this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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This kind of prepping simply doesn't work except to deal with something that's over very quickly (eg: nuclear attack) because humans can't survive long-term like that. You need a community of at least hundreds in order to be a viable population. And a community that big can't isolate itself effectively.
Our choices (and they are choices) are whether we embrace rapid decarbonization together or all fail together. The outcome isn't at all certain, but we can put our thumb on the scale by exercising whatever bit of power we have to alter the politics and implementation of it.
Cory Doctorow’s retelling of “Masque of Red Death” in Radicalized (2019) plays off this – rich techie-bro makes a special bunker to survive the future only to shit himself to death while the rest of the world uses the opportunity to go cooperative/communal/collectivist …
This guy is currently alone, but I think he must have thought about this when he bought a place big enough to house hundreds of people.
I'm sure he did think about the idea of being joined by others...but like a lot of rich peoples conceits, it doesn't really work. A community of hundreds means tens of thousands of interconnections to the outside world who are going to know where this place is. You can't create some isolated survival pocket like that against a long-term problem unless it's something the size of a nation, where you can absorb large numbers of people into your community. And if you do create a nation-state sized sustainable community, you're likely serving as a model for the world and seeing the same things adopted globally.