Investors of a purportedly "five-star" bunker in rural South Dakota, called Vivos xPoint, are already at each others' throats.
    • Big Baby Thor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      120·
      23 天前

      It’s kind of like their own punishment. They’ll laugh as they descend into their bunkers, thinking “no one can get in!” Not knowing that the exits will be boarded up.

      At last, one of them will emerge, after having ate the other occupants - children included - and they will be met by a crowd of brown people (global warming caused “white genocide”).

      The crowd will then drag the surviving billionaire to a down square, where they’ll be submerged into a vat of liquid metal, forming a statue with a horrid look on it’s face, to be mounted on a block with a placard titled “The Last Billionaire”.

    • Carighan Maconar@piefed.worldEnglish
      7·
      23 天前

      But wait! What if we buy a cruise ship and sell the cabins on it as law-free estate for these freaks? Certainly that one has to work out, right?!

  • moondoggie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    23 天前

    These aren’t “the wealthy” - most of these are priced at $50k-75k. That’s prepper nutjob price ranges and it’s no surprise that they’re shooting people with front end loaders since obviously it’s the government disguised as the company workers, coming to dig them out and take their guns.

    The people who are actually wealthy have the means to not live in a hole in South Dakota surrounded by other people in their own holes. Their hole in the ground will be somewhere much less advertised.

  • Janx@piefed.socialEnglish
    73·
    23 天前

    During one particularly hairy incident, a man who moved into one of the units with his wife, his daughter, and her four children, pulled a gun on a Vivos contractor who had pulled up with a front-end loader to his bunker.

    The resident eventually shot the contractor, injuring him. However, South Dakota’s stand-your-ground law led to a grand jury declining to indict him.

    It’s telling that one of these billionaires was the type to kill a worker trying to do their job near his property. And “stand your ground” laws were created by and for gun nuts who want to murder someone. Change my mind…

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      50·
      23 天前

      Like the other commenter noted, these aren’t rich people, they are prepper types. A billionaire isnt getting a $55k bunker.

      The guy who did the shooting is apparently a former cop turned EMT.

      The person he shot also wasn’t a worker trying to do his job, it was a guy who worked for the company who told a mutual acquaintance that he was going to that guy’s house specifically to attack him. When he got there, he asked the guy if he’d ever killed someone, and then he said he had killed someone with his bare hands. He then started going at the guy, who shot him and then immediately rendered aid.

      Not to defend a guy eho is probably a nutjob and a jerk, it sounds like a reasonable act of self defense to me.

  • artifex@piefed.socialEnglish
    51·
    23 天前

    These people are such morons. It would take about 2 minutes of an intro level Anthropology class to learn that for like 95% of human history we lived in small groups like this — so we’re definitely able to do it — but they only worked because they were (mostly) egalitarian. They absolutely don’t work when group members consistently value themselves over the group.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      23 天前

      They weren’t necessarily egalitarian, but they all involved a sense of duty to the community the ability to reinvent the structure of the community, and the freedom to leave. They were also smaller than this. But yeah this is a bunch of people who don’t understand how to function in a community like this.

      Also I’m not certain why these people are already living in the bunkers

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        22 天前

        They are so disconnected from reality they think the world has already ended. Evidence of this would be the minor pushback to things like AI they are starting to experience.

        A bunch of them went and hid in their bunkers when 9/11 happened. Obviously a pretty bad thing to happen but hardly the end of the world. Sadly they came out about 2 days later because they got bored.

      • artifex@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        22 天前

        Yep, though we know of bands of hundreds of people who persisted for a long time and at least a few examples of proto-cities with thousands and a much less pronounced division of labor (or at much less pronounced evidence of the trappings that tend to go along with things like kings and a class system). The prevailing assumption right now is that they must have been working more “together” than not.

  • slickgoat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    23 天前

    Have these guys ever considered that the survivors outside the bunkers might just weld the bunker doors shut whilst those inside watch them do it on closed circuit television?

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      23 天前

      I think the bigger threat is people dropping toxic gas or bombs down the ventilation shafts.

      cause ventilation shafts will be found, eventually, no matter how well they hide them.

      • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        22 天前

        If there’s any kind of catastrophe, people are going to want the resources inside these things. They’re not going to destroy the bunkers, just their occupants. Yeah, gas would do the trick. I’d suggest starting with CS, just to send a message.

      • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
        4·
        22 天前

        Then just cut the doors open and loot the supply hoards. Convenient that you can look these things up on the internet and save map pins to find them in case of need…

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        22 天前

        They could do like submarines and have air scrubbers. That’d keep them going for a while with no vents.

