The mega rich are buying doomsday houses in New Zealand, and now we learn that Peter Thiel even got citizenship https://t.co/wC7fjTiCpT pic.twitter.com/BK4J9RfJrh
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture) January 24, 2017
******
I went to a parochial school in the Bronx back when the Duck’n’Cover security theater plans were first proposed to a skeptical American public. Despite their near-veneration of President Kennedy, the nuns who taught us had no faith in such drills. When we second- and third-graders asked about the CDC commercials we’d seen on our black-and-white tvs the night before, the Dominicans told us the greater NYC area was so vital a target that, should the Godless Commies ever lose their fear of America’s military majesty, we’d be dead by the time the sirens went off. Ergo, our best doomsday prep was to preserve our immortal souls in a state of constant purity, vigilant against all temptations, so that if Satan’s Kremlin minions should temporarily gain the upper hand our time in purgatory would be minimized.
Between those nuns, and the spate of fine post-apocalyptic fiction ranging from Earth Abides and Shadow on the Hearth to The Day After, I’ve never been able to find much consolation in the concept of ‘doomsday prepping’. But it’s always interesting (often entertaining) to see how other people have invested their hopes.
Evan Osnos, in the New Yorker, on “the wealthiest people in America—in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond— getting ready for the crackup of civilization”:
Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”…
Last spring, as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”
In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.” He said that his preparations probably put him at the “extreme” end among his peers. But he added, “A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.”
Tim Chang, a forty-four-year-old managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture-capital firm, told me, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.” He said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to.” He and his wife, who is in technology, keep a set of bags packed for themselves and their four-year-old daughter. He told me, “I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”…
Such behavior is not, IMO, much different from that of medieval barons building churches in the name of their patron saints — a measured monetary gamble in hopes of ensuring one’s survival, worst came to worst (and the ‘worst’ was always so imminent, whether as three bad winters in a row or another outbreak of civil war). We are nowhere near the level of such daily physical jeopardy, but we have so much more stuff to protect… and so many more ways to terrorize ourselves with new information!
… Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” (Among survivalists, or “preppers,” as some call themselves, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stands for “Foolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.”) Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”…
In building Reddit, a community of thousands of discussion threads, into one of the most frequently visited sites in the world, Huffman has grown aware of the way that technology alters our relations with one another, for better and for worse. He has witnessed how social media can magnify public fear. “It’s easier for people to panic when they’re together,” he said, pointing out that “the Internet has made it easier for people to be together,” yet it also alerts people to emerging risks. Long before the financial crisis became front-page news, early signs appeared in user comments on Reddit. “People were starting to whisper about mortgages. They were worried about student debt. They were worried about debt in general. There was a lot of, ‘This is too good to be true. This doesn’t smell right.’ ” He added, “There’s probably some false positives in there as well, but, in general, I think we’re a pretty good gauge of public sentiment. When we’re talking about a faith-based collapse, you’re going to start to see the chips in the foundation on social media first.”…
… One measure of survivalism’s spread is that some people are starting to speak out against it. Max Levchin, a founder of PayPal and of Affirm, a lending startup, told me, “It’s one of the few things about Silicon Valley that I actively dislike—the sense that we are superior giants who move the needle and, even if it’s our own failure, must be spared.”
To Levchin, prepping for survival is a moral miscalculation; he prefers to “shut down party conversations” on the topic. “I typically ask people, ‘So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of fear that people bring up are artificial.” In his view, this is the time to invest in solutions, not escape. “At the moment, we’re actually at a relatively benign point of the economy. When the economy heads south, you will have a bunch of people that are in really bad shape. What do we expect then?”…
… On the opposite side of the country, similar awkward conversations have been unfolding in some financial circles. Robert H. Dugger worked as a lobbyist for the financial industry before he became a partner at the global hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, in 1993. After seventeen years, he retired to focus on philanthropy and his investments. “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution,” he told me recently.
To manage that fear, Dugger said, he has seen two very different responses. “People know the only real answer is, Fix the problem,” he said. “It’s a reason most of them give a lot of money to good causes.” At the same time, though, they invest in the mechanics of escape. He recalled a dinner in New York City after 9/11 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble: “A group of centi-millionaires and a couple of billionaires were working through end-of-America scenarios and talking about what they’d do. Most said they’ll fire up their planes and take their families to Western ranches or homes in other countries.” One of the guests was skeptical, Dugger said. “He leaned forward and asked, ‘Are you taking your pilot’s family, too? And what about the maintenance guys? If revolutionaries are kicking in doors, how many of the people in your life will you have to take with you?’ The questioning continued. In the end, most agreed they couldn’t run.”…
Robert A. Johnson sees his peers’ talk of fleeing as the symptom of a deeper crisis. At fifty-nine, Johnson has tousled silver hair and a soft-spoken, avuncular composure. He earned degrees in electrical engineering and economics at M.I.T., got a Ph.D. in economics at Princeton, and worked on Capitol Hill, before entering finance. He became a managing director at the hedge fund Soros Fund Management. In 2009, after the onset of the financial crisis, he was named head of a think tank, the Institute for New Economic Thinking….
Johnson wishes that the wealthy would adopt a greater “spirit of stewardship,” an openness to policy change that could include, for instance, a more aggressive tax on inheritance. “Twenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,” he said. “Being one of those twenty-five doesn’t feel good. I think they’ve developed a heightened sensitivity.”…
Johnson said, “If we had a more equal distribution of income, and much more money and energy going into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and health care, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society. We’ve largely dismantled those things.”
