locations. I love the quote "I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own 'bunker', who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking."
Mark Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014
It is set to include a shelter, complete with its own energy and food supplies, though the carpenters and electricians working on the site were banned from talking about it by non-disclosure agreements, according to a report by Wired magazine.
Asked last year if he was creating a doomsday bunker, the Facebook founder gave a flat "no". The underground space spanning some 5,000 square feet is, he explained, "just like a little shelter, it's like a basement".
Then there is the speculation around other tech leaders, some of whom appear to have been busy buying up chunks of land with underground spaces, ripe for conversion into multi-million pound luxury bunkers.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has talked about "apocalypse insurance". This is something about half of the super-wealthy have, he has previously claimed, with New Zealand a popular destination for homes.
So, could they really be preparing for war, the effects of climate change, or some other catastrophic event the rest of us have yet to know about?
In the last few years, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has only added to that list of potential existential woes. Many are deeply worried at the sheer speed of the progression.
Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and a co-founder of Open AI, is reported to be one of them.
In a meeting, Mr Sutskever suggested to colleagues that they should dig an underground shelter for the company's top scientists before such a powerful technology was released on the world, [...] according to a book by journalist Karen Hao.
"We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI," he's widely reported to have said, though it's unclear who he meant by "we".
What's more, it's unlikely to arrive as a single moment. Rather, AI is a rapidly advancing technology, it's on a journey and there are many companies around the world racing to develop their own versions of it.
But one reason the idea excites some in Silicon Valley is that it's thought to be a pre-cursor to something even more advanced: ASI, or artificial super intelligence - tech that surpasses human intelligence.
It was back in 1958 that the concept of "the singularity" was attributed posthumously to Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann. It refers to the moment when computer intelligence advances beyond human understanding.
Those in favour of AGI and ASI are almost evangelical about its benefits. It will find new cures for deadly diseases, solve climate change and invent an inexhaustible supply of clean energy, they argue.
Elon Musk has even claimed that super-intelligent AI could usher in an era of "universal high income".
"If it's smarter than you, then we have to keep it contained," warned Tim Berners Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, talking to the BBC earlier this month.
Governments are taking some protective steps. In the US, where many leading AI companies are based, President Biden passed an executive order in 2023 that required some firms to share safety test results with the federal government - though President Trump has since revoked some of the order, calling it a "barrier" to innovation.
Meanwhile in the UK, the AI Safety Institute - a government-funded research body - was set up two years ago to better understand the risks posed by advanced AI.
And then there are those super-rich with their own apocalypse insurance plans.
"Saying you're 'buying a house in New Zealand' is kind of a wink, wink, say no more," Reid Hoffman previously said. The same presumably goes for bunkers.
But there's a distinctly human flaw.
I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own "bunker", who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking.
Neil Lawrence is a professor of machine learning at Cambridge University. To him, this whole debate in itself is nonsense.
"The notion of Artificial General Intelligence is as absurd as the notion of an 'Artificial General Vehicle'," he argues.
"The right vehicle is dependent on the context. I used an Airbus A350 to fly to Kenya, I use a car to get to the university each day, I walk to the cafeteria... There's no vehicle that could ever do all of this."
"The technology we have [already] built allows, for the first time, normal people to directly talk to a machine and potentially have it do what they intend. That is absolutely extraordinary... and utterly transformational.
Current AI tools are trained on mountains of data and are good at spotting patterns: whether tumour signs in scans or the word most likely to come after another in a particular sequence. But they do not "feel", however convincing their responses may appear.
Ultimately, though, no matter how intelligent machines become, biologically the human brain still wins. It has about 86 billion neurons and 600 trillion synapses, many more than the artificial equivalents.
"If you tell a human that life has been found on an exoplanet, they will immediately learn that, and it will affect their world view going forward. For an LLM [Large Language Model], they will only know that as long as you keep repeating this to them as a fact," says Mr Hodjat.
"LLMs also do not have meta-cognition, which means they don't quite know what they know. Humans seem to have an introspective capacity, sometimes referred to as consciousness, that allows them to know what they know."
It is a fundamental part of human intelligence - and one that is yet to be replicated in a lab.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by spiraldancing on Monday October 20, @05:03AM (11 children)
Yes. Yes, we should all be worried.
Is that too glib an answer? How about "yes, but not because of this"? I have a long list of reasons why I believe humanity is right on the cusp of "Irreversibly Screwed", and "Billionaire Apocalypse Bunkers" is (...checking...) #86 on that list. For context, "Alarmist Click-Bait News Media" is #17, and "Billionaires Exist" is #4 on my list.
