
Survival of the Richest - hudibras
https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
======
dev_dull
> _Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly
> completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I
> maintain authority over my security force after the event?_

How will these bunker building individuals be viewed by survivors? Inevitably
society rebuilds, yet these folks probably won't have anything of value to
offer a new community. It's very possible they even lived a life of luxury
while everyone else starved.

I think they will be in for a rude awakening when or if that time comes. To
that end they're probably not building survival bunkers, they're building
tombs.

~~~
flocial
I think if we want to play apocalyptic scenarios, the rich survivors and their
clans would devolve into medieval fiefdoms. Security forces would be given
honorary titles and authorities over lesser beings while the brain trust would
be given aristocratic status. They'd organize raids on other survivors to
quell internal unrest and promote unity within the tribe.

The sponsor/ruler's ability to survive the apocalyptic event would be
dependent how good they are at political/psychological manipulation/intrigue.
I'd say most upper management would survive.

~~~
ryandrake
If it's truly a post-apocalyptic environment, your "pre-war" wealth won't
matter. Nobody will care how many zeros are in your bank's (non-functional)
computer database. Your ability to survive and cause other people to survive
would be all that counted. I've always thought of it as "having Mad Max
skills."

What are your Mad Max skills? If the nuclear apocalypse comes and you survive,
what useful skill do you have that will let you continue to live without the
rule of law? Can you build a house? Fix a car? Grow crops? Butcher an animal
properly? Land an airplane? I've always though everyone should have at least a
few of these practical hands-on skills, in case the shit hits the fan. What
good are your computer programming skills when there's no more electricity,
let alone functional computers? So, you're a social media marketing manager
for a global brand? If that's all you know how to do, you'll end up some local
warlord's sex slave.

Why would "security forces" listen to some formerly rich corporate CEO? What
has he to offer them?

~~~
pmoriarty
You don't necessarily need "Mad Max skills" as long as you're part of a group
of people.

The ones to dominate in groups tend to have social engineering skills, or "Ben
Linus skills" you could call them.

They don't need to know how to start a fire, or fire a gun, or fix a car. They
can just get other people to do it for them -- not for money, but because they
can con them in to it, or exploit their weaknesses, set them against one
another, or bribe them with promises.

~~~
AstralStorm
Someone needs those skills though.

This is a problem is too small group in a survival situation. A viable group
should have the size of a village at least - over 100 people of some
diversity.

Otherwise it is very fragile.

Obviously enough resources to start with.

------
michaelmrose
"This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed
guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But
how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the
guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using
special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making
guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or
maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology
could be developed in time."

Can we beat the rush and tar and feather these people now and ride them out on
the rail or possibly a one way rocket?

~~~
throwawayqdhd
> making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind

This almost sounds like a parody

~~~
arethuza
Yes, great way to piss off your security people who will (not unreasonably)
take the very first opportunity they can to take their revenge.

~~~
throwawayqdhd
Even more absurd is their confidence that they can leash up hyper-masculine
private security contractors - the men who hold the guns and kill for a
living.

~~~
AstralStorm
Depends. An actual leader able to convince them and strategize, plus handle
logistics would probably do reasonably well. Especially a military commander.

Most of CEOs and managers aren't leaders of this sort - they have to pay
people to follow them. The second the deal is bad and they cannot rely on
contacts and politics, they are left in a ditch.

------
koliber
Apocalypses come and go. In the human times, there has not been one singular
event that wiped out a large majority of the population. There have been
"local" catastrophes confined to a country or a region which have caused
upheaval and changes of who is in charge. They're generally referred to as
wars or revolutions.

The things these folks are afraid of will mostly not directly be a danger to
them. Massive amounts of money can directly protect you from epidemics, rising
sea levels, inadequate food and water, and even nuclear war.

Unfortunately, such events, and others, cause social unrest, which can devolve
into chaos and war. This is what they are trying to protect against. It's not
rising sea levels per se. It's pissed off and confused people searching for
food and water and trying to enact revenge.

There are many strategies for dealing with this. Isolation is one. Pre-emptive
cooperation and guild-building is another. Doing whatever you can to keep the
social system stable and mitigating reason for collapse seems like a good
option as well.

~~~
AstralStorm
There has been one such event very early in history of humanity, Koba
supervolcano eruption.

Very tight evolutionary bottleneck. Likely sparked the first of migration
waves out of Africa.

------
mac01021
Maybe the author is simply does not fully appreciate the nature of those
billionaires' interest.

After all, they are billionaire hedge fund managers. As in investor, when your
portfolio is sufficiently large, you invest a significant fraction of it in a
way that is consistent with the need to survive an improbable but highly
devastating outcome.

If I had 10 billions of dollars, I might invest 8 or 9 of them optimistically
or philanthropically. That doesn't mean I can't also spend the remaining
dollars and a couple of days per week trying to make sure my family is ready
to confront whatever improbable calamity I think they might need to face in
the worst case.

