This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his Economic Collapse blog.
Editor’s Comment: There is little doubt that the world is becoming quite unstable. What remains arguable is whether or not we’ve reached a tipping point from which things cannot return to normal. The start of the Trump presidency has been marked by sharp divisions, protests, anger and political turmoil that has gripped headlines and brought anger to a fever pitch. Economically, the flashpoint for crisis is just around the corner, and could hit home at literally any point.
While things may continue to appear normal, the fabric of society is extremely vulnerable, and those with the means and advanced effort to prepare for the collapse are doing so. Things are incredibly delicate and the number of viable potential threats and catastrophic emergencies is many fold. Perhaps the fact that things have remained stable for this long is a piece of great fortune and a source of false security. Do what you can and get ready, because there is no guarantee that the future will take care of you and yours.
Now It Is The Elite That Are Feverishly ‘Prepping’ For The Collapse Of Society
by Michael Snyder
Once upon a time, “prepping” was something that was considered to be on “the lunatic fringe” of society. But in 2017, wealthy elitists are actually the most hardcore preppers of all. This is particularly true in places such as Silicon Valley, where a whole host of young tech moguls are putting a tremendous amount of time, effort and money into preparing for apocalyptic scenarios. So while interest in prepping among the general population has fallen extremely low right now, the election of Donald Trump has given liberal wealthy elitists even more urgency to prepare for what they believe is a very uncertain future.
In the January 30th, 2017 edition of the New Yorker, reporter Evan Osnos has done an extraordinary job of profiling these wealthy elitists that are “getting ready for the crackup of civilization”. One of the people that he interviewed was Steve Huffman, the young co-founder and CEO of Reddit…
Huffman, who lives in San Francisco, has large blue eyes, thick, sandy hair, and an air of restless curiosity; at the University of Virginia, he was a competitive ballroom dancer, who hacked his roommate’s Web site as a prank. He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, “the temporary collapse of our government and structures,” as he puts it. “I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.”
According to the article, Huffman estimates that “fifty-plus percent” of his elite friends in Silicon Valley have some form of “apocalypse insurance”. Needless to say, that number would be far higher than for the general population as a whole.
Another tech mogul that was interviewed by Osnos for the story was former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez…
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.”
As you can see, a lot of these liberal elitists are actually secretly stashing away lots of guns and ammunition.
So don’t believe everything that you read about them being “anti-gun”.
Other big names in Silicon Valley have decided that having a property on the other side of the planet is the best form of “apocalypse insurance”. The following comes from a story about Paypal founder Peter Thiel in the New York Times…
Mr. Thiel’s admiration for New Zealand is longstanding. “Utopia,” he once called it. He has an investment firm in the country that has put millions into local start-ups. He also owns lavish properties there, which his Silicon Valley friends hope to fly to in the event of a worldwide pandemic.
And of course Thiel is far from alone. So many wealthy individuals are buying up property in New Zealand these days that it is actually becoming a significant political issue over there. In fact, it is being reported that foreigners purchased an astounding 3500 square kilometers during the first ten months of 2016…
Statistics showed foreigners had bought over 3500 square kilometers of New Zealand in the first ten months of 2016, which is over four times as much as they did in the same period in 2010.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told The New Yorker that New Zealand had become the hot topic among Silicon Valley leaders lately.
“Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.”
Hoffman estimated that over half of the Silicon Valley insiders were into preparedness – especially since anti-elite sentiment has risen around the globe in recent years. It was intensified by events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, he added.
So are these wealthy elitists ahead of the curve, or are they just being paranoid?
Only time will tell, but they didn’t become exceedingly wealthy in the first place by being stupid.
As I discussed yesterday on The Most Important News, there are certainly reasons to be optimistic now that Donald Trump has become president, but there are also lots of reasons to be prepping harder than ever.
We should be hopeful for the future and working for a better tomorrow, but we also need to understand that we live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable.
And most of us think that it is just common sense to purchase insurance for our homes, our cars, our health, our lives and so many other things, and yet most of the population is completely unprepared for a major catastrophic event.
It is a good thing to have balance in life. My wife and I are very proud preppers, and there won’t ever be a time when we aren’t prepping.
But we also live our lives without any fear. We know that the world is going to get crazier and crazier, but we do not believe that it is a time to dig a hole and try to hide from the world.
Rather, now is a time to rise up and become the people that we were created to be.
