The latest billionaire trend? Doomsday bunkers with a flammable moat

Here is a silly take:

The billionaires could use their doomsday bunker money to try and help solve the global issues we are having instead of just saying "fuck it I'm going underground."

You don't become a billionaire by caring about other people.

The idea of a doomsday bunker being dumb and mostly pointless aside, a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with? In a doomsday scenario, why would someone waste precious good fuel to set a moat on fire for a few days? Instead of using, say, booby traps?

And of course Yudkowsky, the writer of the world's most boring Harry Potter fan fiction had to chime in with an even worse take.

a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with?
Yeah, that sounds like something straight out of poorly written fiction.
Yeah there’s no way mines aren’t a better worse idea.
- Explosives or hole in the ground? Not that it really matters, both could be better worse ideas
They clearly didn't read Leiningen vs The Ants.

Doesn't matter. They're going to burn with the rest of us. They won't be able to keep staff as it gets worse, and many of them lack any real ability to care for themselves. Pampered fucks are facing a grim future they made sure was going to happen.

The staff won't keep them. What security guard is going to agree to protect Elon Musk after the apocalypse? They'll shoot him in the back and take the keys to the kitchen.
- I mean you say this but our species has a long history of people serving authoritarian monsters. I think you're vastly overestimating humans ability to say this is messed up I should do something about it. Most people just keep their heads down.
- These things have been thought through. The money may be worthless, but the highly controlled access to food, guns, ammo and medicine would be adequate leverage.
  I expect, at some point, a leader would emerge with more cred than, "I started a company, " but they'd need to get permanent access and they'd have the same problem: control, rationing.
  All this stuff is just people fantasizing about being smart and solving hard problems. The truest hard problem is we are not meant to live alone or like Morlocks.
  There are ways to have a retreat hidden in plain site.
- The rich will have so much more room for fear. They have further to fall more to protect and their.
Yeah, once the global economy collapses, their billions are worthless and the people with the guns are the most powerful. How long until their private security force is like "hold on, why are we following you again?"
- You section off the food and booze, so that only you can access it and then have two security teams that never intermingle. Nothings guaranteed, but it would be harder to coup you.
There was an article where a reporter sat in on a discussion between Tech Lords, where one actually proposed shock collars on "The Staff" to keep them loyal.
"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.""
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
Time to start building guillotines, boys and girls.
- I feel like shooting fish in a barrel:
  The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew.
  That would just get them tortured. While torture is normally not a good way to get information, it's different when the obtained intel can be immediately verified by trying the combination. The lock could be set up in such a way that it jams when you enter it wrong, but its unlikely that the torturers will just give up at this point. More likely, they'll keep going in hope that you have a way to circumvent the lockdown.
  Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival.
  Thing is, there'd be two ways the collars can fail. They can go off when they shouldn't, or fail to go off when they should. Both can be exploited by an attacker, and guarding against one makes the other more likely.
  Time to start building guillotines, boys and girls.
  That's a good idea.

I say we convince them society is collapsing, let them hide in their bunkers, wait for the flaming moat fuel to run out, then wall them in.

No need for a wall, just grade over it all with some bulldozers, plant some trees, and make a park where my dog can have a nice place to shit while I read a book.
- I don't know... do you want to risk them finding a way to dig themselves out?

bunkers are terrible in general because of air/exhaust problems. If you know where they are you can just tape all the vents shut. What they should be investing in is submersibles.

Either way this a grotesque squandering of society's resources.

If.

Urge to build guillotines intensifies.

Bonjour !
- Bonjour, Madame Guillotine!

Podcaster Christina Randall, who has over 1.58 million subscribers, thinks so. Randall recently observed that Zuckerberg’s reported bunker is one of approximately 15 end-of-days projects being undertaken by billionaires worldwide and said the Biblical Book of Revelation, which predicts the end of the world, is being fulfilled. “Revelation 6:15 says that the kings of the Earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains,” Randall said.

