The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a concrete bunker in the forest.'
A certain faction of elites has been building doomsday bunkers since the Cold War. These days, bunker sales are booming. Douglas Rushkoff's book Survival of the Richest talks in terms of the 'insulation equation,' where the powerful seek to insulate themselves from the negative societal consequences of their own bad decisions, in part by buying bunkers. Here's a quote from a review of the book:
They'd rather optimize their bunkers than work to avert the apocalypse. Rushkoff describes their attitude as a "faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making."
I'm not sure it's as simple as an either/or choice between saving the world or hiding in a luxury bunker. And thinking back to the civil unrest here in Minneapolis in 2020, I wonder if that level of chaos was sufficient to drive some elites into their bunkers. The chaos did motivate both of my brothers to move out of the city, but did it trigger the bug-out plans of the well-to-do? If it didn't, then what would?
While the civil unrest of 2020 proved temporary, it's possible and even likely that the next round of societal upheaval will last longer. The poor haven't gotten less poor. The economy hasn't gotten more fair. Many of the critical systems we rely on to keep the world going appear to be held together by tape and thumbtacks. The next major crisis may be far more disruptive than the last one was.
Rushkoff's use of the term apocalyptic hints at what elites may find to be sufficient cause to flee for their bunkers. This group seems most afraid of a nuclear arms exchange. Some of them have private security forces. Their contribution to post-apocalyptic society would include resource hoarding and mercenaries.
Realistically, the best thing anyone can do in a crisis situation is to work with other people to deal with the crisis. It's always been the case that members of our species survive better together than we do apart. Although our self-obsessed culture ignores this fact, we're social beings. We weren't built for bunkers. We evolved in communities.
Imagine a plausible doomsday scenario. Another pandemic, let's say, but with a much higher fatality rate. In this scenario, there would be prolonged closures of most businesses and government offices. We might also see skyrocketing crime, military administration of urban police forces, and total economic collapse. There could be shortages of food, medicine, fuel, electricity, and other essentials.
Not long into such a situation, groups would organize to loot outlying areas. They would in all likelihood have military arms and maybe military or law enforcement training. These scavenging parties may eventually encounter bunker mercenaries. I don't see that going well for anyone.
Should elites take more responsibility for the negative impacts of their actions on society? Definitely, especially the billionaires. But the majority of elites are no more responsible for all of society's ills as you or I are. They're just normal people with somewhat more power. Instead of investing in bunkers to hide from nuclear winter or populist uprisings, I think they should invest in agricultural and manufacturing communes.
This implies investing in land, supplies, and people. If done right, the payoff would be productive property and a community to manage it. Peace-of-mind bunkers could still be constructed, but these wouldn't be what really insulated the elites from the world's problems. The real insulation would be the community.
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
