I have a friend who knows some of these people and has heard them talk about people they judge to be "below" them - even though they - unthinkingly - rely on these people for the maintenance of their standard of living - or even to live, period. Their attitude is the same as that of the French nobility in 1789 - "Your Majesty, the peasants have no bread... Marie Antoinette: Then let them eat cake." They're absolutely clueless about those who are "under the radar". They could not begin to fix a toilet - and they pride themselves on never having done any sort of manual labor, indeed they are proud of their ignorance and lack of skills. Not only do they have this ignorance, they express cold contempt for those they consider below them, they ridicule them. "Thinking themselves to be wise, they have become fools" applies exactly to them. In a survival situation, once people figured out who they were, they'd be hunted down and killed, bunker or no bunker. They might be wise to inscribe a grave marker on their bunkers - "Here Lies One Of The Elite And His Family Who Brought About The Ruin Of Civilized Society - May They Rot In Peace" and giving of course their names and dates...
As for gold, during the Siege of Vicksburg a loaf of bread went for one ounce of gold... and the existence of billionaires and their ownership of resources only lasts so long as civilized society with the rule of law and the notion of property rights exists. When those go away, then it comes down to a question of ability to project force, and lone wolf billionaires will not long survive the communities who oppose them - and perhaps desire to bring them to some sort of rough justice.
The concrete example - have any of you actually laid concrete? Even in small 80 pound bags, maybe enough for a cubic foot - 27 cubic feet in a yard of concrete, btw - it's hard work to deal with it. Get it on you, and you'd better have lots of water - it burns. And then you have to have water to keep it moist while it cures - and you're looking at 28 days for a good cure to make strong concrete which doesn't crack or spall - and then there has to be rebar in it, and you'd better not have any cracks next to the rebar, because that will destroy whatever you've built. I put in two concrete walks five years ago, and I can tell you it's not simple to do a good job - and it's damned hard work.
As for psychological trauma in a survival situation, my landlady when I moved to Kansas City in 1992 turned out to be a member of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Forces, but also a survivor of Auschwitz - and then the Soviet occupation. Luckily, I spoke fluent German at the time, so when I'd pay rent, she'd serve me milk and cookies and we'd talk - mostly just me listening - to her talk about her experiences. It's too bad the Holocaust Museum people only interviewed her in English - they missed a lot of what happened. Her motivation in the Ghetto was survival and to kill as many Germans as possible, and what got her through Auschwitz was to survive and be a witness to what had happened. There were definitely suicides in both places, too.
And then, so far as I'm concerned, the conversation goes off the rails - any governments left would be hunted down with dogs and dealt with, and their memory would live in infamy. "I'm here from the government ... " would be their last words.
I have a friend who knows some of these people and has heard them talk about people they judge to be "below" them - even though they - unthinkingly - rely on these people for the maintenance of their standard of living - or even to live, period. Their attitude is the same as that of the French nobility in 1789 - "Your Majesty, the peasants have no bread... Marie Antoinette: Then let them eat cake." They're absolutely clueless about those who are "under the radar". They could not begin to fix a toilet - and they pride themselves on never having done any sort of manual labor, indeed they are proud of their ignorance and lack of skills. Not only do they have this ignorance, they express cold contempt for those they consider below them, they ridicule them. "Thinking themselves to be wise, they have become fools" applies exactly to them. In a survival situation, once people figured out who they were, they'd be hunted down and killed, bunker or no bunker. They might be wise to inscribe a grave marker on their bunkers - "Here Lies One Of The Elite And His Family Who Brought About The Ruin Of Civilized Society - May They Rot In Peace" and giving of course their names and dates...
As for gold, during the Siege of Vicksburg a loaf of bread went for one ounce of gold... and the existence of billionaires and their ownership of resources only lasts so long as civilized society with the rule of law and the notion of property rights exists. When those go away, then it comes down to a question of ability to project force, and lone wolf billionaires will not long survive the communities who oppose them - and perhaps desire to bring them to some sort of rough justice.
The concrete example - have any of you actually laid concrete? Even in small 80 pound bags, maybe enough for a cubic foot - 27 cubic feet in a yard of concrete, btw - it's hard work to deal with it. Get it on you, and you'd better have lots of water - it burns. And then you have to have water to keep it moist while it cures - and you're looking at 28 days for a good cure to make strong concrete which doesn't crack or spall - and then there has to be rebar in it, and you'd better not have any cracks next to the rebar, because that will destroy whatever you've built. I put in two concrete walks five years ago, and I can tell you it's not simple to do a good job - and it's damned hard work.
As for psychological trauma in a survival situation, my landlady when I moved to Kansas City in 1992 turned out to be a member of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Forces, but also a survivor of Auschwitz - and then the Soviet occupation. Luckily, I spoke fluent German at the time, so when I'd pay rent, she'd serve me milk and cookies and we'd talk - mostly just me listening - to her talk about her experiences. It's too bad the Holocaust Museum people only interviewed her in English - they missed a lot of what happened. Her motivation in the Ghetto was survival and to kill as many Germans as possible, and what got her through Auschwitz was to survive and be a witness to what had happened. There were definitely suicides in both places, too.
And then, so far as I'm concerned, the conversation goes off the rails - any governments left would be hunted down with dogs and dealt with, and their memory would live in infamy. "I'm here from the government ... " would be their last words.