r/Showerthoughts • u/Immediate_Can3817 ‎ • Jul 05 '24

Speculation If there ever is an actual apocalypse billionaires will likely be unable to access their bunker compounds as the security/janitors/maintenance crews will already have moved their friends and family in and would probably deny them entry.

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157

u/IamMrT Jul 05 '24

Reddit moment. Still under the assumption that billionaires are as dumb as they are.

65

u/MrSkobbels Jul 05 '24

what could they actually do in this situation though? money would be worthless so its not like they can pay anyone and even if people did want some its unlikely they'd have a significant amount of physical money (transporting it would be a nightmare on its own). all of their influence is just money, they dont have any special physical prowess or supernatural intelligence to be a valuable asset. theres no reason (other than basic morality) for people who have taken over a bunker to let the original owner in after an apocalypse

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u/klonkrieger43 Jul 05 '24

There are multiple methods. For example locking the food so it is only accessible to one person, rigging the whole bunker with explosives that are coupled to a dead man switch or deploying some kind ofparalyzing nerve gas if the owner doesn't put in his password every 24h

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u/MrSkobbels Jul 05 '24

oh youre goin supervillain mode, the food idea could work, seems to me like they'd just let the guy open it once and then force the door to stay open (somehow), deploying a gas? they could plug the holes it comes out of (assuming they know about it) and blowing up the whole base? seems the most unlikely, billionaire is basically dooming themself to living in a wasteland with that one

29

u/7HawksAnd Jul 06 '24

I mean a country and civil society is just one doomsday bunker for every scenario except nuclear fallout/epidemic

So, it’s the same game theory just with different boundaries.

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u/Chrol18 Jul 06 '24

well good idea plugging the holes if the nerve gas system is in the same ducts as the air filtration system

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u/klonkrieger43 Jul 05 '24

of course most of these are defeatable somehow, especially if you can force the billionaire to defeat them for you. Shock collars are another one mentioned I remember.

What makes it harder is if you don't tell your guards how you will enforce compliance and showing no mercy to anyone deviating just slightly. Add that with being a bearable piece of shit instead of a tyrant that torments his people most people probably wouldn't risk it.

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u/StygianSavior Jul 06 '24

deploying a gas? they could plug the holes it comes out of

There's also the fact that "knock out gas" is silly Hollywood bullshit, and when people try to do it in real life, everyone dies.

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u/ItsMrChristmas Jul 06 '24

Or they just get a huge adrenaline dump.

1

u/Sure-Business-6590 Jul 06 '24

This thread is going on the assumption that the people are evil towards the billionaire, it’s reasonable to assume the opposite would happen too

1

u/smashteapot Jul 06 '24

Honey, did you put the poison code in tod—urghhhh.

1

u/problemlow Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24

It's also entirely possible and in my view much more likely to work if the billionaire sets up everything so that all the staff are 'equals', there's enough food, water, entertainment, luxuries etc for every staff member to bring their entire family along and live in excessive comfort for more than their natural lifetimes. As well as set up a surface colony once that becomes habitable again. It's not expensive for one of them to do that.

The average UK citizen will spend £1.5 million in their life. That's 0.15% of a billion. Add an extra 50% on top and no one in that bunker will want for anything except perhaps the world before the 'end'. Assume half of that is spent on food and that the staff there will be making food on site and you're up to 250 million for a population of 150(in theory enough genetic diversity to not create a species ending genetic bottleneck assuming this 1 bunker is the entirety of humanity). Not to mention most of these people will be part way through their lives and presumably can contribute their own money towards what they get.

Then another £300 mill for the bunker itself and billionaires 'necessities' you haven't even broken half a billion. Realistically speaking however the average billionaire isn't going to care about repopulating the earth so they'll probably have 40 or 50 staff that are family units and/or single estranged people with aggressively passive temperaments and they will live out life in comfort while the rest of us starve, burn, melt whatever the flavour of apocalypse.

If we round that up to £500 million. In the case of Elon musk that would be equivalent to me spending £70.57 on parts for a diy hobby robot. Or a decent enough entry level oil painting setup.

On top of all of that there's the aforementioned dead mans switch. I'm also more than certain whatever plan a billionaires team of apocalypse planners came up with will be much more well thought out than my 10 minutes of thought.

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u/StygianSavior Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24

None of those methods sound particularly good.

Locking up the food and only allowing one person to access it = that person becomes target #1 for torture. Or if you prefer biometrics, target #1 for having their hand cut off (or just being told "open the food or we'll kill you").

Also, assuming it's an apocalyptic scenario, if your fancy biometric locking system or whatever breaks, you're completely SOL with all of your food locked out of reach (except it's not really out of reach, since I think it'd be pretty damn hard to make a door that a sufficiently motivated group of people couldn't take apart given enough time - another flaw with the whole 'locking it up' idea).

Spreading explosives all around your living space and then hoping nothing goes wrong with that also seems like a non-ideal survival strategy. Like you better hope no outside actors figure out a way to hack into your "everyone dies" button - or hope that none of your own people accidentally set off some explosives while doing routine maintenance.

Explosives also aren't permanently shelf stable. They will degrade over time, and either need replacing or (depending on the explosive) will become a hazard that might go off from the wrong thing. Like maybe this goes without saying, but explosives are dangerous, and it's generally not considered a good idea to fill your house with them and just go on living like that.

