
Doomsday Prep for the Super-rich - fullshark
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
======
throwaway2016a
> To protect his wife and daughter, he said, “I don’t have guns, but I have a
> lot of other weaponry. I took classes in archery.”

This whole article reads like some surreal parody of what eccentric SV
mil/billionaires would do.

Although I suppose there is probably some truth that in a post apocalyptic /
post rule of law world... the person in the big house with the expensive stuff
to loot probably has a huge target on them.

~~~
blhack
I mean...I _guess_ arrows are reusable and much more easily created by hand
than bullets? I guess?

~~~
virmundi
They are an a lot quieter. But don't be fooled. Even with shitty long guns
(not even riffles since they weren't riffled), the American Indians swapped
bows for guns. They still used bows, but took to guns due to their power.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Interestingly, in the American Southwest guns didn't really challenge bows
until the introduction of the Colt revolver.

Even Kentucky long rifles which were very effective against infantry were
pretty much worthless against mounted natives who could fire dozens of arrows
a minute.

This was the case up until about the 1850s.

~~~
big_youth
This article disagrees with you: [https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-the-
introduction-of-guns-chan...](https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-the-introduction-
of-guns-change-native-america)

"It is common to deride early modern firearms as slow to load, inaccurate and
undependable in wet weather. Indians had a more favourable opinion of these
weapons, particularly of the flintlock muskets that became available at the
beginning of the 1630s. ...

Flintlocks were still cumbersome. They required about 25 seconds to load, and
were accurate only to about 100 yards. Yet Indians did not intend to use the
weapon in open-field, pitched battles. Rather, they wanted flintlocks to fire
on human or animal targets from ambush at close range. After firing, they
would rush in with hand weapons. The manner in which Native peoples used guns
is critical to understanding their demand for them."

------
ucaetano
I grew up in a 3rd world small farm, raising pigs, chicken, setting traps and
planting a bunch of stuff, not to mention a light version of WROL (without
rule of law). Reading this article I feel that I'm more prepared for the
apocalypse than all the "super-rich"...

~~~
mywittyname
Because you absolutely are. I've always thought that anybody who seriously
thinks society is going to collapse should just move to a developing country,
buy a farm, and get-on getting-on. Because there's really no way to prepare
other than to get started on your post-collapse life.

I grew up on a farm in very rural USA and we often face mini-"disasters". The
roads would be impassable due to snow, power would go out for weeks sometimes.
My life has shown me that you don't prepare for disasters, you just do
without.

You're cold, hungry, and miserable. Guns and ammo doesn't help because there's
nothing really to hunt, same goes for fishing (most people don't live within
walking distance of a non-polluted waterway). Better not get too attached to
electricity or driving because it's going to be impossible to store any
significant amount of fuel.

A collapsed society resembles rural Afghanistan or India more than it does
whatever wild west these people are imagining.

~~~
ucaetano
> we often face mini-"disasters"

True! I remember one time when our transformer blew up, and we lived for
several weeks without electricity until we got a replacement.

Nothing like listening to the world cup on a battery-powered radio. Fun times!

------
Nokinside
Super-rich don't seem to understand that if the society collapses, only
individualism that exists is rugged individualism. Hiding int he bunker might
work for some time, but it would be life of fear.

Individuals don't survive alone. It's the tribe, village and family that
ensures survival. Best way to survive would be to connect into some tight knit
community, where people who know and trust other take care of each other. If
you have plenty and someone is starving, you share and bond or you fight.

Here is better survival strategy for Silicon Valley billionaire:

Build hidden storage bunker in the middle of Amish country. Fill it with all
the community needs in doomsday, medicine, spare parts, tools and simple food.
When doomsday happens, invite all your neighbors to share while you study
bible and become important member in your community.

------
bambax
I was afraid this article was going to upset me, but in fact it doesn't shy
away from the more difficult questions, namely

A/ the reason we're _" skating on really thin cultural ice right now"_ is in
no small part due to the emergence and dominance of social media, so it's
quite rich that the people responsible for chaos are trying to protect
themselves from it

B/ it's quite morally repugnant to want to survive alone if society collapses

C/ it's completely impractical because you can't survive alone for very long (
_" are you taking your pilot's family with you? What about the maintenance
guys?"_)

