It’s an addiction. And nobody taught them Noblesse oblige. At the end of the day, they’re just unwanted kids that can’t fill their void.

Apocalypse shelters are more of a dream of a new world where there’ll be fewer people and more air and green, but you need to be prepared. People like “clean sheet” dreams, like “I’ll erase this and start anew, that’ll be magnificent”, except it won’t, you had 3 levels of a house, you’ve erased them, now you only have some wet ground and nowhere to sleep. OK, one level with a bad roof. Not better. EDIT: Much better, except it would be even better not erasing anything.

I mean, post-apocalypse is a pretty common escapist setting, makes perfect sense people with money and no imagination wanted to turn it into their “not for everyone” elitarian fantasy and fashion instead of something common, that has also happened with ideas of trans-humanism and new secret societies and what really not. Some folks with nothing interesting in their personality try to feel special by impeding others in engaging in games pretty common in our humanity and our time in particular.

I frankly feel as if that whole thing with enshittifying the Web and computing were also an irrational thing, people with power just having that desire to spoil a good thing for others so that it became rare and elitarian.

Getting back to apocalypse shelters, variations of that were a pretty common hobby for like everyone even in poorer countries. Be that a bit of amateur radio, hiking, making a shack in the woods, picking up mushrooms, science-fiction and fantasy reading groups, a whole lot of hobbies.

We’re just living in a time when unfortunately people with money and no personal qualities of note are trying to make everything “magical” and “interesting” a sign of status and take it from the rest.

So, about practical possibility of an apocalypse and “clean sheet” dreams, those people will be the first to die. No, nobody will kill them, they’ll just find out that in a post-apocalyptic word you die from catching a cold, breaking a leg, getting an infection, letting your food spoil, miscalculating time and direction and all those mistakes are more likely when you are used to fixing mistakes with money, and you won’t have that, you’ll just have a stockpile of tools and materials, which can be used for exchange, but in a functional world money buys logistics, and in a post-apocalyptic world it doesn’t, so a mistake will remain a mistake. No matter what you have, that won’t synthesize a doctor when there’s no doctor. EDIT: And, of course, someone may, in fact, kill you.

So - for smarter people it’s a hobby, for the dumber kind it’s a compensation strategy that (if we are being compassionate) won’t be tested. In general such preppers, especially playful billionaires, often manage to die from stupidity without any apocalypse, I forgot what that submarine was called with an X-Box controller instead of a helm.

So - this might read as a very angry text, I’m sort of the stupider kind myself, regularly risking getting an infection or breaking something, but I still live in a big city with doctors and transport and groceries.

I think people don’t appreciate how small a piece retail investors really have.