This year my wife and I are going to be taking on some new adventures, and these new adventures are going to give us a bigger voice than ever before.
Someone once told me that life is like a coin. You can spend it any way that you want, but you can only spend it once.
We don’t want to spend our lives paying bills and killing time.
Instead, we want to do all that we can to make a difference and to change the world.
So unlike these wealthy elitists, let us not be in fear of what is coming. There is no other time in history that I would have rather lived than right here and right now, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his Economic Collapse blog.
If my reading of the signs of the times is right, even making your nests among the stars will be of no avail.
No one will be left untouched, no one will be exempt from the upcoming troubles.
I believe that a BOL in New Zealand is a waste of time and money: unless you live there. Even the Western USA for CEO’s in NYC is a BIG stretch. I cannot stress it enough.
Be there to get there.
The idea that one would be able to escape to a location 10,000 miles away when SHTF is ludicrous. Even Thiel with a private jet will find the SF Airport in CHAOS, unable to escape.
It MAY be possible to retreat to a BOL within a couple hundred miles of your home. MAYBE. Know the alternate routes because millions of people may get the urge to flee, just like you.
The roads will be impassable.
In Metro Phoenix there is a rough four wheel drive road that will take you from Phoenix to a BOL in the Mountains. Very few know it and no one could make the journey without a 4wd vehicle and/or motor bike.
Fortunately for me, it is not far from the mine. 🙂
I suggest a dual sport motorcycle with an extra large gas tank. No road needed, easily dodge traffic, just put your bug out back pack on and GO!
My old Honda XL500 with 4 gallon tank would go all day on 1 tank of gas. That thing was a tank! I could go over logs, medium rocks, stumps, etc. It would also go about 85mph. on the straights. Get a 250cc and get even better mileage but not as fast.
I invested in a Polaris Ace – single seat side by side atv. 500cc engine and 48″ wheel base. I went for a 6 hour drive through mountain trails with my ATV club and used less than a quarter tank of gas. I got a 3 seat Polaris Ranger for my wife. It has a nice tipping box for transporting hay or water and will go almost anywhere. They are both great rock crawlers.
New Zealand Will be the WW111 fighting Zone. So Pacific conflict with China and thr West. Austrailia is being hardeded complete with US Airbases as we speak. New Zealand will be part of the battlefield.
I doubt it.
We are going to use our boat. O, the places I know.
DK, it IS possible to go to a BOL within that radius if you leave EARLY. Where I go is about 275 miles from my home and I know several different routes to get there. The last few trips I’ve made there since last Sept. I left early before anything significant could happen. Made it there with no trouble. I use one route going there and a different route coming back. I agree that a BOL thousands of miles away is out of the question. If it’s that far away, you might as well relocate to it now.
Indeed there is (actually three) been on all of them!
Durango Kidd, when the rich get to the airport, they’ll find that their getaway plane has been shot full of holes, nothing left of it but a burning hulk. There is no way in hell the little people are going to let these assholes who created all these problems, just hop on a plane, and leave. No, no, no, the little people will make sure that they stay right here, and enjoy the shit storm that they made. I also have to laugh when i hear about rich who think they will just hide out in their expensive under ground bunkers. The problem with that idea, they will never leave that bunker, it’ll end up being their tomb. Kind of hard to open the door to your bunker when it’s been welded shut, plus having a 60 ton D9 Cat parked in front of it’s door. So the leaders of Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Google better hope they get right with the Lord, because their time is running out.
New Zealand, seriously? Didn’t Snowden have a little blurb on them, something to the nature that they were spying on their neighbors (and most likely their own citizens)? The place is a trap, they will get you there and steal all your processions and throw you in a cage. Your on an island in the middle of no-where with a hostile domestic army who hate yanks, what could go wrong during the apocalypse?
They can run, but they cannot hide.
Shoe’s on the other foot now, huh?
What is really indicates is the growing disparity between two paradigms that are at loggerheads over what the world should look like.
I’m not sure what they think they will discover when they come out of their bunkers, but it won’t be the Shangri-La they expect it to be.
Given their mindset, I’m not even sure they can get along inside their bunkers or in any kind of community that might form . Just imagine it…
1. They have to let everyone in because this is America . All refugees will be welcome in their community .
2. There will be no borders to their community . So anyone walking by can claim to be a part of it and partake of their bounty
3. They must care for everybody who comes and asks it of them .
Oh the list is endless…..