        • matthurtme@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          22 天前

          The core hardware of a premium nuclear bunker air scrubber (like those from DEFCON Bunkers or [American Safe Room]) lasts 5 to 10 years. However, the actual CBRN filters (gas and particulate) require replacement every 6 to 12 months when operating, while the primary HEPA filter can last for years in dry, non-contaminated environments.

          Bunker air filtration : r/preppers https://share.google/1ocXyhrcvc9nSWYoc

        • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          22 天前

          Unless they have a biodiverse ecosystem and infinite energy, they’ll eventually need some input from outside of their bunkers.

        • gh0stcassetteEnglish
          1·
          22 天前

          They only have so many replacement filters, if you keep pumping carbon monoxide in (heavier than air, so it will sink and be harder to pump out), the life support systems will break.

    • J92@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      23 天前

      This would just lead them to store gas-axes in their bunkers. What i dont imagine they can counter, however, would be the urge to leave once the air system is sabotaged and the crowd outside is sat waiting.

      • slickgoat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        23 天前

        I don’t think that any outcome they foresee will have any relation to what will actually happen.

      • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
        6·
        22 天前

        Gas masks don’t help with total lack of oxygen. All you have to do is send pure nitrogen down the ventilation shafts, even if they tanked O2, that’s maybe 10 hours per tank per person - how many tanks do you think they got with their $55K “Villa de Armageddon”?

      • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        22 天前

        The funniest part would be watching these chucklefucks trying to operate cutting equipment

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      22 天前

      This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!

      Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

      This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

      What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]English
      20·
      22 天前

      It’s a known phenomenon. When surrounded by sycophants, when on the top of a severe power imbalance you forget how to adult and how to empathize.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        22 天前

        What is a residential cruise ship?

        Think of condos, but on a ship.

        People make it their permanent home, and the ship wanders the world’s oceans based (theoratically) on votes from the passenger/owners as to where to go next.

        The residents tend to be a mix of remote workers, digital nomads and retirees.

        • modus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          22 天前

          I just did a quick search. $100k to own the cabin + $2k per person per month for one example. Seems like a good way for some to blow their money during their golden years. Sell the house and head out to sea to die.

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      22 天前

      Not surprised, they haven’t heard the word “no” or had to wait for their turn for a very long time

  • oortjunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    33·
    22 天前

    These fucks are GROUND ZERO for humanity’s collective dysfunction. They really think concentrating their filth in a fucking bunker isn’t going to brew the literal worst toxic behavior ever witnessed?

    Have at it in my opinion. Lock em in and melt the keys.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      15·
      22 天前

      Like most of their ideas the bunker strategy is idiotic because it completely fails to take into account the psychology of the individual. They used to flying around all over the planet and experiencing the best in life, for the most part they’ve lived this life since before they knew what their own fingers were for because they were born into wealth, these people are not going to do well in a tiny underground facility.

      The people who would do the best in the bunker are the people they are in the bunker to hide away from.

      • in_the_dark_forest@feddit.orgEnglish
        7·
        22 天前

        The only smart people in tgis are the ones selling rhe bunkers. They charge lots of money for a promise that is not even fully complete as described in the article. In the unlikely event of an actual apocalypse, many will not even rech the bunker in the first place and if somyhing is not ready or woking as it shouls there is nobody left to prosecute.

      • flying_sheep@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        22 天前

        Vivos does claim that they’re paying psychologists among other experts. I wonder how well.

  • Evotech@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    23 天前

    Relying on a company to support you in an apocalypse event is outrageous amounts of cope

  • Dr. Unabart@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    26·
    23 天前

    Not a television guy, but if you convinced these jackoffs the world was ending, forcing them to flee to their bunker commune, o’d watch a reality tv show of them in the bunker going lord of the flies on each other.

    • TruscapeEnglish
      30·
      23 天前

      That’s actually part of a whole chapter in World War Z. A mercenary from the rich people’s resort who later ditched them reveals that once the common people started showing up to their door rather than zombies, an immediate fight broke out between all of the residents and their staff, with most of them killing each other. The mercenaries refused to intervene because they were hired to kill infected, not normal people, and had no loyalty to the rich residents.

      The whole thing was broadcast live because the owner of the resort wanted to flaunt their status during the great panic.

      • proleEnglish
        5·
        23 天前

        The mercenaries refused to intervene because they were hired to kill infected, not normal people, and had no loyalty to the rich residents.

        The most unrealistic part. They’re mercenaries, they’re loyal to money

        • TruscapeEnglish
          10·
          23 天前

          The Great Panic in World War Z was when the public realized there was no cure and the rabies vaccine developed did nothing against the infection. Another chapter mentions a border guard who remembered how “[travelers] gave me a look that said money wasn’t going to be good for much longer.”

