Why billionaires are obsessive about bunkers

A few years in the past, Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media and digital economics in New York, was requested to present a speech at a swanky resort in a distant American desert. Rushkoff presumed he could be speaking to funding bankers a few ebook he had written concerning the web. When he arrived on the venue, nonetheless, he was shocked to seek out himself in entrance of half a dozen ultra-rich tech and hedge fund luminaries, as a substitute of a conferenc.

The boys — sure, they had been all males — had been collectively torn, they mentioned, over a specific alternative: New Zealand or Alaska? They feared the world was heading for what they termed “The Occasion” — some sort of “environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, photo voltaic storm, unstoppable virus or malicious laptop hack that takes every little thing down”, Rushkoff says. They usually needed to know which area could be most secure to retreat to.

Different questions that preoccupied them included: was local weather change scarier than organic warfare? How lengthy would they seemingly want to stay in a bunker for anyway? And, crucially, how may they cease their very own safety forces from murdering them? They sought these solutions from Rushkoff as a result of he had beforehand written Current Shock, a well-regarded ebook about the way forward for tech.

Rushkoff admits he didn’t have many solutions to supply, apart from noting that if the billionaires needed to keep away from being murdered by the assistance, they need to begin being extraordinarily good to them now.

His story is intriguing for 2 causes. First, it exhibits the diploma to which critical cash is fretting a few looming catastrophe. This has lengthy been a characteristic of the fashionable world. Because the writer Garrett Graff described in chilling element in his 2018 ebook Raven Rock, the US authorities created an enormous community of bunkers within the late Forties for its key officers in case of nuclear conflict.

What has modified in current a long time is that growing numbers of personal people have began prepping for catastrophe too. A sequence of occasions, from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to rising tensions between North Korea and the west, and the unfold of conspiracy theories on-line, have fuelled fears of societal collapse.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has introduced the specter of nuclear conflict again into public consciousness. This week the French insurance coverage group Axa launched a survey displaying that four-fifths of individuals in western international locations really feel considerably extra weak than they did 5 years in the past. Local weather change, for the primary time, is deemed the highest risk in Asia and the US in addition to in Europe (the place it has been seen as such for some time), adopted by geopolitical instability (ie conflict).

The survey additionally revealed a pointy decline within the variety of folks expressing religion within the potential of policymakers or scientists to deal with such threats. “There’s a feeling of powerlessness,” says Thomas Buberl, Axa’s CEO. As Ian Bremmer, head of Eurasia Group, places it, “There isn’t any [effective] institutional framework for addressing these points… and even slowing the proliferation of harmful weapons.” This case has sparked not solely the expansion in survivalist — or “prepper” — exercise among the many inhabitants at massive, but additionally prompted the ultra-wealthy to hunt refuge, whether or not in luxurious bunkers, superyachts or each.

The second motive why Rushkoff’s story is intriguing is that this scramble to organise the logistics of bunker life could make the underlying issues worse. The extra that the ultra-rich assume that they will escape Armageddon, the much less they might have to really feel the mandatory desperation to forestall it. That is notably miserable, Rushkoff argues in his new ebook, Survival of the Richest, since these are the identical individuals who have exacerbated issues akin to local weather change, social battle and inequality. “They’ve this mindset that you simply develop into this sovereign particular person, above all people else,” he argues. Bunkers allow them to take a look at.

After all, a number of the super-rich who’re looking for out bunkers would say that this criticism is unfair. As one identified to me not too long ago, the impulse to guard your self and your family members from risk is a common human intuition.

Lots of the world’s wealthiest folks imagine they’re making an attempt to counter such threats. Invoice Gates, as an example, is pouring billions into healthcare and local weather change causes. Elon Musk claims that he needs to forestall nuclear conflict in Ukraine (although his ways depart many Ukrainians horrified).

However the grim reality is that no billionaire on their very own can repair the catastrophic dangers of local weather change, pandemic or conflict. We want collaborative motion between the private and non-private sectors.
So allow us to hope that right now’s swelling temper of worry will shock us all into on the lookout for options. If not, the longer term seems to be scary — even from a bunker.

Observe Gillian on Twitter @gilliantett and e-mail her at gillian.tett@ft.com

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