~~~
Karunamon
Would you elaborate on B a bit? I don't quite see the moral value judgment in
surviving while society collapses.

~~~
bambax
Everyone is part of society. If society "collapses" (which can take many
forms), the responsible, respectable reaction is to stay with it and try to
restore it, not cut it loose -- retract to a shelter somewhere with "lots of
guns and ammo" to wait it out.

When disaster strikes it may be very natural and expected to save oneself, if
possible. That's survival instinct. But _prepare_ for it is not admirable, to
say the least. It's being selfish with intent.

Max Levchin says this in the article _" It’s one of the few things about
Silicon Valley that I actively dislike—the sense that we are superior giants
who move the needle and, even if it’s our own failure, must be spared."_

~~~
Karunamon
But at the end of the day, you're not restoring anything if you're dead due to
lack of food, water, or shelter, or violent action by someone else. That's
what's confusing me about your view, here.

There's a reason these basics are at the very base of Maslow's hierarchy[1],
and that's because without them, such niceties as polite society aren't
possible. It would be foolish to not concentrate on having the basics
available.

1: [http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow-
pyramid.jpg](http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow-pyramid.jpg)

~~~
anigbrowl
Your post _presumes_ conflict with all the other survivors, which says a lot
more about you than it does about them. In reality, people tend to help each
other out in the wake of disasters, rather than engaging in a zero-sum
struggle for exclusive control of resources.

~~~
Karunamon
And you _presume_ that you know the friendliness status of every other
survivor. Such assumptions only hold within your limited circle of
acquaintances. What happens when you encounter someone who you and your circle
of friends and neighbors don't know? The social order is _gone_.

There's a "disaster", and then there's the total collapse of society.

~~~
anigbrowl
I presume no such thing.

------
fallingfrog
How many paid people does it take to maintain these huge compounds?? These
people don't seem to understand that all of their wealth and possessions only
belong to them because there is a big organized power system that says so,
with lawyers and cops with guns and people that are required to obtain cash
money every month. 5 seconds after things go south, that helicopter belongs to
the pilot, not to you. That land you're buying belongs to the person standing
on it. If you're really afraid of the apocalypse, then stock up on the only
things that will matter afterwards: friends and family, real relationships not
based on money. That and some hand tools and guns.

~~~
1812Overture
I think this is what a lot of libertarian types don't get (a lot of overlap
with prepper types). Taxes aren't the government stealing money that you
willed into existence out of thin air, you're paying to live in a society
built to protect your wealth.

~~~
malandrew
Some taxes are useful (roads, justice system, police, some defense, etc). Many
taxes however are simply theft.

The only way taxes are fair is when it impacts everyone. When a tax takes
money from one group for the benefit of the other, it's theft.

A universal consumption tax is about the only thing that is fair as it's
proportional to gains and gains are generally (albeitly imperfectly)
proportional to shared infrastructure built, maintained and defended using
taxes. Unless the additional revenue benefits everyone, it's hard to increase.

~~~
fallingfrog
Our entire society is constructed to remove wealth from many people and funnel
it to a few. If taxation is theft, then what is rent? What about the fact that
any business pays its employees less than the value of the work they do? Once
you start to redefine "theft" in such a wide way, most of the economic and
social activity we engage in on a daily basis becomes "theft".