Apologies if this is outside of scope for Soylent ... it's early here.
Lets go exploring.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 20, @11:00AM (5 children)
I mean, near the top of my personal list has to be climate change: Not only are we well and truly screwed right now, but to which most people with enough power to have significant impact on the problem have responded with, in essence, "whatever, let everything burn, I'll be long gone before it all happens anyways". Among other things, that's why some of the ultra-rich are trying to get to Mars or at least the Moon in some kind of permanent way.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by spiraldancing on Monday October 20, @11:37AM (2 children)
Depends on which day you ask me, but Climate Change and Resource Depletion are kind of tied for first place ... and oftentimes, when I'm feeling more philosophical, I even consider "The Internet" as the number one problem -- which, there is so much to unpack there, but basically, in the sense of "it got bigger, faster than we learned how to legislate/regulate it".
Also ... I am literally wearing a t-shirt right now, with that Carlin quote on it.
Lets go exploring.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday October 20, @04:15PM (1 child)
I'm not too worried about resource depletion. That just means at some point it becomes cost effective to mine asteroids.
However, that would make me start worrying about the asteroid mining process, because some PHB with a Masters Business will decide that mining asteroids would be more efficient if the asteroids were relocated in LEO for processing. Thus they'd spend trillions on the delta-V to hurl dinosaur extincting sized rocks at Earth. Good chance the troglodyte making the vector calculations on these resource relocations would eventually make a rounding error that would negate any current Climate Change concerns. When that happens, the billionaire bunkers of today probably won't be deep enough and provisioned enough to survive the aftermath.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21, @03:25PM
I'm not too worried about resource depletion. That just means at some point it becomes cost effective to mine asteroids.
I was thinking that the only resources that can be depleted are fossil fuels, and I doubt there's much of them on asteroids! Everything else can be reused or recycled. In a thousand years they'll be mining our landfills.
I suspect global warming will destroy us far sooner than the fossils are depleted.
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday October 20, @01:43PM (1 child)
The other, bigger problem with "climate change" is the proposed solutions are NEVER about fixing the problem, just a mixture of raw power grabs, making a profit, and occasionally feel good antics (aka prayer for atheists).
People will put up with a lot to solve problems, but when its the usual people pulling the usual scam, their only hope is propaganda and authoritarianism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24, @12:57AM
China does seem to have a chance of fixing their side of the stuff. They seem to be burning more coal, but the scale of their solar and wind stuff doesn't appear for show or mere greenwashing. There are EVs everywhere in China. So there's a good chance that their coal and oil consumption will go down in the future.
I guess they do think more long term than the next election/quarter.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday October 21, @02:19PM (4 children)
I think this is on topic. Not much point to talking about doom prepping without talking about what dooms they're prepping for. For me most disasters and issues just aren't bad enough or large scale enough to count - on their own. Sure, you can have things like a large asteroid strike, supervolcano eruption, or megatsunami that could have global destructiveness. But we're more likely to see "irreversibly screwed" problems from things like nuclear wars or out of control biological weapons (both which in addition to their initial destructiveness would impair human activity for decades or longer). Those would be high on my list.
But I think the real problems will be human societal structural issues. For example, stagnation of science, culture, and progress. We already saw an example of this in the Communist world - imagine if there wasn't a democratic developed world to compete with the Communist world. There wouldn't be a reason (or rather the knowledge of the reason) for such reforms as Glasnost and things could degrade to the point of complete feudalism or worse.
Another is societal fragility. A habit of government-oriented approaches is that if there is a problem, instead of fixing the problem, compensating for it. For example, the current problem with AI. Instead of fixing AI business activity by addressing things like the accounting book cooking that supports it or even just allowing AI to suceed and fail on its own, the US federal government has mandated some degree of consumption of AI products - which provides an uncritical revenue stream for poor AI business models to survive for a time. One such problem compensation isn't much of a danger, but then add in more and more. For example, modern US government also supports a global military system, the banking system, real estate price supports via policy, Social Security overspending, and overpriced educational and health care systems. Juggle too many of these balls at one time and a shock might knock most of them out of the air at once. More and more of the energy of society goes into supporting a growing list of problems rather than in maintaining a cushion against coming failure and breakdown. So when breakdown happens, it's more complete. Government has exhausted its ability to keep things going and it often exhausted a lot of other peoples' resources in the process too so they can't help keep things going either.