As public institutions deteriorate, élite anxiety has emerged as a gauge of our national predicament. “Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” Johnson asked. “What does that really tell us about our system?” He added, “It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”…
Osnos also explores “the Survival Condo Project, a fifteen-story luxury apartment complex built in an underground Atlas missile silo” in Kansas (which sounds no more appetizing a prospect than such did in the 1960s), and checks out the “last redoubt” that’s been popular ever since readers of On the Beach failed to understand it:
… Much as Switzerland once drew Americans with the promise of secrecy, and Uruguay tempted them with private banks, New Zealand offers security and distance. In the past six years, nearly a thousand foreigners have acquired residency there under programs that mandate certain types of investment of at least a million dollars…
Before my trip, I had wondered if I was going to be spending more time in luxury bunkers. But Peter Campbell, the managing director of Triple Star Management, a New Zealand construction firm, told me that, by and large, once his American clients arrive, they decide that underground shelters are gratuitous. “It’s not like you need to build a bunker under your front lawn, because you’re several thousand miles away from the White House,” he said. Americans have other requests. “Definitely, helipads are a big one,” he said. “You can fly a private jet into Queenstown or a private jet into Wanaka, and then you can grab a helicopter and it can take you and land you at your property.” American clients have also sought strategic advice. “They’re asking, ‘Where in New Zealand is not going to be long-term affected by rising sea levels?’ ”
The growing foreign appetite for New Zealand property has generated a backlash. The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa—the Maori name for New Zealand—opposes sales to foreigners. In particular, the attention of American survivalists has generated resentment. In a discussion about New Zealand on the Modern Survivalist, a prepper Web site, a commentator wrote, “Yanks, get this in your heads. Aotearoa NZ is not your little last resort safe haven.”…
Seriously — read the whole thing. It will, if nothing else, reinforce your conviction that it’s better to fight than to despair, because if we don’t stop them carelessly smashing things even the self-styled Masters of the Universe are going to end in a very, very bad place.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
But wait – Combover Caligula is too doing a great job-he has courtiers who say he is!
Leave Brittney alone!!!!!
O. Felix Culpa
New Zealand is beautiful. ‘Twould be a shame if Peter Thiel and his ilk despoiled it by their presence.
O. Felix Culpa
O/T, but hopefully helpful. Good counsel on How to #StayOutraged Without Losing Your Mind.
Nick
In my opinion, hobby doomsday prepping is more like making up random D&D characters for fun. It lets you plan things, it lets you imagine how different things would work out in hypothetical situations, it gives you a pleasant sense of being prepared. Prior to Trump’s election, I spent a few weeks buying a few extra items every time I went shopping, healthy, durable foods — do I think that Trump is going to nuke the world or cause supply chains to break down? Not really — but I could, and if I could, why not? We can eat them slowly and replace them as they go down, and it gives me a good feeling to reflect that my family has a two-week cushion of decent food.
Counting my cans of beans now affords me the pleasant illusion that I have a tiny bit of agency in the Time of Trump. Half the reason to do this stuff is it’s kind of fun.
amk
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: If we replace the oval office walls and ceiling with mirrors, the narcissistic pos might even never get out. win/win.
Droppy
I am happy to be a resident of the nation’s capital if only for the reason that when the bombs start dropping, I wan’t have to worry about where to I can run. Early vaporization is my survival plan. Saves me all that worry about keeping my helicopter gassed up and storing 10 years’ worth of freeze-dried cat food.
elm
Contrary to reports by the enemy press, the Pacification of Chicago was a glorious success! Order has been restored and Chicago has been rendered Great Again! Rebels attempted to sabotage our forces with detonation of a nuclear warhead but the damage to the Hyde Park region is minimal and no longer to be discussed.
Plans for Pacification continue ahead of schedule, the list of cities to be Made Great Again is as follows…
zhena gogolia
@O. Felix Culpa:
That’s good. I’m happy to say I’ve already figured these out and am trying to follow them for myself.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On a more somber note, wife said last night (after getting a little tearful about the absence of checks and balances after a lifetime of assuming them) that she is seriously starting to explore the notion of emigrating. She also said she’d like to learn some survival skills for what happens if and when technology disappears. I did point out some of our books – the old Green Beret manual to emergency medical treatment, books on nautical knots, books on simple compass navigation. Got some really good maps and atlases, some plant books, and at least two cookbooks with guides on dressing all sorts of animals and good material on pickling/canning. Got a bunch of mason jars and lids, decent camping stuff, a load of candles, water containers, portable grates, matches and lighters. In other words, assuming EMP but no radiation, I’ve got a starting point, anyway.
Also, there are rifles, shotguns and pistols, and ammo for all of it, including a bunch of clipped .30-06, and spare 30 round mags. If it comes to needing the guns, though, I’m probably folding it up and quitting. That world wouldn’t be worth the survival.
Yarrow
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That is beyond parody. The poor Onion.
Peale
@amk: Like a bird cage. He’ll finally have a friend to keep him company.
Yarrow
@O. Felix Culpa: I was thinking the same thing. I hope the citizens of New Zealand see the threat heading their way. They have lovely things like universal healthcare. Shame if those Masters of the Universe swooped in and decided that wasn’t Libertarian enough for them and it must go away.
amk
twitterdom
harlie @chollyv 2h2 hours ago
@MAS0424 @mmurraypolitics At this point, I’d be happy with Nixon.
12 replies 18 retweets 394 likes
Elisabeth @septembergrrl 2h2 hours ago
@chollyv @MAS0424 @mmurraypolitics At this point, I’d be happy with Nixon and Reagan’s rotting corpses.