~~~
justinator
Do these guys ever have, "fun"?

I don't feel that they ever have fun.

~~~
imesh
Getting a high security bunker built to your specifications sounds like a lot
of fun to me.

~~~
culturestate
Agreed. I'm a closet infrastructure nerd and could easily see myself losing
months of my life to planning some mundane aspect of this thing.

------
toomanybeersies
I read a piece a while ago that basically said that the poor will be the ones
to survive an apocalypse (of whatever cause).

Because the poor have always been surviving, since the day the were born. It's
ingrained into their being. The rich don't have this instinct to survive,
they're detached from it.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the rich people building bunkers in New
Zealand.

I don't think they'd last very long to be honest. The farmers will be the ones
to survive. The billionaire who's bought a bunker in Queenstown doesn't know
how to handle their shit in the outdoors, it's not a boardroom out there. The
cocky who's been walking up and down those hills all his life does. He's spent
12 hours a day out there for decades, he's probably hunted more animals than
he could ever remember, he's used to being out there and handling his shit. He
also probably owns a horse, which is going to go a lot further than a 4wd or a
motorbike.

The survivors will survive, not the rich.

~~~
hueving
The poor in cities (e.g. New York City) will be no better off than the rich.
They know as little about survival without civilization infrastructure as the
rich.

This isn't like the homesteading days. Most of the poor still buy food from
grocery stores (with cash or ebt) like anyone else.

~~~
evgen
The poor outside of cities who are not subsistence farmers will be in an
equally bad spot. Modern farming has not been an independent activity that can
be pursued without external inputs for several hundred years. No fertilizers,
no hybrid seed shops, no machinery repair, no fuel or electricity means no
farm. Rural residents who can hunt might last a bit longer, but I would put my
money on a suburban hipster with an organic garden and chicken coop before I
would bet on anyone who farms cereal crops or livestock.

~~~
AstralStorm
They will have it easier to adapt to subsistence farming. They should be at
least familiar with basic manual farming techniques and tools. Such people are
also familiar with working in groups.

The main problem for them will be, as usual during war and upheaval, personal
physical security. Probably access to potable water too as wells fell into
disuse. And obviously getting to start - initial plants and seeds.

Machinists should be able to figure things out too reasonably quickly. Reuse
is big in most such situations. The more advanced hardware might be less
useful or hard to maintain, but again basics are reasonably easy.

~~~
evgen
Really? I spent part of my childhood on a farm and while I could attach the
mower to the PTO of the tractor and cut some hay I would not have the
slightest clue how to hitch up a team of horses to do the same let alone
maintain the equipment. Modern farming is about as related to subsistence
farming as web development is to relay logic.

And are those machinists able to do a lot of machining without power or
delivery of new stock? You are still thinking several layers of
interdependence and abstraction above the long-term reality of a breakdown of
civil society -- you should think less industrial revolution and more 12th
century technology IMHO.

Of course, now that I write all this out I realize where I would place my bet:
the Amish will rule the post-apocalyptic future...

~~~
AstralStorm
1\. Yes, if pressed to, you would get it, in a better or worse way. At least
you know what to do, if not how. You would know which plants are manageable,
how to schedule crops, how soil needs to be aerated, watered and fertilized.
You can figure out suitable replacements to everything if you put just a bit
of mind to it. People, even simple, can pull off feats of intellect when
pressed.

2\. The most accessible power technologies are wind and tidal power. Plus you
can use human and animal power easily enough. And it is easy enough to make
big unwieldy batteries. This is at most 16th century tech with initial
development in ancient times and was initially done with ancient equipment. As
long as someone remembers how it is done and how electricity and motors work,
it would get done.

The hardest part is metallurgy and more advanced chemistry. That took
centuries to figure out very well, though a lot can be done with wood or reed.

You can do a lot without semiconductors or with very junk big ones scavenged
from about anything. Scavenging plastics is easy too.

3\. The biggest risk would again be personal security and mental health. These
risks cannot be avoided but can be mitigated. Medicine would be set back by
centuries. Advanced food preservation techniques would be unavailable...
Leisure would be very limited at least initially.

------
throwawayqdhd
It's so strange to hear this perennial talk of the apocalypse when factually,
we've never lived in a more prosperous, healthier, and better connected world.

Maybe these wealthy people know more than I do, but I've just seen literally
billions lifted out of abject poverty and apocalypse-like situations in the
last 20 years alone in China and India.

We haven't had a major war in more than half a century. Disease rates are
lower than they've ever been. Dying from hunger was a very real thing for the
majority of the world, but it's a problem we've erased quite a bit.