Moving on, the final category is dysfunctional governance structures. My view is that if you have this great idea for running a society, but it requires a complete breakdown of your society in order to implement, then your ideas fall on the "irreversibly screwed" list somewhere (depending on likelihood of implementation in event of breakdown). Why? Because if it is truly a better system, then you can just implement it now on small scale and show the benefit. Systems that are genuinely worse can't do that.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21, @04:22PM (3 children)
For example, stagnation of science, culture, and progress. We already saw an example of this in the Communist world - imagine if there wasn't a democratic developed world to compete with the Communist world.
The trouble with communism is it only works at tiny scales; a small village or tribe. For communism on a national scale, it requires autocracy. The autocracy is the problem. Note that socialism is NOT communism; Socialists believe that government should work to promote society, capitalists believe that government should work to promote wealth. THEIR wealth, fuck yours.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 22, @03:23AM
Depends on the flavor of socialism. We covered communism already. In addition, there's some socialist ideas that require global participation: such as any schemes that are harmed by "harmful competition" on taxes, pollution, and labor wages. As to "capitalists"? It's a typical problem of democracy that there is a tendency for everyone to see government as there to promote their personal interests, be it personal wealth or some other thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24, @01:07AM (1 child)
China does have elections. Unlike the USA it has One Party instead of Two[1].
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19876372 [bbc.com]
The last I checked the approved candidates in the USA almost always win too; only a few "outsiders" once in a while. But none of the candidates are subject to annual reviews of how well they can govern...
It's like picking the pilot of your plane through elections. Both sides have approved candidates. One side has some candidates at least pretend to have some competence, the other side doesn't even bother with that... Heck you get a candidate with a proven record of crashing planes...
[1] Both China and the USA have more than two parties but they practically don't count...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24, @01:13AM
Which might explain the doom prepping billionaires...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 20, @05:12AM (14 children)
I first heard about this billionaire survivalist bunker fetish several years ago. It's selfish and hubristic, stupid, and downright treacherous. Those scumbags should be working hard to keep the ship afloat, not recklessly enriching themselves in ways that make the ship more likely to sink, and then preparing for that possibility by plotting to abandon ship, leaving the rest of us to go down with it! There isn't a safe shore anywhere. The idea that any bunker could enable them to ride out a nuclear war or other disaster of similar magnitude is ridiculously unrealistic. A million angry survivors of whatever catastrophe struck could easily find, break, and enter their stupid little hideouts. Suppose however that there wouldn't be so many survivors. Then, they can instead die of the same things that killed everyone else. They can find out that they can't live without a civilized society, dying because despite all, they don't know how to live like our Stone Age ancestors did.
As to the idea that AI is at hand, no. No, it's not. LLMs are not truly intelligent. Not intelligent at all. There are far too many SF/fantasy stories in which intelligence just magically arises. These sorts of notions greatly underrate the difficulties in becoming intelligent. I am sure it is far, far harder than generally appreciated.
(Score: 5, Funny) by quietus on Monday October 20, @06:54AM
Even if we could create a thinking computer: it would be trained on the Internet, where 99.9999% of content is created by either hormone driven teens or not quite sober men in their payamas at six o'clock in the morning. (And as to coding agents taking over the fabric of society: go spend an hour reading stackoverflow replies, or scan a couple of github repositories.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Monday October 20, @07:19AM (10 children)
A billionaire, by definition, is someone who has £/$/€ 999,999,999,999 and thought to themselves "No, this isn't enough, I need more, and I can't give what I have to anyone else".
They are inherently selfish because absolutely no selfless person on Earth is capable of becoming a billionaire. They'd have stopped a long time ago. You have to literally be a sociopath to become a billionaire. It's honestly the only way it happens.
And if you're a billionaire in an apocalypse? Well, one, most of your wealth does suddenly and immediately evaporate regardless of anything else.
And two... you're now the prime target. Not just from others, but from your own people. You know why? You own enough resources to sustain a civilisation. And you're just one person. One person who's a sociopath and holds no real power outside of a capitalist system.
You aren't going to sustain that bunker on your own (you can try, but that sounds like a quick way to die to me, especially if you start involving trying to get AI to run it in a world of limited resources...). The person sustaining it with you? Yeah, you're under serious threat from them. Your only solution there is to arm them to have them defend you. Whoops. That isn't going to end well either.
In an apocalypse... I think the last thing I'd want to be is a billionaire.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 20, @11:46AM (9 children)
Even for selfish people, it's not normal to become a billionaire.