6 replies 22 retweets 355 likes
LAO
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The first thing that’s made me laugh in a day and a half. Thanks!
sharl
Hmm, I wonder if Thiel signed on as an ally/adviser to Trump to increase the pace of U.S. movement to Armageddon, which will increase his NZ property value (SV libertarian thinking: Disrupt! Move fast, break things!)
And this Gizmodo update confirms the confusion among Kiwis I’m seeing on twitter:
Waldo
Great. Even if it’s an illusion, when the masters of the universe think they can survive anything, they’ll be much more likely to gamble everything. WASF.
liberal
I’m rich! I know what I’ll do! Instead of using my vast wealth to help make sure that the unthinkable doesn’t happen, I’ll use it to make sure I can survive the unthinkable!
God, these people can’t die fast enough.
elm
A bug-out plan for NZ doesn’t work if you don’t have a jet with adequate range to get to New Zealand.
amk
whatever fuck happened to them military parades planned for the narcissist’s inauguration?
Jack the Second
1. Convince all of the billionaires, hundred-millionaires, etc, to build bunkers in far-away, remote locations.
2. Stage “War of the Worlds”/”Watchmen” style fake end of the world.
3. Don’t tell any of them it’s safe to come out.
Villago Delenda Est
These fucks all have guilty consciences.
Peale
I love how they think anyone will be accepting bitcoin as payment for anything. Sure, whip out your cell phone to buy some fish. I’m sure the fishmonger will be well equipped to complete that transaction.
liberal
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s a nice idea, but where would one emigrate to? Huge chunks of the world are at least as fucked up as we are. Including much of Europe.
Not that I’m going to look down my nose at anyone who wants to flee, even if for me the right decision is to stay and fight.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk: Military told him to fuck off.
HRA
During this election campaign, I read where someone would say “They want to take us back to the 1950s!” It certainly looks like we are seeing the beginning of those days now.
Yarrow
@sharl: Maybe they can revoke his citizenship.
zhena gogolia
@liberal:
My feelings exactly.
liberal
@Waldo:
Moral hazard, be-yotch.
Pogonip
@elm: Or if the peasants you rely on to service, fly, and fuel that jet have become notably disgusted with you.
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia:
Great! I’m trying to do the same for myself, like signing off Balloon-Juice, taking the dog for a walk, and getting some work done. Adieu for now!
Yarrow
@amk: The military told him to go fuck himself.
Major Major Major Major
@Nick:
This, a thousand times this. Except these people don’t see it that way any more. Tech types have always thought they would do pretty well in a zombie apocalypse; it’s no surprise that the MOTU strain actually builds luxury apartments in abandoned silos.
Citizen_X
So H.G. Wells had it backwards: the rich elites will become the Morlocks.
The basic relations will be the same, though. We’ll still eat them.
Oatler.
One of my SF favorites is “Rax” by Michael Coney, which tells of a kid witnessing a war it turns out was fomented by governments to distract the populations from disasterous climate change while they stored resources in underground shelters.
Yarrow
@Peale: Yeah, and with what internet connection do you access your bitcoin once the whole world falls apart?
A Ghost to Most
I’m using it as justification for getting locking differentials installed on my mountain assault vehicle, and my wife agrees! When she got scared, I knew it wasn’t just me being crazy. Also, passports.
Lurking Canadian
For fuck’s sake. You’d think a yearly 3% tax increase would cost less than building an underground bunker with its own water supply to survive the apocalypse.
Hey rich assholes, civilization, do you speak it?
Betty Cracker
It is impossible to overstate my contempt and loathing for people like Peter Thiel, a gay man who collaborates with homophobic nutcases to add to his already obscene levels of wealth. I read an excerpt of an interview with that vile motherfucker a while back in which the interviewer specifically asked Thiel about the possibility (certainty, actually) that Trump will put homophobic shitheads on the SCOTUS who will attempt to rollback gains like marriage equality.
Thiel said he wasn’t too worried about that because he knows Trump isn’t personally too exercised about teh geys — hey, did you know Trump once clowned around with Rudy Giuliani in drag? Well, of course that piece of shit isn’t worried about it — his vast wealth will protect him from any real nastiness.
I sincerely hope Thiel contracts are terminal case of crotch rot.
amk
@Yarrow: small mercies and all that.
Larkspur
@sharl: Good. I’m glad they are looking into it. I know a wealthy couple who spend 6 months a year in New Zealand. They’d like to live there, but they can’t immigrate because even though they have money, they’re in their 70s and 80s and don’t meet the requirements for permanent citizenship. I guess they’re the kind of rich people who aren’t corrupt. Imagine that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: He needs to be placed on the tumbrel manifest, and a copy sent to New Zealand just in case.
I trust the Kiwis to do the right thing.
Peale
@Yarrow: Actually I think they politely said that missiles are quite heavy and aren’t designed to handle traffic clrcles. They should have lied and told him that Obama sold all the tanks to Iran as part of the nuclear deal.
GregB
I have been told it is a harder fall from the penthouse to the street than from the sidewalk to the street.
At least Thiel is still an advocate of globalism.
oklahomo
This reminds me of a Farside cartoon of a man and woman in a bomb shelter, surrounded by cans of food, and with dozens of mushroom clouds above ground. “Don’t tell me you forgot a can opener.”
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: His wealth won’t really protect him at some point. Like from, say, a fast-moving and highly contagious disease. That’s part of what makes these isolated homesteads so ridiculous. They will have to interact with the outside world at some point and when that happens they’ll come in contact with things they never imagined. And there won’t be any health services to create vaccines to deal with all of it.
