Tech-Bro Bolt Holes

The French revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Carrier massacred thousands of people from a position of utter political safety. It was the kind of safety known only to those who slot themselves so completely into the power structures of their time that they become above accusation, above guilt and free from the fear of consequence. Only such leaders can oversee the horror of building the Pyramids and the Colosseum, order the razing of enemy cities, make wonder after atrocity after wonder, and get away with the comical overuse of fake tan. Until they can't - political safety evaporates when the wind changes.

Carrier lost his position, along with his head, after Robespierre was toppled. An age earlier, Caesar had been stabbed by his peers on the Ides of March, Caligula killed by his own guards, and Commodus strangled by a friend in the bathtub. It's funny how something as physically fragile as a human can delude itself into thinking it can act without fear of reprisal.

I'd bet that every bigwig who fell from grace - from Nero to Charles I - would have loved to have a "billionaire bunker" to hide in. Such bunkers are apparently springing up all over "disaster-resistant" areas, or at least those places that are presumed to be a bit more resilient to climate change, civil wars, pandemics and nuclear attacks.

Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, has chosen Hawaii to build his, Peter Thiel wanted New Zealand (good choice!), Bill Gates is rumoured to have security facilities beneath all of his homes, and Elon Musk would probably favour something on Mars (but I reckon he'll have to settle for Texas). And for the lesser billionaire who can't aspire to his own planet, companies are offering bespoke survival bunkers worldwide. Some will even include gyms and swimming pools, so you can exercise between sipping margaritas.

How do these billionaires hope to control their security personnel after an apocalypse? It's obvious that they'll require armed people to live in the bunkers with them to prevent armed people outside the bunkers from breaking in, using the yoga mats and stealing bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Won't those armed insiders hold all of the power by virtue of assault weapons? Because what possible value is a billionaire after the planet's gone to the dogs and the difference between rich and poor is a defensible position and gunpowder? Can you imagine Bill Gates being useful in repelling an armed attack?

Much more likely, is that Mr Gates' security team will view him as a superfluous mouth to feed, take a look at "his" dwindling stocks of venison and decide it's time for Bill to be bumped off and added to the protein bank - billionaires only hold power within an economic system that allows billionaires to exist. Once that economic system breaks down, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Musk and the gang are just as vulnerable as Carrier was without Robespierre and just as useless as every other pleb without military experience.

And this is not lost on the billionaire club. Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Survival of the Richest, has heard some very rich people suggest solutions like special locks on the bunker’s food stores that only the billionaire can open and fitting security personnel with draconian collars that enforce discipline (and presumably explode, if needed). And who wouldn't want to spend decades underground with a unit of soldiers who start out hating you and grow more resentful with each electric shock you deliver to their necks?

The irony, of course, is that the global calamities that might force billionaires into subterranean living are best averted by leveraging the power and influence that billionaires currently have. Their best hope of keeping their current living standards - above ground and with much bigger swimming pools - is to invest their wealth in projects that are useful to the planet and everyone in it.

Then again, the recent Fallout TV series made Armageddon look quirky and fun. Maybe I'll keep an open mind about it, if I ever get planning permission to build my own bunker.