Somewhere between $1.5-200 million, you talk with your financial advisor, and they tell you that you can live comfortably the rest of your life without having to work anymore. (That range is determined by what you count as "comfortably": Are you happy with 1-2 homes and nice hotel rooms, or do you want a home everywhere you frequently visit? Do you want a fancy private jet with all the staff that go with it, or are you OK flying first-class commercial? Do you want a full-time household staff, or is a weekly visit by the cleaners and landscapers enough? That sort of thing.) Faced with the difficult choice of going into the office 5-6 days a week and/or working late at night reading contracts and such versus enjoying the pleasures in life, most will say "You know what? I like option B. Retirement party is set for 3 months from now so I have plenty of time to hire or promote somebody to do my work."
The main exception to that rule is the people who find something meaningful about doing the work that they do: The doctor who knows they can still save some lives. The tenured academic or scientist who loves research and teaching and keeps doing it because they think there's much more to discover in their field. The famous musician who has more music they want to put out to the world. The pro athlete who is trying to break that one last record they care about. But a lot of them give away a lot of what they make, and certainly aren't laser-focused on trying to get even richer, because why bother?
To become an ultra-rich billionaire, you have to decide, over and over, that you care more about money than your family or friends. You have to decide that you care more about piling up money than any charitable causes, hobbies, or fun activities. You also have to be arrogant enough to think that nobody else could possibly do what you do to earn money, e.g. your number 2 person can't run your business just fine without you. There's no possible way for that person to not be pretty messed up in the head. And it's really really really stupid the degree to which we've organized our civilization around catering to the whims of these nutjobs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Monday October 20, @02:03PM
Many years back, I watched a documentary in which they asked various already rich people how much money they would need to have in order to feel secure. The answer was pretty universally three times what they already have. This was true for someone with $1M, someone with $10M and someone with $100M. The documentary was old enough that $1M would be enough to live on for the rest of your life.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday October 20, @02:20PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 22, @03:51AM
In other words, normal people with wealth. What's the point of casting a mundane though greedy pursuit of self-interest as if it were a mental illness? Is this rule by the insane (my attempt at catchy label: paranarchia = paranoia + -archy = insanity + rule)?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gnuman on Monday October 20, @02:52PM (5 children)
I'll bite here. So, there are people that are rich because they inherited money. Others, own companies that exploded in value. At that point, it's not so much "I need more!" (with exceptions), but money generates money. How much has Bill Gates given away and convinced some through The Giving Pledge? Even more, he pledged that the foundation will close its doors and not become one of these perpetual foundations for sake of perpetuating itself (think Nobel Prize). Remember, it used to be $50B pledged.... now, that's $200+B.... while at same time he's spending quite a bit.
Secondly, like everywhere, there are rich people that are greedy bastards just like there are poor people that are greedy bastards. At same time, there are rich people that would prefer for higher income taxes on the ultra-wealthy as they do not want or need as much wealth. An example here is Warren Buffet.
So, I do not believe you can just pigeonhole every billionaire as "greedy bastards". At same time, it's a fair statement.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 21, @02:11AM (4 children)
So about Bill Gates: Yes, he puts a lot of his money into charity. But also, he retains control of that charity, and sometimes that charity does things like buy a bunch of Microsoft stuff, driving up the demand for Microsoft's products, putting even more money in Bill Gates' pocket. And also, critically, he retains control of the money, so he gets to decide what he thinks should be his charitable efforts this year, not either the people ostensibly being helped by it or any elected representatives. And it's also crucially a tax dodge as well.
It's probably better than simply hoarding it, but not by as much as you'd hope.
Contrast that to MacKenzie Scott, who gave away most of her fortune to organizations she doesn't control.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 22, @04:15AM (3 children)
I can see some point to the targets of the would-be charity having some input. None at all to the "elected representatives". They're often part of the problem.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 22, @11:06AM (2 children)
It can be part of the problem, but it can also be not.