NotMax
“The dehydrated nightingale tongue is awful and the freeze dried Dom Perignon isn’t much better. It’s hell, I tells ya, sheer hell.”
Timurid
@Yarrow:
Which they could do when he was still only President-Elect Trump.
Kay
Weird state propaganda campaign continues. This is fucked up to watch. The message is like “Bold Action By President Trump Praised”
This is actually happening and we’re watching it. It’s like North Korea in there. Institutions folding all over the place like cheap lawn chairs.
Turn on one of the cable business channels. They’re repeating the propaganda verbatim.
Yarrow
@Peale: I think that was military speak for “Go fuck yourself.” Or, “Our tanks are way bigger than your tiny hands.” Also, too.
Major Major Major Major
These people have played too much Fallout, and I say that as someone who plays too much Fallout.
@Lurking Canadian: I do think most of them are if not liberal then at least Democrat-supporting. Thiel’s the black sheep.
Timurid
In other news, MAKE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION GREAT AGAIN!
Yarrow
@Kay: This is exactly what the people who study authoritarian governments warned us would happen. Authoritarians move very, very quickly once in power and institutions fall. It’s not really a surprise. It’s all happening as expected. It’s up to us to fight back.
A Ghost to Most
@Yarrow:
Especially when the locals know where they are.
trollhattan
@elm:
Next up: Billionaire Douches’ GoFundMe campaign for bug-out 787.
Location: secret.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
There were a lot of French aristocrats in 1789 who assumed that their vast wealth would protect them from the consequences of their actions. Just sayin’.
sharl
@Larkspur: I’ve never been to NZ, unfortunately, and don’t know a great deal about the country. But the vibe I get is of a nation of (relatively) gentle people who value their independence and uniqueness. I can’t see this Thiel business going over well at all with the Kiwis (most of them at least).
Yarrow
@A Ghost to Most: Yeah, they can sit in their isolated bunkers, whether some underground shelter (and just how long will they really last doing that, especially if they bring families and younger kids?), or some walled off self-sufficient homestead, but if the mobs get going they’ll be overrun. They can hire all the security they want but it won’t work at some point. The locals will know those people have resources and they’ll come after them.
Kay
So funny. Remember “Fix The Debt!” ? Anyone who took any of those people seriously is officially a dope.
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid: woohoo.
Jordan Rules
I wonder if Susan Sarandon will bail too. throws super-powered Michelle O side-eye daggers towards her
I mean, I probably would if I could. Though the question about where to go is a good one because of global instability. This shit is so clarifying though and I suspect we’ll see places that really start to stand out as safer havens and better choices.
Oh and I didn’t enable this bullshit like she did so I’d be a WOC running from extreme circumstances that she helped create with her ignorance.
cosima
@liberal: There was one fella in the story who eschewed building himself an escape palace — he said that at parties when people talk about it he asks them how much they’ve donated to their local food bank. He was the only thing about the story that I could bear. It was disgusting to read how much some of these people had made selling their companies to google/yahoo/whoever, and how many of them are hedge fund managers, and even a g-d real estate guy.
WTELF is wrong with these people?
Reading this piece a couple of days ago did *not* improve my state of mind about all of this fuckery.
geg6
@Droppy:
This is kind of what my mom told me back in the old duck and cover Cold War days. She said we would never have to worry about a post-nuclear war because my area of the country was then the steel making capital of the world and was in the midst of building the first US nuclear power plant. She figured we were high on the list of targets and wouldn’t be around to deal with the aftermath.
Yes, these were discussions my parents had with us kids during those days.
Seanly
@sharl:
Okay… my link to Frinkiac didn’t work…
I’m sure there is some minor NZ official now groveling on his knees saying “They drove a dump truck full of money to my house. I’m not made of stone” ala Krusty the Clown.
Kay
@Yarrow:
I don’t move that quickly. I’m sort of waiting for more information. I can’t get my arms around it yet. I’ve done quite a bit on voting rights and I understand the issues and process, so I’ll probably end up with that faction :)
Lurking Canadian
@Kay: So predictable. In fact, it was predicted. Krugman predicted it in the pages of some obscure New York rag, if I remember correctly. Too bad he’s too shrill to be a serious commentator.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I’m Beltway-adored and adorably crusty “libertarian” Alan Simpson is desperately trying to get on TV to decry the Trump/Ryan agenda, and they’re not answering his calls, while Erskine Bowles occasionally glances at his phone and wonders why no one is calling.
geg6
@Peale:
I have become more and more convinced that you can be a complete and utter idiot and still get/be obscenely wealthy in this country. This just proves my point.
Lurking Canadian
@geg6: I had (almost) exactly the same conversation with my mom. She had seen somewhere that the blast radius of a nuke was (5km? 5 miles? I forget. 1982 was a long time ago). Anyway, using that statistic, she had computed that a nuke aimed at the Parliament building in Ottawa would be certain to vaporize our house, so we had nothing to worry about!
A Ghost to Most
Resist! Banner on crane near WH
SenyorDave
@Betty Cracker: I believe that Dick Cheney’s daughter did outreach for to the gay community for the GOP. She certainly had nothing to fear from a President Pence. Kapo is a terrible word, it was used for Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. Peter Thiel is a kapo. And a terrible human being, a man who is worth billions but seems to devote most of his energies into figuring out ways to increase his wealth.
Yarrow
Keep it up, everyone!
rikyrah
@Kay:
uh huh
uh huh
SenyorDave
@Seanly: I’m sure there is some minor NZ official now groveling on his knees saying “They drove a dump truck full of money to my house. I’m not made of stone” ala Krusty the Clown.