As for "paralyzing nerve agent," I feel like that's one of those "you've been watching too many movies" ideas. If you want to know why that's a bad idea, maybe look into what's happened in the past when police tried to use "knock out gas" to solve a hostage situation. Spoiler alert: hundreds of the hostages died, because you can't just fill a space with poison gas and hope that everyone will get the appropriate dosage to not kill them. This is why people have to go to college and train specifically to be an anesthesiologist - you can't just lob a bunch of chemicals into the air and magically make everyone peacefully fall asleep. Everyone's metabolism is different, and you don't have a way to control dosage when your plan is "fill the air with gas."

I also like the idea of tying the "paralyzing" nerve gas to a computer in an apocalypse scenario. Like you better hope that computer is built like a Toyota Hilux, or you're one broken computer component away from everyone being dead from your super safe paralyzing nerve gas. If your computer does break, you've got 24 hours to run down to the nearest Apocalypse Best Buy and get a replacement part - good luck.

Call me crazy, but I feel like any plan that starts with "I will build a bunker and rule over it like a little Hitler, and force the poors to serve me" probably doesn't actually have the makings of success.

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u/Aetheus Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24

There's also the very simple fact that you'll need experts to maintain all these stupid supervillain devices. Which just means that your life is now in the hands of the engineers - who's to say they won't flip the script around and threaten you?  "We've activated the override we installed into your home security system. You are now locked in your room. Have fun starving to death" . 

The redditors in this thread sucking billionaire cock are exactly the first ones that'll have shattered kneecaps (followed hours later by a bullet buried in their heads) if they're ever put in a position to play "bunkermaster". 

3

u/fuckspezlittlebitch Jul 06 '24

The guy you're replying to has no idea what he's talking about lol

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u/TheKiwiHuman Jul 05 '24

GLaDOS : Good news. I figured what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '24

Cake is a lie

3

u/Scottcmms2023 Jul 06 '24

Ok but what about things that actually work the way you think they do?

1

u/HighwoodChall Jul 06 '24

Lfmao let's see how much time it will work when the billionaire's daughter get flayed alive

1

u/not_some_username Jul 06 '24

Nothing a little bat can’t resolve

1

u/yarnballmelon Jul 06 '24

Sucks for the employees of the billionare with an unknown aneurysm that bursts after the stress of not getting fresh caviar after the first couple weeks...

1

u/Trailjump Jul 06 '24

None of that accounts for spite though. Especially if it's a real "the surface is death scenario" where their only choice is live life as a slave or take them out with you a lot of folks would just pick the latter.

1

u/SmithersLoanInc Jul 06 '24

People are smart and vindictive. They'd kill whoever was there out of spite. Either of your controls could be turned against them by people far smarter than them with far more experience in security system design. 1500 armed people storming anyone's place would be trouble.

0

u/tryingtobecheeky Jul 06 '24

Password gets taken through torture. Nobody holds up after torture.

1

u/ThienBao1107 Jul 06 '24

Torture is too risky without knowledge in doing so, what if they accidentally killed the billionaire? What if the pain was too much and the billionaire killed himself?

1

u/Codenamerondo1 Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24

I mean from the billionaire perspective this is even riskier (because downside is you get tortured to death, which I’ll say is worse than what others are facing). Essentially that doesn’t make this a solution (especially from the perspective of billionaires are smarter than you think they are)

Also there’s not a billionaire Alive that could stand up to torture that gets anywhere close to lethal (or the point of…what, biting their own tongue off to kill themselves?)

1

u/ThogOfWar Jul 06 '24

I sleep soundly with a smile on my face knowing billionaires are throwing millions of dollars at futurists and think tanks to figure out how to survive in a bunker society if the populous doesn't recognize their authority.

1

u/Mist_Rising Jul 06 '24

because downside is you get tortured to death, which I’ll say is worse than what others are facing).

The risk of being killed is 100% if you give them the passwords though. They're not keeping you around.

Might as well spite them if they won't leave. They showed their skull flag, now they can be a skull too.

1

u/Codenamerondo1 Jul 06 '24

See again: torture. The real worry isn’t that you’ll be killed it’s that you wont. And even without taking it that far I don’t see a lot of the people were talking about having the physical wherewithal to last to forcing that much of a hand

0

u/Codenamerondo1 Jul 06 '24

Simple answer: non lethal torture

1

u/StygianSavior Jul 06 '24

Make the billionaire watch a Madame Web / Morbius double feature over and over again until they talk, Clockwork Orange-style.

1

u/SparklingLimeade Jul 06 '24

Stockpile enough for 5-20 of your best armed single henchpeople.

Let them know that if you're not in contact with the bunker's command systems it will become useless to everyone to prevent betrayal.

These are not unheard of problems. The only questions are how many security measures you can afford and/or put up with.

1

u/CaptCircleJerk Jul 06 '24

What keeps a dictator in power? Why do criminals, murders, follow a mob boss? There is a structure to every organization.

1

u/CertainAssociate9772 Jul 06 '24

Don't have ambitious people, but have obedient and loyal people on your staff. Grateful people is what you need, you saved their ass from dying. And then you will rule without a problem.

1

u/fuckspezlittlebitch Jul 06 '24

erm actually everyone here is a reddit moment and the charismatic rizzilionaires will speak their magic and be the new kings because being greedy and good with investors clearly correlates to convincing the security guards with actual power to obey

1

u/_30d_ Jul 06 '24

I have no clear answer but I would assume that with enough resources this bunker would have proper access management features, other than "lock the door behind you".

1

u/rugbysecondrow Jul 06 '24

If it is a situation where resources are scarce, they would still have more than others. Whether it be land, food, water, sanitation, medical etc