As an example: As the Covid vaccines started coming out of testing, a lot of governments wanted to have the formula and manufacturing process for the vaccines be public domain rather than patented so that they could manufacture their own generics of it, thus increasing the supply of available vaccine doses, reducing the cost per dose for everybody and making sure that poorer countries could inoculate their population more easily. But the Gates Foundation, which is involved in vaccination programs in a lot of poorer countries that can't fund it themselves at the pharma company's prices, was key in blocking that move mostly by threatening to withhold funding. Why? Well, for starters, Bill Gates is a big believer in "intellectual property" (unsurprising, his fortune rests on it), and also his foundation owns stock of the companies that would have been adversely affected by generic competition. That decision restricted the supply of Covid vaccines to what the big pharma companies could produce themselves, ensuring that vaccination was both more expensive and slower, and that probably led to a bunch of unnecessary deaths in the countries where the Gates Foundation was "helping". Is that really a decision that Bill Gates, who is neither a doctor nor an epidemiologist nor a public health official, should be making?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 22, @01:36PM
Would your complaint be even slightly different if Gates were all three? It's not Gates expertise or career that you complain about.
As I see it, those governments could always pay a big pile of money to make said vaccines public domain, if such a thing were truly important to them.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday October 22, @08:03PM
Why it would be stupid to do this anyway? And now proved that it would have been completely stupid to do?
Because manufacturing process of these vaccines is very complex. It took Germany some months to ramp up production of Biontech vaccine. Germany was one of the blockers for this funny "public domain it!" movement. It's akin I public domain the lithography process of ASML used to manufacture currently mostly advanced chips in the world. Will anyone be able to make competing machines in next months? next 2 years? 5 years? The same thing happened with Covid. It's far easier to ramp up production at known sites than to tell someone in South Africa "yo! here's the sources, good luck mate!".
You want another example? The processing and refinement of rare earth minerals is basically public knowledge... It's been half a decade since US has cried about China about their market domination. Why haven't they invested in their own production at scale? And this is a problem YEARS in complaing about.
The Covid vaccine shortages were a few months only.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21, @04:27PM (1 child)
Those scumbags should be working hard to keep the ship afloat, not recklessly enriching themselves in ways that make the ship more likely to sink, and then preparing for that possibility by plotting to abandon ship
Abandoning ship is what rats do. You know the parable of the fox and the scorpion. Expecting someone greedy enough to become a billionaire and thinking he has any empathy whatever is as foolish as voting for a felon and expecting him to behave like a statesman, let alone a model citizen.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 22, @01:38PM
Yes, which would seem to mean we need to do better at keeping such rats on a short leash. But how?
There's a lot of belief that power is fun, that everyone should "climb the corporate ladder", aspire to leadership. Too many stories focus on the people at the top, as if what everyone else thinks and does is of no importance. Fact is, leadership is a lot of responsibility. Many people who want power tend not to want responsibility. Having to run for office is at the least a test that weeds out the worst idiots-- most of the time. Sadly, of late that test hasn't been effective enough.
Wealth is rather too good at providing power without responsibility. The slightly smarter powermongers opt for that means of gaining power.
Another factor in all this is the brattiness of many of the followers. They want a Big Daddy to protect them and advance their pet interests, which is, selfishly take for themselves whatever everyone else has, by force and even murder if necessary. They want a big man so very much, they'll do all they can to elevate anyone who appears to be both strong and on their side. This includes being way, way too forgiving of Big Daddy's crimes, and willingly blinding themselves to the certainty that Big Daddy is conning and cheating them all.
But what system could possibly work better? It seems no system can withstand such b. s. and treachery. Participants able to cheat and refusing to play fair breaks any system. Sports is rife with cheating. In the most extreme cases, rivals try to remove competition well before the event, as was attempted by the attack on Nancy Kerrigan's knee. Fixing of games has been (and probably still is) a problem.
Many days it feels like we're all living the Byzantine Generals [wikipedia.org] problem.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 20, @05:32AM (2 children)
I had a realization about these people: it's not about the money per se. It's about what that money means: specifically, that suffering is optional *for them,* and that they can inflict it on anyone else. With that in mind, I believe their diseased minds really have come with a plan that's essentially "destroy the world/let it be destroyed while we hide out in our luxury bunkers, then emerge when the fallout's settled and rule the entire world."
They really do seem to have God complexes, or worse. They don't think anyone besides them is, well, human. The obsession with AGI, as opposed to just LLM AI, is because they want slaves. To their thinking, the issue with Galt's Gulch is that all that pesky farming and cleaning and such couldn't be automated.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fen on Monday October 20, @07:34AM (1 child)
More than that--they want to *become* the AI. I've been to a few singularity summits and seen the cryo-types.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24, @01:11AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Monday October 20, @05:55AM (4 children)
So if their moving fast and breaking things winds up breaking the whole world, not all of their doom prepping can save them. What meaning does a trillion dollars have after Armageddon? It's just a number in bank computers that may no longer even have any power to operate, or paper that has no more meaning because it isn't backed up by any functional government that will accept it as payment for taxes. There are no robots around that can do all the menial tasks like cooking meals and cleaning toilets, much less shoot weapons to defend them against the inevitable mobs that will want their blood and what stuff of actual value they managed to accumulate. They will have no coin that human servants will accept to do those things either: the mercenaries would rather put bullets in the brains of their arrogant former masters and loot what they can.
