The first thing people will do when society collapses is head to where the billionaires live to raid their stockpiles.
If any are successfully defended, I propose we simply push a bunch of rocks on top of it.
Shit next to the intake vents. Make that spot the communal toilet. Lets see how long the filters last
Would rich people want to live in a world where there is no one else to enslave?
Waiting for robot slaves, assuming they don’t follow the path of cylons
They will always find someone to enslave
Yes, but one would think in an apocalypse bunker the pickings are slim
That’s why its one wannabe oligarch per bunker.
They than get to (try) to play god with everyone they so generously allowed into their ‘fiefdom’ without any known opposition.
I’m pretty sure the zuck bunker has separated quarters for security and service staff. They ain’t going down there alone bro.
Mutiny will come pretty soon once the staff realize they can just dispose of the suckyberg
I mean we say that, but look how happy people are to just go with the status quo just because ‘it could be worse’ or some variation.
In a bunker, class consciousness happens on speedrunning mode.
May not matter. Authoritarian mindsets might be quite happy enslaving just one other person. Here’s a documentary about it.
The crappy thing, is that while they plan on a possible collapse of soceity, they could just as easily plan on what to do about all the displaced workers created, by all their technical solutions seeking problems.
I say that when the billionaires retreat into their bunkers we should all cover the entrances and vents with a couple hundred layers of concrete.
They’re just building latrines for future civilizations.
There are things called bunker busters too
Those are too fast. I prefer to let them rot.
The rich would rather live in an apocalypse than let workers have some more of the wealth that the workers themselves have created.
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Communism has never existed and never will, however the systems that communists implement inevitably focus on allocating resources to a well-connected elite.
AI isn’t the problem. Greedy, power-hungry people are. Tale as old as time (the saying will be even more true after AI solves time travel).
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For real though… Why are so many people freaking the fuck out over AI? Sure. A robot can replace a forklift driver or a cashier. But there are an insane amount of jobs still that robots or ai can’t replace for decades upon decades yet. But people believe that chatgpt will somehow create megabot blue collar workers within the next few weeks
But what do those forklift drivers and cashiers do?
Because whether or not AI can actually do a certain job is irrelevant when the c-suite thinks it can.
I’ve become convinced that the c-suite doesn’t even care of they think AI can do a job. If they can convince investors and/or the board that they should dump money into it and their golden parachute, that’s good enough.
Now, if only there was a term for intentionally misleading people investing in your leadership into thinking something is much more capable than it really is and running with the cash…
You’re underestimating:
- The speed of progress of the current generation of AI
- The number of jobs that AI can already replace.
- Just how many fuckin’ people are forklift drivers or cashiers
- The will of your employers to be rid of annoying, needy employees
You’re overestimating:
- The actual productivity of most people
- Your actual worth to your company
- How much company leaders understand about AI outside of “I can cut headcount by a lot”
I think the part that most people miss is that it’s not about being a 1:1 replacement. With proper use of the AI tools we have now, it’s not at all unexpected for one person to be able to do the job of many by overseeing the running and output of AI agents. AI isn’t going to replace whole industries (yet), but it is absolutely going to replace half of the members of a lot of teams.
I think the thing I haven’t quite sussed out is… Well, let’s take Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Wal-mart and DG both have this weird niche of being both major employers for rural areas, as well as depending on nearly their employee base as customers. If they automate all their jobs away, who do they think they’re going to be selling to? My guess so far is that all these MBAs think that certainly their customer base won’t run out of cash by having their jobs automated away.
Seems to be the case for a lot of industries, even if not as blatant. The economy thrives when people have the means to buy products. You can make production as cheap as you want, you’re not making much profit if only the 1% can buy them.
Even Henry Ford understood this, and paid his automobile factory workers well so they could also be his customers.
Ford might have been a bastard, at least he was a smart bastard who didn’t let the idea that someone might benefit from something that also benefitted him stop him. Which is a major problem with the current batch. And I know he was a fascist. He was bad, somehow people strive to be worse.
Is your vision for the rest of us merely a few weeks ?
Or can you see past June 2025 at all from where you sit ?
Nawww is the little piggy boy scared we’re gonna come for him?
Good.
I read a book called Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven many years ago about a comet hitting the Earth. There was a scene in the book, after the impact, where a rich guy manages to finally reach a place up in the mountains where he has supplies stashed, only to find that his employees have claimed it for themselves and won’t let him in because he’s basically useless in the new world of survival.
If you were working for Huffman or Musk or any of the rest of them, and a there was a huge society ending disaster, would you let them in when they showed up or would you just shoot them down with their own guns? I know what I would do. I can’t imagine anyone letting them in.
That is such a great book.
And yeah, fuck them. I would absolutely never let them in.
Now ask yourself why these guys are suddenly so obsessed with AI, chatbots, and getting rid of roles previously staffed by humans.
Which is just a thousand times fucking funnier to me given that i’m someone with actual technical knowledge who works in the industry as opposed to a kholed nepo baby with parental funds.
I hope the virtual doorman hallucinates that they’re a radioactive dog or some shit
lol
A delivery guy I know couldn’t make his (scheduled, daily) pickup at an Amazon warehouse because the robot security didn’t recognize him that day (despite being the usual guy, with a badge).
So yeah, that probably will be the most likely scenario.