------
dmode
Having grown up in poverty in a third world country that is extremely chaotic,
the doomsday obsession in America is laughable and a little disturbing at the
same time. Society doesn't break down like that. Can someone explain why is
there such paranoia in the US about societal collapse ? It it video games,
movies, media frenzy, hyper partisan politics ? All of it ? I know people who
have created bunkers and stock pilled food to prepare for apocalypse.
Seriously !!

~~~
VLM
The topic is example number 258726 of the most photogenic controversial
clickbait not really having much to do with the reality of anything.

"Society doesn't break down like that."

Unfortunately it does, in the USA. See the aftermath of hurricane Katrina for
an example of how well we get along when things are temporarily bad.

Also the geography of the USA frankly sucks. We're rich and its not because
our weather is unusually calm. I live on the border of tornado alley (if you
stretch the definition a thousand miles) and if you don't have something heavy
to sit under in the basement you're a fool. I've had coworkers houses
destroyed by tornado. Closest hit to my house is about two miles in the last
decade. Another thing that sucks is we get paralyzing blizzards and occasional
ice storms knock out power for days, every couple years. You can prepare for
it and frankly relax and enjoy a couple days off work, or you can prepare to
suffer greatly. So everyone here has a "bunker" and stockpiled food. Its
called "living" not prepping.

~~~
maxerickson
So compared to the actual storm, how much damage did looting do, and how many
people were murdered?

You are claiming that they are clear evidence of how terrible we are, so I
think it is fair to ask you to show the work.

Because another aftermath of Katrina is all the help and aid that poured in
over the following days, months and years.

~~~
Arizhel
Katrina only affected a relatively small area: a small portion of the Gulf
coast. So of course help poured in. It's not like the entire US was hit by a
Category 5 hurricane!

An economic disaster is different: it hits the whole country at once, and then
other parts of the world because of trade disruption and other economic ties.
There aren't going to be any places left to "pour in" help; they're all going
to be suffering.

------
dkarapetyan
Either these folks truly don't understand how interdependent modern society is
or the article cherry picked sound bites to make them look like idiots.

Instead of investing in strengthening the institutions that made their way of
life possible these idiots are trying to sequester themselves. It is sad that
we have allowed morons to such high ranks of power. The only sensible voices
in the entire article are Levchin and Johnson.

~~~
FabHK
Agreed, "no man is an island".

On a related note, I was appalled by the howls and outcries against Obama's
(entirely sensible, if maybe easily misunderstood) "you didn't build that".

(Related discussion in the "Don't tell your friends they're lucky"
article/thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437332)
)

~~~
Apocryphon
The War Nerd explains why survivalist individualism is overrated and false:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13484925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13484925)

~~~
FabHK
Nothing (except a header) seem to show up under that link?

------
Alex3917
So this is actually something I've thought a lot about, in terms of whether
it's actually rational to be a prepper or if it's just a fun hobby.

In nominal terms, your risk of dying in a society-wide collapse is actually
larger than your risk of dying in a car accident.[1] So if you wouldn't think
twice about taking basic steps to lower your chances of vehicle death (e.g.
wearing a seatbelt) then it's absolutely rational to be at least _concerned_
about your risk of dying in the apocalypse.

However, in absolute terms your risk of dying in the apocalypse is still
considerably smaller than the most common causes of death. Given that only
1.2% of Americans meet all 7 guidelines for good cardiovascular health[2],
being a prepper probably has negative returns unless you already have enough
money to access safe food and healthcare, you're meeting all the guidelines
for good cardiovascular health, you don't have any neglected mental health
issues, etc.

[1]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-huma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-
extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615)

~~~
blahshaw
I'm really curious what those guidelines are. I don't see them listed in that
link.

~~~
Alex3917
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/243071.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/243071.php)

That's the tl;dr version. For each of those bullet points there is obviously
some nuance, e.g. knowing how much exercise counts as being physically active.

------
bootload
_“I typically ask people, ‘So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much
money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the
most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of
fear that people bring up are artificial.”_

I like Max Levchins idea behind this statement. The underlying anxiety shown
by a lot of the characters interviewed in this article display a real human
dis-connect. There is nothing in the US (and other countries for that matter)
that cannot be fixed with hard work, a bit of luck and investment in the right
things. Maybe that is the real eye-opener. One of the things I have observed,
in crisis the way individuals act, reflects their mental state.