Your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days. (James 5:3)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fen on Monday October 20, @07:39AM
I've been to the singularity summit and even talked to one of their prophets--Elizier Yudkowsky. He's fat and weird and writes with way too many words. In this case, don't follow the money. I've seen people flabbergasted that I didn't want to sign up with cryopreservation of the brain. Peter Theil and Elon Musk are some more wizards from back then (2010's). The end goal is being an immortal, all-powerful PC.
(Score: 2) by Undefined on Monday October 20, @01:21PM (2 children)
I think the point is, what value it has before armageddon. As in, how big and comfortable a bunker can they build, and how much food, weapons, ammunition, and various other stores can be packed away. And, in case things don't come to an untimely end, that wealth means living high on the
hogbacks of others instead.Also probably the ability to cram some others in there with you. I guess.
Although trillions should basically allow you to build your own underground town, rather than just a bunker.
Personally, if it's the end of the world and that doesn't get me, I'm just bowing out. In the meantime, enough of my income goes to direct forms of charity so that I have no net increase in wealth month over month. I sleep well.
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday October 21, @06:31AM (1 child)
"Also probably the ability to cram some others in there with you. I guess."
I think it's demonstrating you have the means to invite them in. Others must now compete for the privilege of your favor. The builder is not obligated to award this favor to anyone. However anyone who "thinks outside the law" can simply take it if he can.
Note that under our law, using physical force to compel is illegal. Only Law Enforcement and Armed Services can use the laws of physics , law-abiding people are expected to only use laws of the regime to settle differences. In time of societal breakdown, restrictions against using laws of physics are suspended.
They know the laws of physics trump everything else should push come to a shove. A "demand letter" doesn't go over very well in a gun fight.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 21, @08:07PM
After Armageddon humanity returns to the state of nature that Thomas Hobbes famously described as being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It will be a war of all against all with no common power to keep anyone in awe, and desperation will serve to remove what inhibitions people might have once have had against the exercise of violence. It is only the existence of states and the effective monopoly on violence that they hold that allows demand letters instead of gunfights.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fen on Monday October 20, @07:32AM (1 child)
They are all in a race to become Skynet. Elon is pretty upfront about it with neuralink. They want to merge with machines to be nearly eternal and all powerful. I used to dabble in transhumanism myself before I saw that everyone but me is just an ego.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21, @04:30PM
They are all in a race to become Skynet. Elon is pretty upfront about it with neuralink.
Wrong SF. Elon is The Borg, not Skynet. Drone manufacturers are Skynet.
Mad at your neighbors? Join ICE, $50,000 signing bonus and a LICENSE TO MURDER!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday October 20, @08:08AM (5 children)
Anyone with a survival bunker needs a security plan, otherwise the first person to turn up with a weapon will take it from you.
A single individual needs to sleep, so the security plan requires a team of people 'on watch'.
If you plan on retaining your wealth, you will be significantly richer than members of your security team.
The rational choice for the security team then is to remove you from the group of people in the bunker and share the excess you hoped to keep to yourself among the security team.
People with significant wealth have a problem: they almost universally complain that they cannot trust anyone - everyone is out to exploit them.
I have no doubts the people building bunkers have plans to prevent this happening to them. Stress-testing them will be 'interesting', and not something I want to see.
I'm always surprised that the Cold-war bunkers governments built to attempt to assure the survival of the people in power were so small in scope, built on the assumption that a nuclear 'exchange' would be limited enough for a rebbuildable society to still be there waiting for the rulers to come out blinking into the daylight. Try watching the BBC film Threads [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Monday October 20, @11:25AM (1 child)
Also amazing that they actually thought anyone who wasn't in the bunker with them would give a rat's ass what they wanted when they emerged. They actually CAN'T imagine a world where nobody gives a crap what they want. They THINK they support meritocracy because they can't imagine the world where being a rich asshole doesn't peg the meter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @05:46AM
It's basically back to gang warfare.
Except there are a lot more have-nots than haves.
And the have-nots have scavenged all available weapons the deceased left.
And they are very angry and very distrustful of "the privileged people". Hate isn't the right word. I would imagine they want heads.
