Tech Billionaires Seem to Be Doom Prepping. Should We All Be Worried?

Minus the last line, there was a great article in the WSJ last summer about why "doom prepping" is actually impossible: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/sorry-billionairestheres-no-esca...

I wasn't doom prepping, but years ago I looked into what our small household would need in the way of backup storage capacity just for water, should our city supply suddenly became unavailable. I don't remember the actual numbers, but it became clear that even very large tanks would not keep us going for very long at all. In an actual apocalypse, any preparations you made would probably only postpone your misery for a very short time. On the other hand, solar panels driving well pumps and similar schemes might prove me wrong. I'm curious how much extra time billionaire preppers calculate their plans will give them if and when disaster actually strikes.

I keep meaning to lean into this and start offering doom prep services alongside the other stuff I do, working with metal and all other media, living off grid, and messing with the systems involved, but most of the supper rich are fucked up when it comes to anything practicle, and require more hand holding than I can put up with.still, I can smell all those yummy guilders and krugerand just down the road

Be worried? Nah.

Way before tech billionaires parts of the American evangelical Christian community routinely asserted the final judgement and second coming is days/weeks away ... and it's all BS - obviously. But if you're caught in the middle of in within your family especially if you're a minor ... it's a linear combo of surreal and emotionally manipulating.

Periodically we get a humerous stories out of it ex. Parents who doom prepped a bunker only for kids to find it, party over the weekend, and eat up all the food leaving a complete boozy mess.

Things to worry about: power corrupts absolutely and the other usual suspects.

This article veers off into solewhat absurd pearl clutching about AGI, but this quote

>"The notion of Artificial General Intelligence is as absurd as the notion of an 'Artificial General Vehicle'"

I find very appealing, while this line

> 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.

I found hilarious.

I don't hold homesteading for all that sensible, as a hedge again apocalypse. Our world is so connected, I think the idea of having a self-sustaining farm at the end of the world is just fantasy. Particularly for folks who have never spent a summer working a field.

Had to deal with some of these people during labor unrest at a factory that turned violent. Very disconnected people. Narrow knowledge and intelligence. Wealth isolates and prevents a maturation process. They have no time to mature. And when dealing with unpredictable complex, dynamic systems, if you are not ready or had practice, you are naturally going to feel a need to run in the opposite direction when shit hits the fan around you constantly.

Their success lies in avoiding anything unpredictable, and all the systems and processes they build leverage that kind of thinking. They call it Efficiency and Optimization. So its very narrow success.

If you have met people who have had to deal with unpredictability like financial crisis, epidemics, riots, war etc where problems just can't be handed of to Lawyers, PR and HR you see a very different breed from your avg tech leader.

So focusing on them is like focusing on sheltered circus animals sitting inside a disconnected popular circus tent, and what they think about what's happening outside the tent in the jungle.

Societal collapse is on its way. The first domino to fall will be the AI bubble bursting which will lead to massive economic problems. The rest will follow after as society is already a giant powder keg with a wannabe dictator in charge.

There is a sentence from famous Clausewitz War Theory:

"every plan lasts as long until the first enemey contact"

Good luck to those tech bros when everything is collapsing and the people protecting them will be paid in then-probably-useless dollars - will they still protect you? :-)

Here is an article of someone describing collapse during Bosnian war: https://de.scribd.com/document/458754826/One-Year-in-Hell