~~~
balladeer
We had major wars as recent as few years ago let alone half a century. Maybe
not in the West and yes it was not of WW scale.

We do live in a today that has more medical advancements than yesterday. But
is our lifestyle/life really _healthy_ when looking at it for the long term?
Are the widening gaps of socio economic imbalances really good or neutral for
our society, again in the long term? And those advancements in science and
technology reaching everybody evenly? I doubt all of these.

In Bangalore I drink packaged drinking water in a so called posh residential
area. There is a _village_ next to my apartment complex where people drink
ground water and if they are lucky the water supplied by municipality. Both
sources are unsafe and contaminated. They can't afford the packaged water.
They also did not contaminate the water they drink. We (the richer part of the
society) did.

I personally believe rich are leaving (now this may not be in a well planned
and intentional manner) the poor behind in the race of survival or something
like that.

~~~
throwawayqdhd
The thing is, the people you mentioned in Bangalore didn't even have access to
water 50 years ago. India is a great example because the country has
progressed on all metrics so much in the last few decades. You don't recognize
it because you see such abject poverty in front of you. 30 years ago, this
poverty was more hidden in that the country mostly lived in rural areas, far
away from cities.

~~~
balladeer
50 years ago that water was not contaminated and yes they did have access to
water that was not contaminated. Also, I forgot to add that there was plenty
of it too and now there's little.

No, it is not hidden from me. I am from the hinterland. I moved to Bangalore 7
years ago. Before that 4 years in college which was semi rural and before that
it was pure hinterland. The divide/gap what we see today was not this wide 10
yrs ago, or 20.

PS. I am not pointing to any specific Govt. Just the modern times.

------
Animats
Now that's depressing. On the other hand, it's hedge fund people, not people
who are actually doing anything. They fear, perhaps correctly, that someday
the mob will come to string them up.

~~~
ryandrake
Also could be worried that their only advantage in life is that they are
already rich. They're not necessarily smarter or better skilled than everyone
else. If you reset everyone's bank accounts to zero, the same people would not
eventually end up back on top, and that terrifies them.

~~~
projektir
Tbh, I think that's true for most people. I don't know if it's particularly
terrifying in itself.

------
seibelj
I need to brush up my highlight reel so I can get paid $50k to recommend
cryptos and bunker designs to insane rich people

~~~
duxup
I recall a story about people whose job it is to sail rich people's yachts
from place to place because they of course don't do it.

~~~
hueving
Right, they only want to sail them in the pretty places during vacations
(Italy in the summer, Bahamas in the winter, etc). They don't want to be stuck
on the things for the boring weeks crossing the Atlantic.

------
socialist_coder
All these comments about how the poor will survive, "mad max skills", etc,
have got me thinking that the super wealthy would never let it get to that
point.

Why wouldn't they unleash their previously created swarm of kill-bots / bio-
agents / nano-bots?

Killing the rest of the population is clearly the best course of action for
the ultra wealthy.

They don't even have to wait for "the event". As soon as they have sufficient
technology to reliably kill 99% of people, what will stop them from doing it?

~~~
beaconstudios
why would you think that these people are just gearing up for a worldwide
first-strike holocaust? That's mind-bogglingly conspiratorial.

~~~
socialist_coder
They are willing to put punishment collars on their own security forces... is
it really that hard to fathom?

If only a handful of ultra wealthy go down this path, the rest will be forced
to follow or risk getting eliminated. It's like the nuclear arms race but
without the global fallout.

~~~
beaconstudios
there's a difference between "when things get desperate, what can I do to
survive?" and "I proactively want to genocide the entire planet". Shows like
the walking dead explore what we are willing to do (and what humanity we are
willing to abandon) in the former case. It's not incomprehensible that we
would be willing to do inhumane things to survive in an apocalyptic scenario.

------
mirimir
> Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future
> climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer ...

In Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief novels, almost all of those uploads become
slaves. Processing modules in clusters, serving oligarchs.

~~~
cm2012
I personally fear the "I have no mouth but I must scream" scenario.

~~~
mirimir
This is a little like that, in that the oligarchs massively duplicate minds,
with random tweaks, and then select. That's the basis of the opening line:

> As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small
> talk.

They're selecting for cooperation.

------
pascalxus
>"The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or
hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture
capital but arrive at passively."

I think this pretty accurate. The author clearly doesn't agree and feels that
this is a false choice VCs have made. I don't agree. I think the author
overestimates the degree with which we (the human race/or any intelligent
beings) can "create" solutions. Solutions/Inventions are not created, they are
DISCOVERED. With the invention of Fire, the wheel, the internet or even
facebook, the potential arrangement of atoms which lead to that invention were
always there: we didn't create those things, we merely discovered it. There's
such vast oversupply of talent creating things everywhere: 100s of projects
are submitted to product hunt every day (sure that aspect can be considered
creation), but figuring out which ones are usable and which ones will be used,
consumed and monetized and be successful: that is Discovery.