 _" The growing foreign appetite for New Zealand property has generated a
backlash. The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa—the Maori name for
New Zealand—opposes sales to foreigners."_

NZ, a colonised country with a treaty, has all the same problems the US has in
terms of inequity. Way more tribal and dangerous than the tourist brochures
suggest.

 _" The original silo of Hall’s complex was built by the Army Corps of
Engineers to withstand a nuclear strike."_

The traces of hydrazine (H4N2), you get for nothing. ~
[https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/hydrazine.pdf)

~~~
Tomminn
In NZ there is free healthcare, free accident insurance and a decent welfare
program. Being a capitalist country, there is still income inequality, but the
situation is no way near as bad as it is in the US because of these safety
nets for the bottom quartile.

The homicide rate in NZ is less than 1 per 100,000 inhabitants. And almost all
of those homicides are solved, because the police force is large compared to
the number of homicides.

I disagree strongly that NZ has the same problems as the US. If I lose my leg
doing wheelies while drunk on a motorcycle cos I'm idiot, I will be taken care
of at hospital, free of charge. If I get cancer, I will get
surgery/radiotherapy/chemo till its beaten, free of charge. If I have trouble
getting pregnant, the government will fund up to 3 IVF attempts. When I am
prescribed drugs, they will basically only ever cost ~$5 a month.

All this is possible because the government does a cost/benefit analysis to
decide whether various health treatments are actually worth doing. And if it
decides something is worth doing, it buys/trains in bulk. As a result, NZ
spends ~$3200 USD per capita on healthcare, compared to the >$7500 USD the US
spends.

And if you're rich, then buy private health insurance. It's waaaaay cheaper,
because the government program will happily use private hospitals if they pass
the cost/benefit analysis. So private hospitals have a real incentive to
provide health care cheaply.

But back to the poor. Because of these safety nets, you can be _super_ happy
and relaxed in NZ even if you're in the bottom quartile.

I would know. I'm in it.

~~~
bootload
_" the situation is no way near as bad as it is in the US because of these
safety nets for the bottom quartile."_

I'm not kiwi-bashing, simply pointing out that rich foreign individuals, using
NZ as a bolt-hole are faced with similar situation, just in a more dispersed
population.

    
    
       "Of all New Zealand children, 22% live in 
        families where the major caregiver receives 
        income from a social security benefit.[0] 
        That is around 230,000, or one fifth, of 
        New Zealand children" 
    

This is supporting what you say wrt to welfare, about the same murder rate
(0.9 compared to 1.0) to Aus. [1] The biggest thing I noticed last time I was
in the North Island was Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi). For the Māori a means
of citizenship and redress for stolen land. There is nothing like this in
Australia (to its shame) and while I can see the results of standards of
living supplied by the state, I'm not convinced the type of systemic, race
based poverty is not found in NZ like the US. [2]

I still remember the effects of Roger Douglas [3] on NZ in the 80's/90's while
studying with my Kiwi mates.

It is worse in Aus, the country is geographically bigger, without a treaty and
to compare the two places, Australian Aboriginal males have a life expectancy
of 69.1 [4] but from anecdotally it's more like 50. In NZ it is 72.8 ('13).

 _" I would know. I'm in it."_

Kia ora @Tomminn

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty_in_New_Zealand#c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty_in_New_Zealand#cite_note-41)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Māori_people#Socioeconomic_cha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Māori_people#Socioeconomic_challenges)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics)

[4] [http://aihw.gov.au/deaths/life-
expectancy/#indigenous](http://aihw.gov.au/deaths/life-expectancy/#indigenous)

~~~
disordinary
In NZ Māori could vote from the first election on. They've always been on
equal footing with the white man legally (if not socially), they could vote in
NZ more than one hundred years before non white suffrage was finally enforced
across the US. And as you said there is a tribunal that redresses historic
issues with Iwi.

Maori also get special seats in parliament, the Te Reo language and Maori
culture is a big part of NZ (Aotearoa) culture and our way of life, and there
is a lot of state funded help to try and bring the racial inequalities in
line.

A lot of the problems are what we see all around the world, and are hard to
sort out. The towns that Māori live in are often small towns where there is
not a lot of employment, if they live in the cities they are often
disenfranchised and have a lack of cultural support.