I believe that was from the Kamp Krusty episode. “Crisis at Kamp Krusty” dovetails perfectly with the current times. Only problem is that Kent Brockman is a far better journalist than Chuck Todd.
Jeffro
This part of the article ought to be bolded or BookSnapped or something:
Just 10 seconds of additional thought gets you off the prepper scare-train, how about that? Education really is a thing!
It makes sense to keep a week’s worth of bottled water and canned goods in your house, plus the usual bug-out bags for folks in hurricane areas, a safe room for those in Tornado Alley, etc. But if some crisis goes beyond a week, it’ll be a whole new ballgame and good luck keeping your fortress defended/stocked/etc, 1%ers.
trollhattan
@Lurking Canadian:
I had a little celebration when the local SAC (Strategic Air Command) base was decommissioned many years back. Also wondered whether we took the extra step to send letters announcing such to the Chinese and then-Soviets that those B52s and their cargo were off to Utah (or wherever the wing was reassigned).
Cold comfort, as Travis AFB is directly upwind if out of the blast zone. Man, I hate resurrecting these thoughts. Fvcking Putin.
gbbalto
@Yarrow: Worse, the locals will beat them to the shelter. If a guard force is stationed there, they may decide that they don’t need the owner and family – the food will last longer without them.
Kay
In one of his idiot rants Trump said he’s investigating citizens who are registered in more than one state.
This will be reported like it means something, but it doesn’t, because “voting” is different than “registered”
When media repeat this, ask yourself- when you moved to a different state did you cancel your voter registration in another state? Just use common sense. Everyone who votes knows how this works. Don’t believe a word they say unless it comes from someone who isn’t insane and understands voting process, procedure and record-keeping.
You would be better off listening to any random poll worker than Donald Trump or the GOP Congress or CNN or FOX.
It’s like the birth certificate. It’s a boring state recording procedure. It’s rule-bound and nit-picky. It’s not malicious or cloak and dagger and anyone who has it explained to them can easily understand it. Don’t let them dramatize it. Read the rules. People move and re-register in a new state every day, tens of thousands of people. Nothing mysterious or dramatic or suspicious about it. Don’t let them Birtherize voting. They will try.
Major Major Major Major
@Lurking Canadian: meanwhile I get to die an agonizing death from radiation poisoning here in San Francisco after they bomb Livermore.
@Kay: Don’t politicians do that all the time?
geg6
@Lurking Canadian:
Since I still live within spitting distance of the aforementioned nuke plant, we have to know these things. If Shippingport was hit by a terrorist attack or by a nuke, the blast zone, they tell us, would be 13 miles. I live about 5 miles from the plant and work about 3 miles from it. My childhood home is 11 miles.
But we don’t have steel mills anymore, so that’s a relief. ;-)
prob50
@Citizen_X:
Yes, it’s a treat just thinking about the rich, frothy stew. Better stock up on antacids, though, ‘cuz these piggy rich pricks are sure to cause serious indigestion.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Kay, the economy’s in the toilet, every city bigger than 10k (or darker than eggshell white) is a war zone, 90M Americans are unemployed (and 150M are mooching free stuff from the job creators, growth is at -55%, and approximately 40M “illegals” came up from Mexico in the past week. This was all covered by Kellyanne on the Sunday shows just 3 short days ago, don’t you remember? We HAVE to hurry up with those tax cuts for the 1%…they’re…they’re going to be a life preserver for all of us and our way of life!
geg6
@Kay:
Turns out Bannon is registered in two states. Florida and New York. LOL!
Jeffro
@Kay:
I believe when you register to vote in your new state, the new state sends a notice to your old state to take you off the rolls. Perhaps not all states, but that’s what happened when we moved back to VA a few years ago.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Judging from letters to the local dead-tree paper the “He won popular vote if you eliminate California” meme lives on. Ironic, given said letter writers all live in California.
Crafting my “He loses bigly if you eliminate the Confederacy” letter.
Kay
@Jeffro:
What I love about the GOP economy talk is it is contradicted every single day by sitting GOP governors.
Scott Walker has been bragging all week about 4% unemployment. So Walker/Trump voters believed both things at the same time.
They’re not rational. They can’t be. The Great Lakes states can’t be hellish, blasted hell-holes WHILE Scott Walker and Kasich are bragging about the economy.
elm
@trollhattan: I believe their actual plan is to eliminate California after they eliminate Chicago and Tucson.
Jeffro
@Kay: And you know, this could be so easily, roundly mocked by Dems (and hopefully will): “When your Uncle Eddie died…was your first thought, ‘gee, I better go cancel his voter registration’? NO!”
The Moar You Know
Preppers are idiots, and I was one for a long time, so I know of what I speak.
Unless these people have their own Legion of Doom island fortresses, stocked with farms, doctors, dentists, full surgeries and a private army equipped with everything up to and including their own air force with modern fighter aircraft (at this point only governments have this kind of money) there is literally nothing they can do to insure their survival that puts them in a better place than a homeless person out on the streets of any major city, and the homeless guy has a LOT more experience at staying alive than these idiots will.
But, y’know, spend the money. It’s good for the economy.
Here’s my takeaway from my years as a prepper: stock up on ammo, hard alcohol and cigarettes. Those are the only trade goods worth a shit if a society collapses. And you better have some strongmen (ones that you can KEEP reliable) to make sure you don’t get robbed of your valuable trade goods. And y’know what? You might make it a year, but pretty soon you’re going to cross paths with someone more amoral than you who can win the gunfight and then you’ll be dead and they’ll be enjoying all your carefully hoarded goods plus the lamentations of your women.
ihop
hmmm, god love them, but isn’t new zealand rather young, geographically speaking? with the south island rocked by a series of big earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 and the north island home to mt ruapehu, one the largest active volcanos in the world?
hobbits don’t really live there. its still the real world.
rikyrah
Blue states are in for a world of pain
By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer January 23
If blue states think they’re going to be shielded from the coming Trump tsunami, they’re sorely mistaken.