Being hired as security at a billionaire’s Hawaiian apocalypse bunker has got to be the best job imaginable. You get paid to live in a tropical paradise in case The Worst should happen. If The Worst actually does happen, you just go inside the bunker and lock the doors, and if the billionaire shows up, you don’t let him in. Easy peasy.
Cory Doctorow’s Masque of the Red Death novella (named after Poe’s story of the same name) explores this theme a lot, especially how short sighted the rich can be and how well the poor band together to rebuild.
Here’s the free audio book:
Ooh, free Edgar Allen Poe book? Are you trying to be my new best friend?
well it’s not EAP, its CD - but using an EAP title. Sure we can be BFFs, but ill need a credit card number and PIN code
Ah, I shouldn’t have skimmed your post. Thanks again, I’ll give it a listen.
Didn’t read the book but I get the scenario after a hypothetical world changing disaster, it’s going to be a ratrace for high ground. It’s a false sense of security to believe hoarding cash or guns or vehicle would be your ticket out of it, it’s called pride and hubris.
A motor/car can’t swim. Weapons are a sign of hostility. Cash could be useless. Even having access to an escape satellite doesn’t guarantee you’ll be hit by space trash or cosmic plasma streams. The Road is a example how depressing the aftermath really is.
The Road is a good example; this thread also has me thinking about the Amos and Clarissa arc after the meteors hit in The Expanse.
I had gone quite a long time without thinking about The Road.
Day ruined.
It doesn’t even have to be so combative.
Imagine being thrown together with 99 other survivors of the apocalypse and 1 of them was musk.
There’s going to be medical people and trades people and farmers and naturalists and even people with governance experience from community groups et cetera.
Imagine how utterly useless a billionaire would be in that context. Their entitlement would make them worse than useless. Like I’d rather be stuck with nanna who is just a drain on resources rather than someone who’s only skill is self interest.
Nanna is the keeper of the stories and the only person who has the entire new testament memorised.
If your way of making money makes you really fear people will be mad at you, you should be asking yourself what’s wrong with your way of making money. That is, if you care. But if you don’t care don’t whine.
I know which compound I’m targeting first.
I think they know the system is unfair. They are just greedy fucks who’d prefer to squeeze it completely dry to benefit themselves.
Capitalism being about companies competing to provide value to society is a myth we tell. Otherwise no one would have a problem.
Where are you getting the gas, Steve? Gas is only good for a few months in storage without treatment and a couple of years with it. Have you never read a fucking book?
Petroleum distillation is incredibly simple. Give me a couple weeks in a junkyard with a welder and I can have your crude refined to any weight distillate you want. People were distilling petroleum fuels a century before penicillin was invented.
Fuck piss baby spez. But of you should see the crude “refineries” around the world run with just a tank, heated by the same crude inside, with just a long pipe as a condernsor that people manually water cool.
Key words in that sentence: give you those things. I doubt the lord tech bro could do any of that if the apocalypse happened tomorrow.
Even the janky version requires skill and knowledge, and if he doesn’t have the crude then both are useless anyway. Building a hole in the ground with motorcycles doesn’t help you when you depend on a highly connected world to fuel and maintain it.
“Gas goes bad.”
-Phillip “Tandy” Miller
Multiple motorcycles? What’s he gonna do, ride them all at once?
If you have a bunch of motorcycles going in a line and you ride another motorcycle on top of that line like a conveyor belt then you will be going twice as fast as the highest speed the single motorcycle could go.
If you stack them enough you can approach light speed as well!
More wheels is more faster, just like legs. That’s why horses are faster than people. This Huffman guy might be onto something
Obviously him (and all the other oligarchs behaving like this) are counting on their entourage of sycophants following them. I don’t think they have completely considered the fact that all of their untangible wealth will be worthless in an apocalypse situation, and instead they will just turn into golden geese sitting on a pile of stuff that everyone else, including their former sycophants, would like to sit on instead.
There was some guy that got to interview a bunch of billionaires for some reason and their views on an apocalypse situation are eye opening.
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”.
He means cylon guards, and we know how that turned out
How’s this prick planning to reach the bunker in case of societal collapse/apocalypse?
I’m sure he’ll find unpaid volunteers to carry his ass, that he’ll sell out once they reach the bunker.
/s
It’s ok, they’re gathering supplies for the people. Once things start it’ll all be in one convient place to take.
Electric motorcycles? Do preppers have an understanding of how gasoline absorbs water from the air and is substantially worse within a matter of months? Even with stabilizer, you get a few years out of it, tops. What are you going to use for the rest of your life?
To be fair, the writers of post-apocalyptic Hollywood movies don’t understand it, either.
Create your own gasoline refining plant in your bunker and crank out fuel as you need it? Should be fine because motorcycles don’t use a lot of gas. But you would think if you had tons of money you might put some solar panel stuff in storage as well just in case
Could always set up a refinery of sorts.
And while gas absorbs water from the air, I’m sure there is an expensive way to if not outright prevent it, than slow it down way more than current mass adopted storage.
Off the top of my head i imagine some sort of giant glass tank involving vaccums and check valves would at least extend the usable life by a fair amount.
And while there are a lot of popular motorcycles whose gas mileage is little better than a car there are also a good amount with amazing gas mileage.
There’s also the possibility of converting the motorcycles to alternate fuel sources like propane or natural gas.
Or as these people are just rich assholes indulging in their fantasies they may really take their cue from movies.
