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Very Wealthy Doomsday Preppers
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:24 pm
by dualstow
Re: Very Wealthy Doomsday Preppers
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 5:57 pm
by Mountaineer
Desert wrote:That was an interesting read. There's a lot of NZ discussion in the article:
How many wealthy Americans are really making preparations for a catastrophe? It’s hard to know exactly; a lot of people don’t like to talk about it. (“Anonymity is priceless,” one hedge-fund manager told me, declining an interview.) Sometimes the topic emerges in unexpected ways. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a prominent investor, recalls telling a friend that he was thinking of visiting New Zealand. “Oh, are you going to get apocalypse insurance?” the friend asked. “I’m, like, Huh?” Hoffman told me. New Zealand, he discovered, is a favored refuge in the event of a cataclysm. Hoffman said, “Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.’ ”
If a silo in Kansas is not remote or private enough, there is another option. In the first seven days after Donald Trump’s election, 13,401 Americans registered with New Zealand’s immigration authorities, the first official step toward seeking residency—more than seventeen times the usual rate. The New Zealand Herald reported the surge beneath the headline “TRUMP APOCALYPSE.”
Interesting article. Assuming they do not have a nuclear reactor on site, how do they solve the problem of maintaining clean air - a sustainable food supply of fish and greens is one thing, sustainable clean air (and possibly water depending on location) is another?
Re: Very Wealthy Doomsday Preppers
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:49 am
by Pointedstick
Those don't strike me as especially challenging problems. A ventilation system with filters and heat recovery provides the former, and a well with filtration provides the latter. Heck, lots of houseplants will help with the air, too.
Re: Very Wealthy Doomsday Preppers
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 1:33 pm
by Mountaineer
Pointedstick wrote:Those don't strike me as especially challenging problems. A ventilation system with filters and heat recovery provides the former, and a well with filtration provides the latter. Heck, lots of houseplants will help with the air, too.
I get that. Alpha and beta radiation are relatively simple to stop and even the gamma radiation if enough lead shielding. In regards to the air, I was thinking about how hard it would be to completly isolate from an environment heavily contaminated. I was thinking of how to construct a closed system, more like what would be on a nuclear powered submarine in regards to air (oxygen), and almost closed in regard to food and water - only has to get a new food supply every several months and water is easy to purify if you have sufficient power. Ergo the nuclear reactor.
Re: Very Wealthy Doomsday Preppers
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:53 am
by WiseOne
Fascinating. I found other articles on this phenomenon. This is a most interesting quote from one of them:
Tellingly, the geeks of Silicon Valley appear to be most worried that it will be a struggle between rich and poor in a world economy turned upside down by new technology — with them as the main targets.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... aland.html
It seems they're aware of exactly the problem I've been foreseeing as the logical endpoint of current policies - not just new technology but the globalization and open border movement. Certainly one response is to arrange to be able to run away. Mine is unfortunately not much more productive than that, as it's limited to using my vote to favor candidates who at least perceive the problem.