Much has been written about how the unified Republican front in Washington is going to betray the working-class whites of deep-red Trump country. The coming Obamacare repeal, fewer worker protections and additional fraying of the safety net will inflict enormous pain.
Blue states might appear to be relatively insulated from much of this turmoil, since they’ve already locked in many of the progressive policies Republicans aim to roll back at the federal level.
………………………………………
Second, Medicaid block grants.
On Sunday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway reaffirmed her boss’s — and his chosen health secretary’s — commitment to restructuring Medicaid so that states receive flat, lump-sum payments, called “block grants.” This would replace today’s system, in which states and feds share costs for eligible Medicaid enrollees, whose numbers can rise and fall with changes in the economy.
This idea has long been popular among Republicans — partly because it shunts the burden of figuring out where and how to curb spending onto the states.
But transitioning to block grants is trickier than it sounds. How do you decide how big each state’s initial lump-sum payment should be? How will it change over time?
One option is to permanently freeze payments at current levels, perhaps indexing them to inflation. But this locks into place huge discrepancies between states and doesn’t provide much flexibility as relative economic conditions change. Today, federal Medicaid spending per low-income state resident varies dramatically across the country, from a low of $1,051 in Nevada to more than 11 times that in the District, according to calculations from the Urban Institute’s John Holahan and Matthew Buettgens.
Which is why one other likely alternative — and one that might appeal to many Republican legislators — would be pegging the size of a state’s lump sum to its per-capita income. The higher-income the state is, the less money it gets.
As economists Jeffrey Clemens and Benedic Ippolito explained recently, this formula “would result in a seismic redistribution of federal spending.”
Among the biggest winners would be lower-cost-of-living red states; among the biggest losers, high-cost-of-living blue states. Texas, for example, would gain about $8 billion in federal Medicaid funding relative to what it receives today. New York and California would each lose more than $15 billion annually.
With fewer federal funds coming in, these states would be forced to cut health benefits for the poor, siphon off money from other programs, raise taxes or some combination of all these things.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This article again highlights why on my first day as dictator, I would take the 400 (more or less) richest Americans, parade them down a major metropolitan street, Chinese Communist Revolutionary style, into a stadium and then put a bullet into the back of each one’s head. I’d then charge the families for the cost of everything to put this together, then confiscate their wealth and redistribute it to the poor.
Again, don’t make me dictator and everything will be fine.
Any time I feel the above sounds too harsh, an article like the one at the top appears.
hovercraft
Did no one tell them about his vampire tendencies? I’d warn the locals to guard their youths and their sheep, he want’s their blood.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Kay, if your state has a Republican governor, it’s AUTOMATICALLY not a hellhole, you know that! Unless Orangemandias says it is. Then it is. But that’s because it’s getting better from the Obamanation years, under the Republican governor’s stewardship and also gutting of the education budget plus doublegood tax breaks.
vhh
@Nick: My wife and I got Australian citizenship for our family the old fashioned way: we earned it by living, working and paying taxes there for about a decade around the turn of the century. One of our kids lives in Oz already, and as Trump Fascism goes forward, we be looking hard at moving back there ourselves.
Australia and New Zealand, while separate countries, each give reciprocal rights in residence, access to voting, Medicare, education to the citizens of the other country.
Housing costs in both countries much higher than US average (average house price in Auckland or Sydney >= USD 750K). Automobiles, appliances, clothes, cosmetics can be 2X US prices. Food also more expensive. Income tax rates steeply progressive in both countries: in NZ, top tax rate of 33% kicks in at income of US 50K. Many other taxes generally lower than US. Salaries generally significantly lower than in US, and buy less “stuff” because of higher prices. Really rich people can do well in either country, but tax avoidance strategies different than in US, and you have to be careful about treatment of overseas investment income.
Both countries have Medicare for all supplemented by private insurance, which gives more choices in hospital care. In Australia, for example, Medicare tax is 2%, but can rise to ~3% depending on income if you don’t have private health insurance. You get a tax rebate of up to 30% on insurance premiums. (Frankly, the US would be smart to adopt a similar system—vastly more convenient and effective—Oz achieves comparable health incomes and greater longevity than the US with 60% of the cost (calculated with corrections for cost of living).
NZ is beautiful but rainy, there is net migration from NZ to OZ every year in search of sun.
Australia, while it (like NZ) has more free market policies than the US, is a MUCH more democratic and egalitarian society. Silvertails (ie people born with a silver spoon up the nether regions and an entitled attitude) like Trump are widely reviled. I suspect that NZ is similar.
One important catch: neither country has much of a research and development innovation sector. There is a steady outflow of young people with advanced education in STEM fields to Europe, the US, and Asia because they would be underemployed and underpaid at home unless they work in financial services. Generalists do much better than specialists in the Oz/NZ job market. And so, Oz/NZ export a large fraction of their most talented people. In my case, I was headhunted by a US organization who more than doubled my salary.
Either country is probably fine for megarich people like Mr. Thiel. But rather out of the way, and potentially boring and with fewer exciting business opportunities. He’d probably spend lot of time on airplanes.
I would expect that applications by Americans for residence visas to both countries will rise, perhaps steeply. Sic transit gloria Americana.
