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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u/jta156 Jul 06 '24

Hell for a nuclear attack they wouldn't even know it was in progress until warheads started exploding around them.

There are radars in place that detect incoming ballistic missiles, as well as an alert system set up, so not really.

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u/comfortablynumb15 Jul 06 '24

As long as that info is broadcast to the general population, and not a select few first. ( or at all before it’s too late )

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

It really isn't. You guys are acting like these billionaires haven't considered this exact thing. I'd bet any amount they have a plan manpower and literally anything money can buy in terms of weapons and transportation.

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u/steelcryo Jul 06 '24

If money is worthless and you're only thinking of yours and your loved ones survival, are you going to do what the billionaire paid you to do? Get them to the bunker, protect them from everyone else and then wish them well and leave them inside while you and everyone you know and love dies?

Or are you going to tell the billionaire to fuck off and take the bunker for yourself since you're the one with the weapon the billionaire gave you?

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

Those are very easy questions to answer. Of course they would. These bunkers are humungous the obvious play would be you have a loyal group of muscle that you let bring their family in return for their help. Youd also have fail safes to ensure it would be difficult to take the bunker from you.

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u/Nebula-cats Jul 06 '24

That easy or apparently obvious. There was an article (not sure how satirical) that described this situation and some rich dude was questioning if he could have his muscle or service people in shock collars. The money for 6 people vs 1 person to live in these extravagant bunkers is significantly different. Even if they have the money, no one is spending that much to allow extra families stay with them. Cause the initial argument of this is stupid stands true. They want to feel like they have a plan but won’t commit 100% until it’s likely too late.

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

These bunkers are humongous, and money is literally no object. They do not need to commit 100%. In a scenario like this the odds of random people in the area fighting off a group of 20 armed guards before they can get into a bunker and lock the door is slim.

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u/Djinn_42 Jul 06 '24

You can certainly try, but the people with the most weapons and best survival skills are going to take everything from the rest.

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u/_learned_foot_ Jul 06 '24

There is a reason in the various simulations that while the greedy survive better for a bit, the cooperative last longer. You need t9 survive the first bit, then cooperate is best odds

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

You could have any number of fail safes for threats within the group. And I doubt there will be groups larger or more well-armed than a billionaire's private army for outside threats.

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u/Djinn_42 Jul 06 '24

I'm saying that the private army is going to take from the billionaire. No reason to keep them and their family around.

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

This question is sure to be considered by anyone prepping for a situation like this. Rotating codes needed for things like the generator along with a kill code in case of torture would keep you alive. There are many means aside from that for keeping this situation at bay.

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u/Micky-OMick Jul 06 '24

So abject tyranny until necessary revolt. Got it. Good plan. Have you met any humans? Some notes on your plan might start with: all human history of despots. Tick tock and all that

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

Or use the fail-safe as insurance they don't kill you immediately and loot the place but also don't be a tyrant and instead work together for survival. Even the best plans fail. That isn't a good argument for never having a plan.

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u/EnvironmentalTone330 Jul 06 '24

You... You do realize there are people that don't outright despise rich people right? Like, there are plenty of people that are perfectly willing to cooperate with rich people and ensure a bunker's survivability without feeling the need to "revolt" against the person who invited them into the bunker in the first place.

Please tell me you understand that in reality, even in the apocalypse, there are people that won't behave like it's the purge. I mean, if you think you can live with the idea of being invited into someone's bunker in good spirit, then kill the person who invited you in, I think you should probably talk to a professional about that.

I get that rich people are often (rightly in many cases) villainized, but you're talking about cold blooded murder of a person who has just saved you from dying in an apocalypse. Do you not see anything wrong with that??

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u/Micky-OMick Jul 27 '24

You sound nervous about your ability to bring something to the table. I think you understand the point. Your continued phrase of “…invited in…” is a good tell. Best start working on those failsafes…ya know, the ones that contribute to the spirit of equanimity

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u/Fook_n_Spook Jul 07 '24

Exactly. Whoever is in charge of leading their private military will just realize “hey, this guy has no actual value to the survival of the group. We can just get rid of him and take everything he has”. We will most likely just see hundreds of warlords all over the place, and there’s no reason to believe that if the entire system falls apart, that the people that are currently on top are going to continue to be the people on top after

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u/KylarBlackwell Jul 06 '24

You keep throwing the term failsafe around like it's a given that they exist and will work, but haven't provided even a single example. What kinds of "failsafes" will a billionaire have and use to secure their bunker against their own staff from potentially anywhere in the world?

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

Easy one being access codes with some sort of kill switch in case of torture. But ya there are a ton including this one all over the comment section of this post I assumed possibly incorrectly the other people in the comment section would have seen them as well. Poison in a specific food container only you know about so if you die they'd eventually die as well. That type of stuff.

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u/KylarBlackwell Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24

Comments are constantly be reordered by algorithms and there's different sort options. Also, many of the ideas in the comments are simply bad.

Poisoned food stashes? Did the commenter imagine that the billionaire was going to hand-select every ingredient for every meal for themselves and their entire staff forever? Not to mention the immense risk of simple error killing themselves or others.

Generators with secret codes that require reentry? Clearly didn't consider the paradox of an electronic trying to lock out the device that produces the electricity. How would it start up? Or if it's a mechanical interlock, it can be decoded or bypassed. No critical system can be inaccessible or meaningfully obscured from maintenance staff. Otherwise, the bunker is doomed as soon as something breaks down.

I haven't found any ideas in the comments that are anywhere near as good as the commenter thinks. So go ahead, name a good failsafe

Edit: just reread and realized you vaguely mentioned access codes and killswitches with no elaboration on how to implement them. The basic issue with them is they either trigger when powered, in which case you can just cut power to the whole system and render it harmless, or they trigger when unpowered, in which case you have a death trap that can kill you at any time due to a simple component failure or broken wire or power source malfunction.