Imagine the plight of the settlers arriving in North America from England if the Native Americans had already experienced what they would do.
What would the bunker dweller have to offer, that couldn't be simply taken by force...call it "Law Enforcement" if you want. Same thing, but sounds more "civilized". That concept has already demonstrate to every inhabitant of the planet.
The ones who can enforce their wish-list make the law.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday October 20, @12:16PM (2 children)
> The rational choice for the security team then is to remove you from the group of people in the bunker and share the excess you hoped to keep to yourself among the security team.
The problem with this choice is once it is made, no one is safe. The security team leader is next on the line and so it goes on.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Monday October 20, @03:58PM (1 child)
If the security team operate like pirates historically did, each member would get an defined, relatively equitable share of the loot. If you think for a moment, you might understand why that might have been the practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_in_18th-century_piracy [wikipedia.org]
As you point out, the idea of the leader getting everything is absurd.
(Score: 2) by BeaverCleaver on Wednesday October 22, @08:25AM
Sounds an awful lot like socialism. Imagine if the billionaires could endorse this *before* they caused armageddon.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Monday October 20, @11:05AM (1 child)
They sense that the guillotines are coming. They have pushed the commoners too far. What they forget is that the 'problem' of a billionaire in a bunker can be solved with a few yards of concrete, right down the vent
pipe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @05:51AM
I was thinking gasoline...followed by some fireworks.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 20, @11:33AM (1 child)
Are not dooms day bunkers supposed to be like Fight Club? You do not talk about your doomsday bunker. If you do the plebs will know about it. So all the people that built the bunker, restocked the bunker and are going to protect you and/or the bunker knows about it.
At least the bodyguard or security man was honest. They will just pistolwhip Zuck or any of the other nerds and claim his bunker for themselves. He wasn't joking. After all their monetary value however massive it is today will be about zero if whatever doomsday scenario plays out happens. Their money, wealth or whatnot means nothing then. So what do they need them for? He is just a mouth that sucks oxygen, eats food and takes up space for no usage.
You can probably replace doomsday bunker here with their Yachts or what not. The crew, which will have real world skills of some kind, will just take the thing in question. Toss Richy Rich overboard and sail/drive away.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday October 21, @09:26AM
Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" had an episode of this situation in a neighborhood.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=twilight+zone+bomb+shelter [duckduckgo.com]
The neighbors wrecked the place trying to get in.
I think it's a fruitless endeavor to place my neighbors in a position where my death will be to their benefit.
One may benefit highly from an extinguished lienholder, landlord, or neighborhood pest.
However no-one benefits from an extinguished car mechanic, construction guy, or plumber.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday October 20, @12:12PM
Hugo Drax and Ernst Stavro Blofeld should not be role models!
These guys probably watched Terminator and the Bond films and now they know they're rich enough to make them real. The world is not a playground, dammit!
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 20, @12:14PM (2 children)
They're worried about the masses of people who lost their jobs to AI coming for their heads.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday October 20, @05:15PM
Or Italian millionaires named Luigi. Though, some people just commit suicide by putting on concrete shoes and jumping into the east river.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @06:54AM
If I were a landlord, I would fear all the tenants who would see my destruction as rent relief.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by suxen on Monday October 20, @01:27PM (1 child)
Just because they have doomsday bunkers doesn't mean they know something is going to happen. If you have the resources to be prepared for anything, why not be?
I worked for some rich people back in the late 90s, they were nowhere near billionaire status, just your average reasonably well off business owners. They had sections of their house that were only accessible via hidden doors and inside they had enough food stockpiled to last their family probably a year or two. They would actually use the food as they went along and replenish it on a continual basis which I think is pretty smart, no waste and at least if the apocalypse happens you're not eating 20 year old beans.
Better to be ready for it and it never happens than the other way round.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21, @04:33PM
That was very common in the 1950s and early '60s.
Mad at your neighbors? Join ICE, $50,000 signing bonus and a LICENSE TO MURDER!
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Monday October 20, @01:52PM
This is a cyclical story that ebbs and flows in waves due to boredom in legacy media, just like the eternal "LSD is coming back!" stories. Also its clickbait / ragebait. It REALLY triggers the "workers of the world unite" crowd.