Kay
@Jeffro:
It depends. Ohio just started the records match 2 years ago. Partly this is to protect the right. They don’t drop people from rolls without a statutory process because that would deny the right to vote without process. This is common sense. Voting is a RIGHT. There will always be notice and process. Always. All rights are like that. It’s not subjective or arbitrary. Exactly the same every time.
That’s why they won’t drop your dead relative when you call and tell them to. That person can’t be denied the right to vote based on a phone call from someone else. That doesn’t afford them notice.
Kay
@Jeffro:
I live in like Ground Zero of WWC hell-hole and the economy right now is better than it ever was under Bush.
All of these dopes who voted for Bush based on the economy? They shoulda been coming out in droves for Obama.
Peale
@Kay: Actually I think we’ll see economic data restated now to reflect the 95 million unemployed and the disastrous Weimar inflation rates and high gas prices that everyone is convinced on their side exists. Either that or we’ll have to have a sever recession pretty quick so that the administration policy prescriptions actually matches the data.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: They’ll strip it. And right quick too.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Well that will be one spot of light in this fast-moving interminable shit show. Looking forward to it!
hovercraft
@amk: They would have torn up the streets, so the DoD nixed them much to the chagrin of our new Emperor. They did throw him a bone and provide him with t a fly over.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m knitting his name into my register that’s for fucking sure.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman: Good, sunlight is always such a good disinfectant. However greelit and or fast tracked this will have some splanin to do.
Nick
@vhh:
Actually, my wife and I did the same — we emigrated to Canada and recently became citizens. It’s not perfect (cold, bad neighbour), but depending on what happens to the world, could be a good place to live. We’re very happy here, and have a strong sense of belonging to a sane society.
I suspect that a lot of people go to New Zealand because their money goes further. New Zealand stands a good chance of being the Argentina of the 21st century, a well-off, civilized country that just can’t quite support an economy that gives them the standard of living they’re used to.
Lizzy L
@Adam L Silverman: Y’know, I’m not normally a vindictive person — but I really really hope you’re right. Thiel is despicable.
Kay
Well, THAT’S normal, I must say. How long can political media maintain this charade? It’s like watching the Titanic sink.
Stan
@Betty Cracker:
This.
hovercraft
@Kay:
They hate me, they are terrible, they are liars!
I hate them, they are liars, terrible dishonest liars.
What’s that they love me, they are complimenting me.
Look at these wonderful headlines they are writing about me, they are so enlightened.
I love them, they are the most insightful, well informed people evah, I love them.
Rinse repeat ad nauseum.
Stan
@Jeffro:
Several of my adult children are still registered to vote in New York despite having lived and registered to vote in at least three other states, so, this is definitely not done consistently.
Thoroughly Pizzled
I hope Thiel dies angry and unloved.
ThresherK
This fellow has certainly watched The Twilight Zone.
But taken away the wrong Aesop.
cmorenc
How many BJers are old enough to remember the era from roughly the mid-50s up through about the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis when an appreciable number of people were building nuclear fallout shelters in their yards, either as thick-walled brick above-ground structures, or as underground bunkers? How many of them are still recognizably present today (doubtless many of such that are still around have been reconfigured to other purposes that may possibly make their original purpose less obvious).
My otherwise very sane uncle, a Phd chemist with Smith-Kline (as it was then called) built one in his backyard in New Jersey – a pure underground model with heavily filtered above-ground vents. A neighbor in my original hometown in SE North Carolina built a thick-walled brick one that was mostly above-ground, because the area had too high a water table to easily construct basements that weren’t forbiddingly problematic.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yarrow: The main problem is a logistical one (Donald not capable of understanding this) in that the US has tanks, and it has artillery, but it doesn’t have giant missile trucks anymore. Also, too, the military gear Donald wanted isn’t anywhere near DC. Nearest active duty tank is probably at Fort Knox, perhaps there are some armored units in the National Guard that would be closer. There’s some towed 155mm arty down at Bragg, but it’s the 82nd Airborne…no tanks.
And, yes, tanks are very rough on roads not designed specifically to allow them to travel on them. I doubt many DC streets are up to that standard. The interstates are, but then again, Ike was inspired by the Autobahnen he saw in Germany to build the interstate system.
Gravenstone
@Lurking Canadian:
Oh, they speak it. The problem is, they clearly prefer not to share it, at least with us hoi polloi.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stan: A lot of this is on the honor system, which does not exist for Rethuglicans.
Villago Delenda Est
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: I’d vote for you. Needs more tumbrels, though.
Lizzy L
@cmorenc: I am old, and I remember it well. In the 1950s my family lived on Long Island, and one of our neighbors built a fallout shelter. I remember the duck and cover drills all through childhood. (They went away in the early sixties, to be superseded by bomb scares.) It was a fear-filled time.
Gravenstone
@gbbalto:
Shades of one of the protagonists in Lucifer’s Hammer. He’s a bit of a dilettante who enjoys astronomy as a hobby. Flash forward to the eve of the actual cometfall, and he arrives at his observatory (where he thought he’d ride things out) and finds it taken over by his custodian, who refuses to let him into the place.
ruckus
I like that the survivalists are willing to prep for the end but don’t seem willing to try to keep it from happening.
ruckus
@Lizzy L:
Lived in socal in the 50s and knew a family that had a “bomb” shelter in their front yard. All you could see was the manhole cover that lead to it.
Lizzy L
@ruckus: These folks had a round metal cover on the entranced as well. The rest of the neighborhood, including my parents, thought they were crackpots. I know they stockpiled cans of food down there because I saw them taking it down. I wonder if it (the shelter) is still there…
hovercraft
@Lizzy L: It was a fear-filled time.