          In that moment I doubt their paychecks were on their mind.

        • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          23 天前

          I mean, right up until the second that they are suddenly not and the relationship needs to get redefinded.

          If you hire a guide to take you out in the wilderness, be polite.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    23 天前

    Never understood these bunkers in modern times.

    If TSHTF so hard that someone truly needs to bunker up for months on end civilization as we know it will likely be at an end. No coming back from it. Congrats, you survived to enjoy the death of everything we know. Heck knows they didn’t store a hoard of raw materials, tools, physical books full of knowledge, farm implements, seeds, and have ready access to individuals with year 1895 level skills to make it all work. They only thought of themselves and stored some food, lots of booze, and a little medicine, figuring they could jet off to some safe haven when it was convenient.

    If it were even the 1950s I think there would still be enough of a reservoir of local material and knowledge, and everything was mostly manually skilled labor to create, so bunkering could have worked out. But not today. Global supply chains, relocated resource extraction and manufacturing, and everything computerized has virtually guaranteed the impossibility of bootstrapping modern civilization should it fail.

    They’re just as dead, but they get to enjoy roving starving humans trying to kill them over whatever’s left.

    • zarathustrad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      23 天前

      So, ever been to Utah? No saying they are fully prepared… But their mutant spawn may make it out to kill each other over the scraps if it’s not a total wipe of life.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        23 天前

        There’s people that might survive, I’m thinking like the Amish. But even they depend on modern society at some level for materials. If anyone would make it it would be a group like that, someone already without modern tools as much as possible.

        • zarathustrad@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          23 天前

          Yep.

          It will have to be those with a strong commitment to community and preparation. Which will mean people with “faith” in the future they probably won’t see.

          So, that will exclude most of the narcissistic oligarchy. Though some are narcissistic enough about their own lineage to spawn a cult of personality for the continuation of their brood…

          They will however continue to hoard resources enough to weather the more likely minor civil disturbances their actions are certain to cause. Wich is the real motive for some.

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            22 天前

            t will have to be those with a strong commitment to community and preparation.

            They’ll be the first to be enslaved.

            • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
              1·
              22 天前

              Maybe they’re coy about it, but the Amish I have met aren’t big into firearms. Once there’s a farm with food and no guns and roving bands of hungry men with guns and ammo situation, the farmers usually doesn’t do well in the ensuing relationship.

              • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                22 天前

                So you’re saying people with guns would kill the people with the knowledge needed to have a hope of survival in a hypothetical apocalyptic catastrophe in a shortsighted display of greed and strength?

                That absolutely tracks.

                • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
                  1·
                  22 天前

                  Yeah, that does track, and when they don’t kill them just to show off that they can, they’ll also be doing it out of desparation, fear of starvation, and fear that the Amish women might drive knitting needles through their hearts.

    • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      23 天前

      Depends on the extinction event. There are plenty of scenarios (well not plenty, but enough) where most people die and supply chains are wiped out, but there are still libraries and warehouses full of shit (home depots, Amazon warehouses, and so on). Pharmacies would be good for raiding, too. Also farmer bob and his family died, but all of his shit is still there on his farm ready to be taken.

      And you can get generators with three fuel sources, not to mention that solar panels are readily available and generally easy to put together for a janky half-assed set up, so anything that needs electricity can still be used. (Did somebody say power tools? Did somebody say well pump? Did somebody say small flow treatment system? Did somebody say refrigeration?)

      And preppers (not all, but likely many) do amass survival books, encyclopedias and “medicine for dummies” books, and any of them that are serious are practicing Bushcraft enough to have a working knowledge of that.

      I’m guessing the bunker is actually there to ride out the people killing other people to take their resources phase. Maybe a nuclear bomb?

      Myself, I’m a half-assed homesteader, which is like being a prepper without all of the white supremacy stuff that goes with it. If there were an extinction event, and I somehow lived through it, I think I would last a couple more months than your average joe, but I doubt I would live into old age.

      • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
        3·
        22 天前

        farmer bob and his family died, but all of his shit is still there on his farm ready to be taken.

        Good luck keeping Bob’s John Deere running for more than a generation.

        • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          22 天前

          A generation is a lot of time to guess/check farming without power equipment. Not to mention the libraries likely with several books that outline that stuff. I have two books in my house right now that claim to be guides for similar stuff. Prepping is big business. And there are tons of john Deere’s and John Deere dealerships with service departments everywhere. I imagine you could keep it alive a long time. More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.

          • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
            1·
            22 天前

            More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.

            So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep… assuming NONE of those kinds of things EVER happen, then, yes, the happy cooperative commune that never murders each other over scarce resources could keep a basic tractor running for 30+ years. Throw in all those other challenges… just traveling to a supply depot to get a new spark plug could be risking your life.

            Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.

            • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              22 天前

              So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep…

              Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.

              Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions. We have seen, however, that in times of crisis communities and people rally together for the greater good. Even strangers help strangers. That doesn’t usually last long, but it does happen. And I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t be true if a world-killing meteor struck the earth in China. On my side of the planet, I do believe there would be a honeymoon phase before mad Max times.

              I’d be naive to assume that it would be without conflict for generations. I’m not saying that at all.

              Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.

              Yes. It would take a while to figure out how to reboot factories and supply chains (if that even is the goal after the extinction event – when there’s 10,000 left alive scattered throughout the world, why would we need factories and supply chains?). But also, there are more than enough spark plugs and engine blocks packed in oil at tractor supplies and John Deere service departments to make it happen for generations. Traveling may or may not be dangerous – neither you nor I know.

              My other claim is that we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good. I stand by that claim.

              The biggest danger would be illness and injury.

              • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
                1·
                22 天前

                Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.

                Yeah, the problem is: we’re both right. Some will go one way, some another - and when the two types intermingle, the results would appear to be inevitably regrettable.

                Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions.

                Having lived in big cities where “bad neighborhoods” means one house out of a thousand might harbor some bad kids who go out and do bad things, I’ll say: the vast majority of people in most of society are basically good, some of them truly great, but it doesn’t take very many bad actors to bring down a whole 100,000 population area into fear and chaos and over-the-top responses to threats.

                You want examples of over-the-top responses in real life? They’re rare, but cops doing outrageously terrible things isn’t just in fiction… a lot of real life is more cold, callous and brutal than a lot of fiction.

                we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good.

                In a lot of ways, horses and cows are much more work and expense (inputs of valuable materials) to keep operating than a tractor, it’s why the horse drawn carriages died out so quickly - not because they’re slow or smelly, but because cranking up an engine that sits in a garage and waits patiently for you for days, or months, at near zero storage cost is infinitely more efficient than protecting your livestock from disease and weather and poachers and wild predators…

                And, yes, in those places where people can maintain working animals, they will go to that expense to plow the earth by mule or ox or horse power instead of planting by human labor, but it is a big step up from desperation on the run to keeping beasts of burden in working order.

                The biggest danger would be illness and injury.

                That is a big one, particularly while the cities are filled with unburied rotting corpses.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        22 天前

        And do you think you’re the only one who will have thought of raiding those places? There’s going to be lots of competition.

        • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          22 天前

          Well, if the pandemic is any indicator, they’ll all be busy raiding toilet paper from Costco while I’m raiding Harbor Freight.

          In all seriousness, I don’t think this scenario will come to pass in my lifetime, but I do believe in “an ounce of prevention…”

    • thingAmaBob@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      23 天前

      Well said. I was wondering why not just treat the world and its people well and they can continue to have their own private land to do whatever. Seems like hell if you’re stuck in a bunker without the modern world at your fingertips. Seems foolish to me as well.

    • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
      1·
      22 天前

      1895 level skills

      Try 1695. There will be bits and bobs of modern life around, but the core skills required are going to be very much what the European settlers in the new world needed.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        22 天前

        Most of the first European settlers didn’t have those skills and either died or were rescued by native peoples, whom they later thanked by massacring them.

        The settlers were often townsfolk or recently demobilized soldiers, not experienced farmers. And it was a different ecosystem, with greater extremes of climate and different edible plants and pests, so even the agriculture needed to be adapted.

        • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
          1·
          22 天前

          Most of the first European settlers didn’t have those skills and either died or were rescued by native peoples, whom they later thanked by massacring them.

          Agreed on both points - needing to know how to grow food and not die from your own sanitation shortcomings, and how to ruthlessly kill the competition, those are the skills that get you past Thunderdome.

  • quick_snail@feddit.nlEnglish
    23·
    23 天前

    a man who moved into one of the units with his wife, his daughter, and her four children, pulled a gun on a Vivos contractor who had pulled up with a front-end loader to his bunker.

    Yeah that tracks.

  • nosuchanon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    22 天前

    Isn’t this exactly the premise for some of the Vaults in Fallout? Social experiments that lead to societal issues?

  • Avicenna@programming.devEnglish
    20·
    22 天前

    well ofcourse they would, they tend to all think that they are the main characters and everyone else is just an NPC