# Bomb Shelters for the Überwealthy



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse


Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences




www.theguardian.com





There's something so profoundly *dystopian* about this story. These hedge fund managers see the collapse of society on the horizon, but rather than lift a finger to head it off, they're building underground bunkers to hide from it. Their great wealth carries no social responsibility, to them -- only the opportunity to screw the poor one more time.

Infrastructure crumbles from tax avoidance, disparity increases from unequal opportunity, global climate change threatens to displace or kill millions... and their response is a climate-controlled wine cellar. Well, the joke'll be on them when their bomb shelter runs out of potable water and breatable air. The joke'll be on ALL of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Just make sure there's room for the CD collection and a good playback system! And plenty of Scotch and bourbon.


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
> 
> 
> Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences
> ...


LOL.

Your social warrior credentials are certainly intact. I grew up when many middle class folks dug "bomb shelters" in their backyards. You don't have to be super rich to prepare for the big one. I don't see anything wrong with this decision.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

SanAntone said:


> LOL.
> 
> Your social warrior credentials are certainly intact. I grew up when many middle class folks dug "bomb shelters" in their backyards. You don't have to be super rich to prepare for the big one. I don't see anything wrong with this decision.


I remember many people in the neighborhood actually making bomb shelters; once they realized how pointless and useless they were, some of them became great places for us kids to play in. And when you discovered the opposite sex, useful for other things...


----------



## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

More power to them. I would do the same if I had money.


----------



## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
> 
> 
> Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences
> ...


You're right, of course. I don't know why some people on this forum would take the side of billionaires who have nothing better to waste their money on; while the rest of us who are just trying to get by are worrying what kind of world our children and grandchildren are going to live in. I grew up in a home that had an unfinished bomb shelter that my grandfather started but never bothered to finish. I never saw the logic in it. Even if it could save you, and even if you found some way to escape radiation sickness, and sustain yourself on powdered food and crackers; with civil unrest, and all your friends dead; why would anyone want to live in a world like that?

Haven't any of you seen that episode of the Twilight Zone: "The Shelter"?


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> I don't see anything wrong with this decision.


Do you really think Scrooge McDuck's gold vault will be worth ANYTHING if society collapses?


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> I remember many people in the neighborhood actually making bomb shelters; once they realized how pointless and useless they were, some of them became great places for us kids to play in. And when you discovered the opposite sex, useful for other things...


When I was a small child we moved into a suburbian subdivision that was built about 1962 or so. The subdivision that had been built the year before had an option for a backyard bomb shelter when you purchased a home in that then-new subdivision.

They were basically nothing more than sealed yard basements. Had an actual nuclear weapon been dropped near us, it wouldn't have been long before the oxygen supply ran out.


----------



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Bomb shelters seem clearly among the most harmless uses the uber-rich could make of their funds....


----------



## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Coach G said:


> Haven't any of you seen that episode of the Twilight Zone: "The Shelter"?


Or the episode of Quantum Leap in which what finally caused Sam to leap was convincing a shelter builder to build swimming pools?


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'd rather just get blown up with the rest of the working stiffs if it's going to happen. I'll let the rich folks figure out how they're going to survive when they emerge from their bunkers to experience the nuclear winter.


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Kreisler jr said:


> Bomb shelters seem clearly among the most harmless uses the uber-rich could make of their funds....


As opposed to actually DOING something with their billions to try to head off the looming disaster?


----------



## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

mbhaub said:


> make sure there's room for the CD collection and a good playback system


plus 1


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> As opposed to actually DOING something with their billions to try to head off the looming disaster?


Better idea: instead of judging other folks, why don't you get rich and do what you think is a good way to spend your money.


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Wow. Just... wow. Robber baron much?


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

SanAntone said:


> Better idea: instead of judging other folks, why don't you get rich and do what you think is a good way to spend your money.


Judging other folks is what we do - all of us - from time to time. It's how [that subject we're not allowed to discuss] works. Even (especially) those who advocate laissez-faire, live-and-let-live are taking up a position.

Really, it's better if we (here at TC that is) stick to comparing CD collection size, hi-fi investment, and arguing that Boulez and Stockhausen were the saviours of CM than fretting about the world outside our cosy conservative niche hobby.

More Xenakis anyone?


----------



## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Forster said:


> Judging other folks is what we do - all of us - from time to time. It's how [that subject we're not allowed to discuss] works. Even (especially) those who advocate laissez-faire, live-and-let-live are taking up a position.
> 
> Really, it's better if we (here at TC that is) stick to comparing CD collection size, hi-fi investment, and arguing that Boulez and Stockhausen were the saviours of CM than fretting about the world outside our cosy conservative niche hobby.
> 
> More Xenakis anyone?


My vinyl collection is bigger than your CD collection! It takes up more shelf space.


----------



## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Better idea: instead of judging other folks, why don't you get rich and do what you think is a good way to spend your money.


So the rich are beyond judgement? The first thing communists do when they take power is take every measure to destroy God and religion and replace it with worship of the state (nobody can criticize the state or else); and in a way capitalist do the same; not as fast, but gradually, as money becomes the new God. This is what I see in the above post: the rich can't be criticized, can't be wrong, can't be regulated, can't even be bound to laws or morals like the rest of us are. The only way to dare challenge the rich is to become rich because in a capitalist society the rich are the ones who are the masters of keeping the economy sound, or so the theory goes.


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Better idea: instead of judging other folks, why don't you get rich and do what you think is a good way to spend your money.


Tonight Bill Gates will be a guest on Ari Melber's show on MSNBC. They'll talk about some of the initiatives The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are working on to reduce childhood mortality, to eradicate preventable diseases, and to raise the standard of living in the poorest countries.

Anyone who thinks it's a good use of one's fortune to build a high-tech bomb shelter to hide from the looming disasters should tune in for a different perspective.

History has many lessons to teach us. One is that vast economic disparity is not a sustainable model for stable society. "The tide that lifts all boats" is an economy where the ultra-rich participate in programs that benefit everybody: infrastructure. Healthcare. Education. The United States had our highest growth and longest sustained expansion of the economy right after WWII, when the top tax rate was 95%. Factories, the highway system, ports and airports, agricultural innovations, and lifting millions out of poverty.


----------



## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

They'd be cheaper moving to Switzerland where the whole population can be accommodated in nuclear shelters.


----------