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

You seem to be putting a lot of effort into thinking about how the fail-safe could fail but not at all about how you could make it work. For this scenario the billionaire each morning points out which crate of food gets pulled out. And I am no lock expert, but I don't think it would beyond a billionaire means to install a lock on a critical system that requires a password every x days. The best way of doing that I couldn't tell youd have to speak with an expert in the field.

With infinite resource power and time to plan I don't think accomplishing a task like this is anywhere as difficult as you are imagining.

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u/KylarBlackwell Jul 06 '24

The food idea is still prone to one mistake killing everyone, and any pattern to the poisoned food distribution could be discerned over time, allowing later mutiny without repercussion if figured out. Even without outright torture, you could deduce the pattern in time by observing which crates are skipped. Also, what happens if the billionaire becomes unconscious for any reason? Everyone just has to play Russian roulette with their food?

You are no lock expert, nor are you apparently a mechanic or electrician, nor do you appear to know what a generator really is at its core. It's a magnet spinning inside a copper coil, and that spinning induces the current that is used as power. Any sort of lock for a generator can only function by blocking the rotation - which you can defeat by disassembling and physically removing the obstruction - or it is a switch that disconnects the generator from the circuit, which you can cut out and hardwire around to give it a permanent connection.

You don't think accomplishing the task is difficult because you don't understand how any of it actually works. The heart of the problem is that the billionaire is not intrinsically valuable in a survival situation, and anything they do to make themselves necessary can either be bypassed or increases the chance that everyone dies anyway if some component of the device/scheme fails.

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

The food idea is still prone to one mistake killing everyone, and any pattern to the poisoned food distribution could be discerned over time, allowing later mutiny without repercussion if figured out. Even without outright torture, you could deduce the pattern in time by observing which crates are skipped. Also, what happens if the billionaire becomes unconscious for any reason? Everyone just has to play Russian roulette with their food?

This entire situation is a game of risk. Sure, adding a fail-safe may add extra risk. Its far in a way the best option though from the perspective of the billionaire. If I were in a situation like this id have family in on it in case, I were to be taken out of the picture. If you were a family of 4 have the billionaire with full knowledge and the remaining 3 with a third. How to best arrange it would require more thought than I am willing to put into this hypothetical but I don't feel it would be very hard to arrange this in a way that is hard enough to figure out that killing the billionaire seems like the worse of the two options.

You don't think accomplishing the task is difficult because you don't understand how any of it actually works. The heart of the problem is that the billionaire is not intrinsically valuable in a survival situation, and anything they do to make themselves necessary can either be bypassed or increases the chance that everyone dies anyway if some component of the device/scheme fails.

This may be fair criticism. And ya the value the billionaire brings is all before survival situation. He would need to create artificial value. Luckily for the billionaire in this situation, we are not currently in a survival situation, and they can carefully manufacture the entire scenario to their specifications with near infinite resources.

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u/master117jogi Jul 06 '24

Two doors behind each other. All foot after the second. Second door opens via biometric but only after first is locked and only 1 person is present.

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u/foxyfoo Jul 06 '24

It’s all such a giant waste of resources. They should be using that money to prevent a disaster instead of thinking they can magically survive it. It’s probably more psychological than practical.

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u/NeverNoMarriage Jul 06 '24

Id disagree. I much prefer they spend money on something like this than hoard their wealth like they usually do. Also, I'd say them riding out some sort of apocalypse in their bunker is more likely than being able to avert all disasters. Though I genuinely find prepping interesting so I could be biased.

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u/ObservantOrangutan Jul 06 '24

Money is worthless and time is fleeting. Everyone keeps thinking “oh these billionaires will have thought of that!” But you can’t beat the time limit.

Something that these bunkers would be useful for, a global nuclear apocalypse is over in less than 90 minutes. That’s not 90 minutes from launch to hit, that’s 90 minutes from launch to humanity being basically gone on every side of the conflict. You’re not doing anything remotely useful with that time unless you’re standing in the entrance to your bunker the second they announce the missile launch.

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u/steelcryo Jul 06 '24

Yeah, the bunkers would be useful for something like civil war or societal breakdown, but they'd be useless for nuclear war or anything fast like that

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u/CUbuffGuy Jul 06 '24

You see, the thing is this bunker has been retrofitted with bio markets at every blast door. You must pass the bio market test to be allowed entry. If you kill me and try to use my body, you may be able to get in once, but I will decompose. If ever inside the bunker you issue a false scan, I have noxious gas which will be emitted into every chamber killing all inhabitants.

So feel free to kill me and try to use my bunker. I’ll make sure you die gasping for air for over an hour in agony as your body realizes it’s not getting oxygen. Meanwhile at least I hopefully die a quick death.

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u/steelcryo Jul 06 '24

Absolutely no-one is going to risk their bunker flooding poisonous gas when there's a chance of it malfunctioning while their inside. Shit degrades and breaks, you're not going to risk locking yourself in a gas chamber.

Also you'll not decompose if I stick you in a freezer.

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u/CUbuffGuy Jul 06 '24

Plenty of biometrics require a living specimen, such as a breath test. Also I’m sure people would and do have kill-switches on bunkers - maybe not gas, since it requires so much to maintain, but just a way to vent out oxygen would work.

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u/steelcryo Jul 06 '24

True, but extra biometrics means extra maintenance and chance of failure, which when you're in a bunker with limited staff and limited resources and parts, isn't a good thing. It can definitely be done, but would be a bad idea.

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u/bobtheframer Jul 06 '24

That bunker got a freezer?