Cermet
Stupid beyond measure; gas powered generators? Really? Food is the main one but if what these nut cases does in fact occur, then food disappears and so do all fuels. There ideas/methods still depend on a rather well functioning society! But that requires they accept facts and care about the common good of all their fellow people – wealthy can’t ever accept that. They’d rather dream up these extreme failures where they can then just depend on their wealthy and hidden resources…right. Shelters are traps to die in; rather they just need to realize small changes in our current well functioning society like contributing a bit more in taxes and believing in science based facts can and will prevent the “horror’s” they dream of and fear.
Peale
@Cermet: They probably store lots of fuel. Which is really not a very good idea if one is expecting mobs of torch carrying citizens.
Cermet
@Nick: An island is no place to live if society collapses (Yes, New Zealand); islands can never support their populations without massive imports – food/fuels and other non-local items. It is, like a bunker, a trap. Yes, when enough die off …yeah, great place to seek refuge.
Cermet
@Peale: Fuels tend to have finite life times in storage before they go bad AND even massive amounts last very short times in cold environments …lol.
sharl
I barely remember the ridiculous dive-under-the-desk exercises we had to do a few times when I was in kindergarten and/or first grade, LOL. With Wright-Pat AFB just a few miles away, that would have done us a LOT of good {/sarcasm}.
If you’re looking for a pleasant and gentle comedic movie that actually manages to stay funny while addressing the fear of those Cold War days – specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis – I recommend Matinee from 1993, starring John Goodman (Wikipedia, IMDB).
MCA1
I’m jealous of Nick, the recently-emigrated Canadian. Read a fascinating note the other day about how Canada’s take on the integration/absorption of immigrant cultures was set out about 80 years ago and is very different from our “melting pot” assimilate model. Instead, it’s an embrace of the incoming culture, figure out what you like about it, and absorb it into the fabric of Canadian-ness. Seems to have been the better long term strategy, from the perspective of living in a place that has destroyed its 250 year old democracy in part over paralyzing fear of the Other.
The problem with prepping, in addition to the insufficiency of it when the apocalypse actually occurs, is that it becomes a hobby and a time suck, and in order to justify spending all that time and effort on it, people start to actually need the end of civilization to happen to justify their actions. Otherwise it’s a mockable waste of time and they look stupid. Cue the Oathkeeper/Bundy/Malheur folks, itching for the end of days mostly so that all the mental and emotional effort they put into burning down the social contract, worrying about non-existent tyranny, and adopting a treasonous philosophy to serve their selfishness pays off.
SFBayAreaGal
On the History Channel there was a show called Doomsday Preppers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet: Logistics are beyond their cognition.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
The premise of The Road Warrior was control of the last remaining oil refinery in post-apocalyptic Australia.
SFBayAreaGal
If it comes to the “End of Times” I don’t want to be a survivor. I hope I die quickly.
Mnemosyne
@SFBayAreaGal:
My dad used to watch that. It was creepy as hell.
Not surprisingly, he got more and more interested in it as his health got worse and his own death was imminent. I think it’s the (mostly) secular companion to the Rapture believers, with a huge amount of crossover.
geg6
@Kay:
Exactly. Me, too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So these Masters of the Universe’s escape plan is to flee to island which all ready has scarcity and the locals inherently, whether they be white or Maori, have a loathing for social Darwinists (since booth groups were on the bad end of that philosophy). One can almost picture the shocked look on Theil’s bleeding head when it being paraded down Wellington’s streets on a pike.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Speed the day. Doesn’t have to be in Wellington. It can be in Mountain View.
sharl
An explainer on Peter Thiel, written by a Kiwi for his fellow Kiwis.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne: Most people can’t deal with the finality of death, that there is no way to beat it. One of the ways to fantasize about beating death is that most people get killed, but you survive, as one of the few. They’ll die anyway, but the fantasies don’t go that far.
Groucho48
There’s a kind of mindless, escapist (heh) series of books by Steven Konkoly that has a prepper as the protagonist. Not the greatest fiction, but, there is enough self-deprecating stuff in it to carry it along.
Stan
@Villago Delenda Est:
We should just build some really cool-looking fake ones for the parades, it’s not like anyone high up in the GOP would ever find out. They and their families leave military service to us lowlifes.
The RT-2PM Topol is the kind of stuff Hollywood could mock up a have dozen of…or maybe Putin would let us borrow a few.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
I’m with Max Levchin on this one. Instead of spending all that time and money on “doomsday prepping” these rich fuckers should be investing it in society now. Whatever happened to an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (or something like that). And don’t get me started on Thiel who helped to bring Herr Gropenfuhrer into power…..Hey Thiel, how about you do us a favor and take your clueless ass off to New Zealand before Doomsday…like right now.
Joe Falco
@SenyorDave: I believe that same episode has an equally memorable scene with the camp leader and the bullies enjoying their profit while the campers suffer and raising a glass: “Gentlemen, to Evil!”
A fitting scene to describe these robber barons and their willing Republican stooges in power.
Chris T.
Ugh, that’s terrible. Thiel despoiling beautiful Lake Wanaka with Thiel’s presence, that is.
Damien
Elite survivalist bunkers? Yeah, that worked out real good in the World War Z book. Maybe they can even get an “End Times Party” reality TV show out of the deal too.
jame
For those who love maps and hypothetical musing:
http://www.wouldisurviveanuke.com
Ella in New Mexico
Now I’m really starting to worry that whole Alex Jones promoted planet Niburu thing might be a true story…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm
slackselvis
I’m already dead.