Meh
For the last 5 years Zero hedge has been publishing pictures of the super riches underground bunkers, New Zealand bug out ranches with their own private air ports and Mega-Yachts that are a prepping mini cities. So no we are not surprised…
This ant, aint feedin no grasshoppers, so when TSHTF and the ships stop bringing containers full of food, its game on
Maybe the crash is really just an exposing the real numbers and not the inflated numbers, as we all know, have been lied about for years. A normalization of real numbers by deducting Globalist finance.
Oh I’ll be broke. What do you think America is right now?
Anyone living in the mess created by the Elites and usual suspects knows they have been full of it.
So globalization collapses, prudent folks will survive. The jerks have been usurping Our Rights long enough.
Maybe these elites are bugging out because they know heads may roll and they do not want to be held accountable by the common man?
Let the pot come to full boil. The sooner we get there the closer we will be to recovery. Rule of Law just as stated in the Constitution.
Living in this constant state of fear mongering is more than Tiresome and Chicken Little News.
I’m sick of all the SJW’s disruptions, the talking points of the left, the redirection of the Neocons, Obstruction, Deviancy, etc…
The Elite keep promising to leave, Just GO! Leave the country in capable hands and we shall survive, then thrive. How bad could it be if they leave? For me that would mean common sense restored that’s good news.
Couldn’t agree more.
WW there is NO way these people will let the common rabble into “THEIR” communities. They preach that humanitarian philosophy for the little people to follow in their neighborhoods but they NEVER practice it in their ESTATES. they will be the biggest hoarders of all.
they will demand that we share our preps but will NEVER share theirs.
YUP, your correct and at some point when they HAVE to come out they will find that because of the way they chose to live, they will be rejected from the new groups of survivors and they probably will die unless they have something to offer and it sure as H—L won’t be anything useful
The news media is trying to convince us that there is chaos. Paid protesters and lying talking heads don’t equal chaos. It’s old fashion commie, agitation propaganda. The everyday people are still just trying to get by. Soros is a dog.
the ones protesting are 90% of the ones who need to be gone, the others are useful and are ADDING to our country, I say those who oppose the GOOD of this country should be removed and sent elsewhere!!even IF they are citizens, at good start would be the politicians!!! HOORAH!!
Apache54, the protestors need to go find a country that works for them.
AGREED!! send them to the Antartic and let them find out whats going on there LOL
The Twilight Zone episode the pic is from is a great one.
Yes, the episode is called “The Shelter”. Worth finding on youtube, it shows what happens when you let everyone in on your plans.
Genius, I was only 4 or 5 years old when “The Shelter” was made. Even then, there were “sheeple”. And the man in that clip who built the shelter for himself and his family was made out to be the villain by the others who refused to do for themselves.
I suspect that the next gun control measure to make us safe in a “fair society” which embraces, “Social Justice” will be a draconian firearm and ammo tax for the ostensible purpose of crime compensation The wealthy donors to liberal causes don’t want a gun ban, thats too democratic as even they wouldn’t be allowed to have a weapon or class of weapon. Gun laws never applied to those in power as Mr Heston said, “Arms were for the elite and those that do their bidding”. A $10 bullet and $20,000 firearm prices out those that threaten the system in revolt, the commoners. The jerk off common tree hugging supporters rally behind the ostensible, “crime compensation”. As Lenin said, “Useful Idiots”.
Liability insurance,,,
The tax wouldn’t be high but rather prohibitive. The person with $10 million has $100,000 invested in 3 guns, 4000 rounds. Being this is just a tax and not a true “infringement” upon a Constitutional right the’ll hope it passes muster taking a page out of NFA 34.
I dislike even thinking about what the elitist hypocrites are capable of doing.
Cook County, Illinois already has $25 tax per firearm purchase, and a 5 cent tax per bullet. This doesn’t count the everyday 10% sales tax. Communists run Cook County and the City of Chicago.
Illinois is a Bankrupt Nazi Germany Police State full of Pigs. Run by Commie Criminals and ex flons. Been like that for 50 Yrs. Get out Yesterday. One state I refuse to ever go to again in my lifetime.
Kevin2. spot on. I’ll bet ‘fair society’ is a code word for a COMMUNIST SOCIETY. Life is NEVER fair. Life is what you make of it.