~~~
bootload
NZ is light years ahead of Aus in this respect.

 _" The towns that Māori live in are often small towns where there is not a
lot of employment, if they live in the cities they are often disenfranchised
and have a lack of cultural support."_

I hear the same in Australia. Much bigger country, same lack of support.

------
lawless123
>lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency,

A post apocalypse in which internet survives seems far fetched.

~~~
halomru
Bitcoin behaves rather badly under global scale network partitions, or if your
global network has a latency of over an hour. But on the other hand it is
completely immune to collapse of governments

~~~
cafebabbe
Ha, "completely immune". Good luck accessing your wallet without power
plants...

~~~
mywittyname
Or internet access. It seems like you could commit fraud by traveling to
regions without a means to communicate with one-another online and selling
them BTCs that were already spent on another network.

I bet two people pull that off before those communities ban BTC.

~~~
usrusr
On the other hand, as long as those communication islands don't reconnect, all
those double-spent BTC will be just as good/bad as homemade dollar bills.

Bitcoin might be postapocalyptically valuable if the apocalypse in question
has hyperinflation at its core, but in a scenario without that it will be
inferior even to vintage paper money. The true availability of BTC within a
given community is just too much of an uncertainty. What could be a sizable
fraction of the amount in active circulation one day could be completely
devalued due some early adopter backup going live a day later.

------
doikor
I really don't see a scenario working where you pay money to someone to
protect you in a doomsday scenario working. The guard is the guy with the guns
(and the training to use them). Why would the guard not just kill you/kick you
out of the secure place once shit hits the fan?

~~~
rubidium
From the article: One of the guests was skeptical, Dugger said. “He leaned
forward and asked, ‘Are you taking your pilot’s family, too? And what about
the maintenance guys? If revolutionaries are kicking in doors, how many of the
people in your life will you have to take with you?’ The questioning
continued. In the end, most agreed they couldn’t run.”

~~~
FabHK
You could learn to fly the plane. You only need to use it once, out. No more
maintenance needed after.

Now, I disagree with this whole "preppers" mindset, but I think some of the
practical problems could be overcome.

------
gloriasuziekim
Let's be real- this article is more a lifestyle piece on the excessively
prepared, i.e. type A, silicon valley super achievers. Apparently, this is an
article about these folks who have their shit together so far ahead the rest
of us, that this otherwise genius for productivity goes into form of deranged
overdrive.

Let's also look at this article's source, the New Yorker, as a vicarious
observer and critic of anything that veers off their path of caring/obsessing
about depresssing novelists/filmmaker s and actors, fashion, and all things
analogue as the solution to the salvation of the light of humanity and
culture, of which they perceive themselves as the clear torchbearers.

------
awfgylbcxhrey
_we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now._

Nope. Not even close. We survived the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War
protests. For all our online angst and whining, we're not even 1/10th as far
toward the tipping point as we were back then.

~~~
sodafountan
Not to mention a Civil War, World War II and the Cold War. I think we'll all
be alright.

~~~
infinite8s
Those were all human-created events. What happens when we have a super-volcano
eruption and the world has another mini-ice age, and there are famines across
the globe? Or the coastal flooding that is predicted to happen by 2050 if we
continue current warming trends. We can't just force nature to give up through
a superior show of force (unlike winning a war).

~~~
vkou
Coastal flooding would largely be economic damage - mostly distributed to a
small segment of the population, not societal collapse.

Food shortages caused by climate change, on the other hand...

------
ratsbane
I've got a titanium spork and some dental floss in my backpack and in the
trunk of my car I've got a hi-vis vest, white hard hat, and a two-way radio.
Am I missing anything?

Are some of these prepper people are missing out on the key concept that to
live by your wits you need wits? Or maybe they're aware of that and that's why
they stockpile the shotgun shells and dehydrated water capsules...?