Okay, the guardian

The best defense is a strong community that loves you. Literally living around you.
Lol I came here to comment the same thing. What a fucking joke. Has the guardian always been so trashy? I don't recall it.

This is the best case scenario.

We the under classes scare them into their bunkers.
We cut off all forms of communication with them.
We seal them in so they can't change their minds.
We switch the rules to "Socialize the profits and privatize the losses."

There is only so many in the .0001% that need to be taken off the board and left to play with their toys inside their gilded cages. If they go voluntarily then how can they say that it is wrong, especially if no one is listening.

Congrats, you won capitalism. Please proceed to the winners bunker for your prize. Non-compliance will be met with dinner forks.
Surely we can switch up point 2 and use AI as their sole communicator. Let them think they're speaking to real people, but isolate them from the society that they think they control.
After step 1, they're already in there. Just fill it with water.

This just proves how capitalism rewards the inanely stupid - these parasites cosplaying as doomsday preppers (who already are not known for their firm grip on reality) don't realize that any event which would cause them to need such a bunker would also most likely destroy the very thing that attributes any kind of value to the power-coupons they've been hoarding - ie, the economy that only exists thanks to the working class.

Also, good luck to them when the well-armed rent-a-goons they hired to protect their little bunkers finds out the money they are being paid is all of a sudden completely worthless and that the governments that guaranteed private property rights is no longer around to protect them from the very same well-armed rent-a-goons. It would be a shame if nobody was around to film the anarcho-capitalist comedy that would ensue...

Naaaaaaaaaniiiiiiii?? You're telling me the people with guns will call the shots in an apocalyptic event because money will lose its value??? IMPOSSIBRU!!!

I love how they think we're going to try to break in and hurt them. We really are just going to entomb them in their bunkers and seal off any intake and exhaust.

If we as a species survives the climate collapse and finds a way to flourish again, archeologists will find these bunkers and think they where built by slaves to celebrate their rulling pharaohs.

Oh, and billionares getting bunkers is a new trend? Bill Gates has had one since he was CEO of Microsoft and HE was following the trend already.

This is true. We will entomb them.
Even if the world does turn to absolute shit and many of us die, it’s the not the billionaires in their bunkers who will the last ones standing.
If there’s any hope at all it will be with the remaining pockets of communities outside who learn to abolish capitalism and just live and support each other in a sustainable way. No one can survive long alone.
Any billionaire in their bunker will be entombed, and if they come out they’ll just get lynched.
Naw, they have wealth of supplies in there, may as well get some construction equipment and break in.

10 Zuckerfield Lane

It's a sign that they're paranoid as fuck and never learned to share or play nicely with others.

Sure, seal yourself up in a bunker and deplete your very non-renewable fuel to keep you safe from the outside.

In a real case scenario they may find themselves walled in anyway.

I feel that I became a little bit stupider after reading this article.

Anyone who thinks the end times are near in any capacity is some flavor of moron.

You're either one of the rich fucks or one of their useful idiots if you go about doomsaying like you're Rorschach from Watchmen.

We have the means to destroy ourselves, and there are a lot of truly stupid people who have power over those means. I don't say I personally believe we will all die soon, but I can see how someone might.
- Mate it's not going to be atomics. It's climate change and we're just at the beginning of it. Atomics will only be a consequence of climate change.

They should build an inflammable moat instead.

Very under rated comment

he is also feeding cows macadamia nuts on a remote island hoping it would make good doomsday food

Like this?
https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?si=KVfHyn8Fb81K4scq
I dunno, but could you email your congressperson this? I imagine you're seeing previews in Ukraine.
My best guess is lines of AI controlles guns with dumb bullets firing at the sky. The first wave will be painful depending on scale, but a country in need should be able to have their best and brightest have something up and running in a few days.
This occuring to the USA would likely result in an awfully strong response with whatever they've been coming up with.
Maybe we can just let the drones shoot at each other and everyone else just has a picnic and watches?
- There's a book about that- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel) where the Ai war is held on the Moon.

This is not a new trend or something specific to billionaires. Home fallout shelters were popular during the Cold War.