The Deplorable Braveheart
They can’t sell communism as it congers up visions of goose-stepping troops. I watched the breakup of the USSR starting with Poland. When the wall fell in Berlin I said, “Communism is coming back, new and improved, repackaged, under a different name”.
The above being said I’m not a pure free market capitalist either as Free Trade with slave labor nations might have an idealogical appeal but it has all but destroyed the US as its a transfer of wealth from developed world to developing. Wall Street W/O regulations is Henry Clay Frick. The US needs both Henry Ford and Walter Reuther.
Americans are a hammer down, balls to the wall, all or nothing people. Unfortunately, the left, as they are in the US is not satisfied with Finland,Norway or Switzerland as a model but rather some as yet to be found utopian all giving, likewise all controlling system.
Kevin2, I can agree they would have to try to sell it ‘new and improved, repackaged, under a different name’ as you put it. It’s already been sold and bought by way too many of our people here. It’s amazing and heartbreaking to see how that influence has grown since the USSR folded up. I think the ‘all giving, likewise all controlling system’ to serve as a model would be China.
So… you are telling me that these Learjet leftists (most of them are, if not all) are ***only concerned for themselves???*** Isn’t that what they complain about??? Don’t they notice their own hypocrisy?
Of course, if they did, people like the limousine liberals might have opened up just ONE room in just ONE of their zillion room mansions to just ONE indigent or illegal immigrant for just ONE night (google “George Clooney mansions,” then “images” for a real hoot – if memory serves, he has FIVE that would make the Prince of Brunei jealous). But of course, that will NEVER happen… which proves the point conservatives and libertarians make all along.
Do yourself a favour: Pick up the book by Dr. Arthur Brooks, prof at Syracuse Univ., called “Who Really Cares.” It’s a book that outlines the utter hypocrisy of the left (e.g., if liberals gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, we’d have TWICE the blood supply).
Truth is, the left doesn’t care… other than about power. They just like to PRESENT themselves as caring, because they are willing to use YOUR tax dollars to make themselves feel good about themselves. Only the truly gullible can’t figure this out. I have to assume all those poor students who collectively owe ONE freaking TRILLION in student debt, and are now serfs, are slowly waking up after they sold themselves into servitude for their useless degree in 18th C. Belgian Lesbian Musicology.
Another book, tho a bit older, you might want to pick up: Do As I Say, Not as I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy by Peter Schweizer. Excellent. Goes thru Mikey Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Babs Streisand, etc., and their incredible and utter hypocrisy.
My point is, educate yourself. Get facts from reliable sources like these two books. Then COMMUNICATE and educate. Our battle is a non-violent one of educating people. If we are to win, it’s time for little people like you and me to start a groundswell. I just gave you two sources you can use to start your little army of one.
I don’t have a problem with people who leave the country. Just when it is all over, Don’t Come Back. To include presidents. Those that go below ground to leave the rest on the surface to survive. I understand that too. Just don’t think you are coming to the surface to build “YOUR TYPE” of world on us.
The ones that I have a major problem with are those that created this mess and think they are going to come back and fit in like nothing happened. I have a real case of the ass for them.
But who knows. I could be dead by then. Hahahaha!
Im sticking around, just to make sure i screw up their plans
Wasn’t there a sci-fi movie about people going below ground to survive and those left on the surface?
Omega Man Chaleton Heston
There have been books about the subject. “Level 7” was good. The best recent series is the Wool Series by Hugh Howey. Supposedly a sci fi director bought the rights to make the series into a movie or movies.
actually the movie was called “THE TIME MACHINE”. The first version wad done in the 60’s and it starred ROD TAYLOR and YVETTE MIMIEUXand then a newer version done in the early 2000’s time period. The ones that went underground were called the MORLOCKS which would come to the surface to harvest humans for food. The ones above ground were called the ELOI.
My wife and I love both versions
The time machine. Didn’t work out well for the surface dwellers.
The elite are stupid because they are building their underground shelters in California, one of the biggest earthquake zones in the world. If an earthquake did happen they would be buried alive. I guess they could live a long time with the food stored, but eventually it would run out and they’d be doomed to die then. It is smarter to move somewhere else, but are they going to have the time to get to their BOL; especially if its so far away, or being the elitist that they are they would get special treatment and be notified before the rest of us slaves. I would expect planes would be shot down at this time; that would be their only way to New Zealand. Again unless they had advance warning. I read that Bill and Hillary have bought an estate in Qatar and Obama bought an estate in Dubai. All countries that do not extradite criminals. They must be planning something.