~~~
beachstartup
if you found yourself in the middle of koreatown during the 1992 LA riots, do
you think that stuff in your trunk would get you very far?

~~~
1812Overture
This is why I keep a roof Korean in my trunk.

------
ttepasse
So. You're not one of the 0.1%. Society "collapsed", whatever than means. You
did go through hardship, hunger, lack of Instagram, pain, loss of loved ones,
loss of property but also amazing feats of solidarity and human compassion. It
still doesn't really look OK and you're daily mourning the life you and
society lost.

Then there lands a Gulfstream, out climbs a well fed billionaire straight out
his fancy bunker. There's a street lamp nearby and a little bit of rope could
be found..

~~~
nickff
Envy does not justify murder.

Most modern philosophers have taken the view that envy itself is immoral.

~~~
ucaetano
Try to explain that to a hungry crowd watching your well-fed family leaving a
bunker.

"Oh please, what you're doing is morally wrong. Shame on you!"

~~~
nickff
I'm not saying that immorality alone will stop many people, but your rationale
proves too much, and would stop you from intervening in any immoral act.

------
Apocryphon
Pretty good idea from the MeFi discussion:

'It's cute to see the whole "I'm going to buy a home in New Zealand! Full of
canned goods! And a helicopter pad!" Realistically, though, for the money they
could do a lot better. Go buy an entire block in Detroit, rehab all the
houses, rent them at below-market rates to folks who need help. There's your
"militia."'

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
I don't understand why this is so weird. History is filled with chapters of
societal wanton and rampant violence. It could be a class struggle like the
French Revolution, deep seated ethno/racial enmity like the Rwandan Genocide,
or some psychopathic asshole gains power, blames a helpless and pitiful group
of so-called 'depraved deviants' for the entirety of his nation-state's
problems, curses at the president of the US, and decides to deputize the
entire nation as modern day Judge Dredd's with full authority as judge, jury,
and executioner.

Yes, even in the 21st century, (although this is in the Philippines, this
shows what humans are capable of given certain conditions), you can kill
someone if they are suspected of using drugs and Duerte will give you a medal.
The astute among you can see that you can kill any person, sprinkle some crack
on them, and not only will there be absolutely no investigation, you will be
regarded as a patriot and a hero. It seems that if you kill a poor person,
absolutely no one cares.

This is one of the first major purchases I would make and I do have a rather
large emergency kit should disaster strike. Like me, they're in California
along a known fault line way overdue for a major earthquake. Unlike these
"smart" execs, I'd hone my survival skills. I'm not overly concerned about a
21st century peasant revolt, but we live in an area where it's not a matter of
if, but when a major disaster will strike. If people are without electricity
and running water for an extended period of time and/or there is a breakdown
in security (police, national guard, etc.), it gets ugly quick. For example,
in Los Angeles, there was a mentally ill person who threatened to jump off of
an overpass on the 405 (possibly the world's busiest freeway). His antics
caused such a slowdown in traffic, the freeway became a literal parking lot
for a few hours. Because a man inconvenienced their time, people began to goad
him into killing himself saying things like "What are you waiting for you
fucking pussy, get it over with!!!" This wasn't one person, a significant part
of the traffic jam was saying this or wishing it.

When you are malnourished and/or dehydrated, you lose compassion and reason,
gain paranoia, and become more focused on your own survival. For people with
such resources this is like paying a few pennies for apocalypse insurance.

------
floatboth
> “If I had a billion dollars, I wouldn’t buy a bunker,” Elli Kaplan, the
> C.E.O. of the digital health startup Neurotrack, told me. “I would reinvest
> in civil society and civil innovation. My view is you figure out even
> smarter ways to make sure that something terrible doesn’t happen.”

At least there's _one_ reasonable person in this circus.