Finally, note that I have a thousand-are doomsday bunker. I generally have more than enough charcoal on hand to grill my supply of frozen meat in the freezer and I "always" have some cans of soup and gatorade in storage just in case I can't hit a store and I have some comfy chairs tables in the basement that's quite tornado resistant. I always have two (small ish) tanks of gas for my snowthrower. The main threats in my area are a tornado gets within 10 miles every decade or so and we have a really impressive ice storm (taking down overhead power lines, usually not near me) about once a decade and a REALLY impressive blizzard about once per year. Most of the time this stuff gets used because 1) the basement is nice and chill in the hot summer 2) If I'm sick or wildly busy or something I like having stuff on hand rather than "shop today in the ice storm, or starve tomorrow". I'm sure this could be spun into some hilarious clickbait, but its normal life. Likewise some billionaire has a home office in his basement or his pantry in his kitchen is larger than mine, who cares?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday October 20, @02:00PM
Who thought that slop generation would replace all their programmers.
Tech CEOs don't even understand their own business, much less how the world works.
You should be worried about the world ending for reasons completely unrelated to what mark zuck is up to.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday October 20, @04:17PM (3 children)
Survivalists don't seem to spend a lot of time focusing on the empirical data. I have to admit I haven't either; but I don't think having a stock full of food and guns and holing up with your family is the ideal profile. The best survivors seem to be the ones who recognize the danger early and leave. Smart people, you know, like Einstein and the like who saw the writing on the wall and got out of Germany. If you're not a world-class physicist or somebody special and you don't have the ways and means to get out then the survival seems to center around not attracting too much attention to yourself, and learning to "play the game". It's no guarantee, since when society goes full off the rails you get in to situations where neighbors preemptively report on each other to avoid the gulag. It becomes a crap shoot, which is not what you want. If there's no place in the world to flee and the game is anarchy, then it seems like survival is going to depend mostly on who has the best organization. Serfs in the Middle Ages weren't necessarily victims. They could run in to the castle when it was attacked, participating in mutual defense with the lords. It could come to that.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Monday October 20, @08:12PM (2 children)
Need to store water. Lots of water. And some camping filters. I have camping filters, partially because I camp, partially because it might be a good idea just in case. My buddy in Florida fits your profile pretty well and they weather a hurricane in place every couple years. They are far too high ASL and far to far away from the coasts to have to worry about storm surge but they get quite a bit of rain/wind every other year or so, it seems.
Actually, I fit your profile pretty well. I also don't store enough water (probably only ten or twenty gallons or so of drinking water). My realistic risks are ice storms and blizzards.
Its interesting that both "prepper people" and the outsiders make fun of the zombie apocalypse people. The most famous prepper podcaster I know of has a tag line something like "helping you be better prepared if times get tough, or even if they don't". In that theme, its hard to say what my garden is; I'm OK at growing food which would be extremely valuable in a collapse, but I also enjoy the exercise, enjoy the outdoors, and I enjoy eating what I grow. I grew a ton of mint one year and turned some into mint julep drinks, that was fun, picked the leaves right off the vine.
I think quite a few "zombie prepper" gun nut people enjoy setting off easily deranged normies and also REALLY enjoy the sport of competitive target practice. The fun part is becoming an expert marksman, absolutely hyper triggering normies by making jokes about zombie preps is just a bonus. Imagine if I could set TDS victims into an absolute rage by merely baking cookies; I'd be baking the heck out of cookies every weekend while laughing; it could happen, look what the usual suspects did to the "OK" hand signal LOL. And then I'd have to eat the delicious home baked (admittedly probably not healthy) cookies, oh no!
I think theres a lot of people getting played in the prepper field, its mostly clickbaiting on both sides.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday October 21, @03:36AM (1 child)
If you have even a few minutes of warning about an impending water outage, you can fill up a bathtub. That's roughly 80 gallons according to the internets. A lot of prep can go on shortly before a disaster hits, if you get enough warning and act on it.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 21, @05:13PM
Its a time and labor thing. Someone with warning of a failing water system can get a zillion gallons ready to use with minimal time and effort, however, after the water shuts off, slowly using my camping filters with my garden rain barrels would take hours or days to process them. I have "ten or so" ready to drink gallons of water in stock; thats probably enough. There is the bigger question of use my rainwater barrels to drink or water my garden or find some other source (I live near a recreational river; I could haul hundreds of gallons of water at a time just a mile or two to water my garden if it were worthwhile labor... Hmm.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 28, @07:27PM
Doom prepping / bunkers / etc. is something that's been popular since at least the invention of the Atomic bomb. It's definitely in the mainstream media and not surprising that someone with stupid amounts of money. Does something "stupid" with it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"