Yes, they want your guns but want to keep theirs to use against you. They really do fancy themselves above the rest of us.
When all heck breaks loose. Head on over to the private lear jet airports. Some fabulous Duck Hunting on the end of those runways I hear. Next….PULL!!!!
Having money for luxury bugouts is one thing, having the know how to be a survivalist is another. I’d rather be with a survivalist than a billionaire when the SHTF.
“A World That’s Becoming Increasingly Unstable”
Only because we are dealing with “modern day Communist”.
“So unlike these wealthy elitists, let us not be in fear of what is coming.”
A very true statement. Do not allow the fear to enter one’s mind … accept it for what it is … embrace it … welcome it in, and absorb it … the sooner a person is able to set their mindset to this belief, the better a person’s wellbeing will be overall.
FTW, truer words were never spoken.
Sometimes when I find something that is really cool. I think of Ron White and how he would describe the feeling.
“That will fuck them up”.
” You can tell people a lot of things, but you can’t tell them nothing.”
You can fool some of the people some of the time..
But you can fool a liberal ALL of the time lol 😛
The elite moving to New Zealand when pandemic breaks out.
The bird flu has gone from bird to cat, from cat to man.
Is this a lie. Whether true or not, the CDC will make lots of money selling vaccines.
I have read, but can’t verify, that the flu epidemic may have been caused by vaccines.
If so, either it was mass murder or mass blunder. The safety of vaccines has been less than ideal. The (((elite))) may want to thin the herd.
New Zealand is supposed to be pretty nice. I hear they don’t allow you to immigrate unless you bring $100,000. Americans are fools. We have a statue welcoming the poor, donated by the French.
The French Revolution was just like the Russian Revolution. It was a coup by a foreign (((entity)))/enemy; who murdered the Royal Family including children, and killed the best and brightest: leaving only poor uneducated easily manipulated useful idiots, most of whom were also killed, all in the name of fairness and justice and economic equality.
__
New Zealand sounds great until you do some research and find out there are big earthquakes and the Chinese could easily invade and take over the whole damn place. Living on an island as slave labor for China isn’t my idea of a safe place. Just saying.
“You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things. Brave undisciplined men have no chance against the discipline and valor of other men. Have you ever seen a few policemen handle a crowd?” Quote from General Patton to 2nd armored division on may 1 1941. The 2nd armored division aka Hell On Wheels. My father was a member of this group who saw battle on the front lines for three straight years. You want to talk about discipline and valor, these men had it! I was raised with these values; and believe me when I tell you these liberals and snowflakes have no idea what discipline is. North Africa, Omaha Beach, Sicily, Battle of the Bulge. There are still these type of men here and willing to defend America once again against treason, have no doubts. So, you elite traitors, keep prepping; but know you don’t have a chance because you don’t have what it takes.
Pretty bad idea to get cold feet AFTER they pushed the SJW’s and cultural Marxists OFF the cliff of sanity…Its going to end badly for many many folks.
The elites are going to depend on their money to get by, not their skills or determination or bravery. They will last no longer than anyone else. They care not for others have no religion except money and i doubt the grit to survive on little.
I think the picture in the article is from The Shelter in the Twilight Zone, if I am not mistaken. Check it out if you have time. In typical minimalist fashion, it is very sobering. Basically about a bunch of people having a party/card game, pooh-poohing the guy who did preparedness. Suddenly, there is an announcement a nuclear war has started. Very instructive character study, as you can imagine! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOwzjQ9W0ws
Watch closely how many people buy in cash. The majority
are in debt with their credit cards. 25% APR interest on some of these credit cards. The banks can bail themselves out but you will not be able to do anything but be a slave to your debt.
” Go out and buy things….. go to Disneyland”
If the elite is driven out of a country its always replaced by a “new” elite. Thats just the way humanity works. Look at any revolution. Its never the “small” man, its always about powerfull groups in the background and if there is a power gap it gets filled very very fast. Even in a worldwide shtf desaster, it wont take long that some group is in power again. There will be no small groups of people for a long time even if 90% of the population dies. Just read history. Its always the same. The big eating the small until they are only big left. 😉