Also:
[https://youtu.be/XanyPq5BcoA?t=52m18s](https://youtu.be/XanyPq5BcoA?t=52m18s)

~~~
Atheros
So I take it that neither you nor Elli Kaplan have home insurance?

------
agiamas
reddit may be valued at 600 million (orl?) but steve huffman's net worth is in
the millions/tens of millions at most. you wouldn't call him super rich when
he can barely afford a nice house in Palo Alto :)

~~~
che_shirecat
don't understand the downvotes -> he's worth $5-10m at most, chump change in
SV

------
onmobiletemp
Wow, what a well written article. Usually i immediatley close an article that
uses the annoying "journalism as a narrative" method, in which the author
spends pages and pages going through their own useless internal ruminations
and observations before getting to actual reporting and analysis. But this
author did it in a way that i found quite agreeable. Such great writing.

Anyway, these people are insane. Its hilarious to see some wealthy, liberal
hedge fund manager consider with complete seriousness the prospect that donald
trump will turn out to be a ruthless dictator. It is something that many
liberal people are doing now -- comedically grave comparisons to hitler and
concentration camps abound on the left. Werent these people around in 2008
when the right went through the exact same hysteria? Cant they look at the
videos of right wingers furiously assering that obama was a muslim terrorist
and see themselves?

------
Zikes
> I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I
> figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.

Revealing the location of your supplies cache is one of the biggest mistakes
you can make, in such a scenario. Desperate people now know where to go to
find such things.

------
jly
> The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a
> growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley,
> America’s second-highest concentration of wealth. (Southwestern Connecticut
> is first.) “I’ve heard this theme from a bunch of people,” Hoffman said. “Is
> the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against
> technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?”

This is already happening and I would expect it to get worse. We have a chance
now to develop policies that will help mitigate the negative effects, if we
choose to.

~~~
infinite8s
The current policy proposals being floated since the election are moving in
the opposite direction to mitigating those effects.

------
jps359
So did I miss the boat on getting rich off of selling survivalist gear?

~~~
ryandrake
Survivalism, prepping, militias, whatever you call it now, is pretty much just
Military Cosplay. It's just another hobby for people with disposable income.
Instead of golf clubs they're spending it on AR-15s, bunkers, and canned food.

~~~
Arizhel
Well at least the canned food can just be eaten eventually, so it's not really
a waste.

------
dhc_tech
Seems like fallout shelters...where do I apply to be an overseer?

~~~
ogsharkman
Right this way, just step into this decontamination pod

------
che_shirecat
>He is less focussed on a specific threat

Call me a nit, but why are there typos in an article from the new yorker?

Edit: apparently doubling the consonant is something they just do -
[http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-
double-l](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-double-l)

~~~
1812Overture
The New Yorker intentionally uses a bunch of archaic spelling and grammar to
look smart despite the often mediocre content of what they're saying.

------
omegaworks
Glamor-prepping, glepping: the ultimate fuck-you-I-got-mine to any young
people still struggling to come up in the society that these wealthy people
wield an undue influence over.

What happens when everybody at the top has their private island sanctuary but
still holds power in the society we all have to live in?

~~~
infinite8s
How will they enforce that power? It will either require humans (of a
different social status) or robotic weapons/mercenaries.

~~~
omegaworks
I wasn't speaking to what happens after (some hypothetical nonsense) collapse
happens, but what's happening now.

Resources invested in creating these bubbles are resources not invested in the
wider economy.

What if that $mil you spent building a bunker to hide from the future could
have been the $mil that funded the battery tech that saved that future?

------
nikdaheratik
For some reason, this made me think more of medieval castles, with Nuclear
Silo condos replacing King Ludwig's mansions instead. I suppose they figure
they won't need to add a courtyard for the peasants until after things settle
down a bit.

------
gloriasuziekim
And what's up with the beefed up security guy with a kalishnakov who looks
like he's some steroid version of Neal Stephenson? At least they got their
marketing for this article right.

------
vkou
It amuses me greatly that Peter Thiel is listed as one of the people who will
bug out if things turn bad.

I suppose that's the backup plan when his libertarian utopia doesn't work out?

~~~
infinite8s
That's part of the libertarian ethos. To each his own...

------
ENTP
If doomsday comes, at least we should get to meet John Titor.

------
ericzawo
Isn't Sam Altman stockpiling gold and weapons?