~~~
Spartan-S63
That oversupply of talent is also being directed towards 100s of projects that
are hoping to be successful. How much of that talent would be better allocated
to basic research and discovery? How much further would that propel us if we
redirected more of our focus from commercial gains to satiating human
curiosity?

~~~
hueving
>How much of that talent would be better allocated to basic research and
discovery?

Probably very little. In my experience, there is limited overlap between
interest in basic research and interest in making things with immediate use.
People interested in the latter will suck at the former because they will not
be motivated.

------
michaelmrose
Instead of "“How do I maintain authority over my security force after the
event?" How about

How can I protect the most possible people and build the best functioning
society post collapse to ensure the survival of myself and my progeny.

This gives the lie to the idea that the captains of industry are great men
they aren't great men they are toads towering above our lives and yet beneath
our contempt.

~~~
antisthenes
How about just selling basic farming equipment to the new communities that
arise from the ashes?

Quality gardening tools will go a long way in the post-apocalyptic world, I
think. And doing so is far less likely to earn you a place in the guillotine,
than being a bunker-resource hoarder.

------
iosDrone
"Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed
building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain
authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social
unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes
everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed
guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But
how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the
guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using
special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew."

Wouldn't the guards simply torture you until you opened all of the locks?

~~~
Retra
Or just shoot you and cut the locks. There's nothing that is accessible to
only one person.

~~~
chii
Put in fail deadly devices - e.g., thermite burners or bombs.

Putting in a wrong password, or excessive physical damage, will cause it to
trigger, destroying the valuables.

~~~
makapuf
If you're alone you will make mistakes. If you're not...then you're back to
trusting _some_ people.

------
mark_l_watson
Good short essay by Douglas Rushkoff, interesting what billionaires are really
worried about.

For a long read, I recommend Rushkoff’s books, like ‘Throwing Rocks at a
Google Bus’, etc. A common theme of his is supporting local businesses to
support companies like Amazon from ending up destroying most competition.

------
FrozenVoid
These people are extremely naive. They are thinking after The Event, they'll
emerge from the bunkers to magically functioning society and rebuild
everything from scratch into anarcho-capitalist utopia without that pesky
government.

In reality, the landscape would likely be filled with neo-feudal warlords and
gangs fighting for control, competing and looting everything in sight -
without the interest to rebuild or maintain anything: same short-term
interests they apply for natural resources with extra urgency of survival and
competition.

Without a functioning government and democracy civilization reverts to earlier
tribe-like patterns of power, which don't allow for a collaborative society to
exist in one place. All the former wealth and social connections they have
wouldn't amount to much, the bunkers can't exist forever even if they have
thousands of years in supplies.

They'll be found and opened by other survivors to loot resources or just
exploded to prevent competition. They don't expect the world treat them as
part of zero-sum game they play with it. They taking the bet people will not
change or respect earlier laws and customs.

The author idea that preventing The Event is a more viable strategy is
dismissed, because its obviously cheaper to bet on smaller projects and its
contrary to egoistic drive. They're not concerned for the course of world
history, they're concerned with their personal little world.

The world electricity generation,transport, water supply and food production
networks can't be replaced at smaller scale: internet and communications that
glued the people together would be replaced by slower methods and disconnect
the world. They are even unlikely to survive without modern air conditioning
and clean water, which will disappear with electricity - even if electricity
exists the new owners of plants will dictate its prices and availability.

A few post-apocalyptic novels touch the idea of elite emerging from bunkers
totally unprepared for the disaster world they avoided, until the resources
run out.

~~~
ahje
> A few post-apocalyptic novels touch the idea of elite emerging from bunkers
> totally unprepared for the disaster world they avoided, until the resources
> run out.

Interesting! Any recommendations?

------
skookumchuck
People have been predicting an apocalypse in the short term for a long time
now. Remember "The Shape of Things To Come", and "The Limits To Growth"?

~~~
polotics
The models from "limits to growth" have been disproved? This would be good
news. Please post a link.

~~~
sl-1
Last time I checked, the models presented in the "Limits to Growth" seem to be
tracking the situation pretty well. Here is a paper about it (not mine)
[https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/00...](https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2763500/MSSI-
ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf)

~~~
skookumchuck
It predicted running out of oil in 1992, for example. Besides, we will never
run out of oil, just like we never ran out of wood nor whale oil.

