Sunday 12 February 2017

ivory tower

Via the always engaging Nag on the Lake, we’re given a glimpse into the surprisingly openly acknowledged—no stuff of urban legend that could be easily disavowed, undisclosed locations, hidden and secret lairs—opening up of what was until recently the exclusive domain of the conservative fringe, the preppers, the survivalists to all and sundry with the means to wait out the apocalypse or at least the temporary collapse of society in luxury.
A far cry from the austere fall-out shelters meant to house great swathes of the population, these are subterranean resorts, either purpose-built or in former military bunkers and missile silos—including all amenities and purport to be self-sustaining. Soberly, some also offer a family DNA vault in case the elite need to be resurrected in the future through cloning after the Earth has healed. Let’s hope and pray that it never gets so bad that the occupants have to live in sequestered resplendence by force and end up regretting spending all that money that could have gone to efforts, especially for those more liberal-minded new-comers to survivalism, to clean up the environment, build community cohesion or even to another representative’s campaign. I am sure that those wailing left-behinds stuck on the surface won’t be able to break in easy and they’ll be killer robot sentries to protect the egress to the compounds, but the fact that real estate agents are taking clients, earning commissions and holding open-house suggests to me that it would not remain impenetrable for long.