One of the Crazy Things Rich People Do That's Scary To Think About

They impress us, and sometimes they scare us, but the ultra-rich are always interesting. Some of their famous activities include buying yachts too big to move through channels, buying ridiculously priced cars that could feed the homeless of New York for weeks, and their expensive tastes in sex workers.

What some of the ultra-rich spend their money on is scary, sad, and at times depressing.

Far be it for the rest of the world to judge the brilliant and rich mega-tycoons for how they spend their hard-earned money. They earned it. They can spend it as they please.

Some of what they do with their money is scary and capable of worrying the rest of the world. Money and power buy many things, like influence and access. That access, as we’ve seen in congressional hearings, places them in contact with world leaders.

Why Are The Rich Doing This?

One of the last things expected of the ultra-successful is for them to be prone to flights of fancy costing millions of dollars. Rich people don’t stay rich by squandering their money, and the ultra-rich and successful are intelligent enough to manage their money well. It stands to reason that with all their access and connections, the top 10 percenters are aware of things those of us at the bottom aren’t.

The threat of global annihilation is as good a reason as any to drop millions, particularly if you have it to spend and can arrange for a secretive bunker to be built on privately owned land. Why would you? Maybe because at no time since the beginning of the Cold War has existence been as threatened.

Today, though, high-security bunkers are different than bunkers owned by the 20th-century preppers.

Doomsday Demand

In Texas, Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Company told CNN that sales grew 300 percent after the last November election. The company’s steel plate bunkers, designed to last for decades, can hold a year’s food for each resident and withstand an earthquake.

A company called Vivos Xpoint is doing a Designer ark near South Dakota’s Black Hills. It contains 575 military bunkers that were once an Army munitions depot.

When the Ark is done, it will accommodate nearly 5000 people. Each bunker is outfitted by the owner and costs 25,000 to 200,000 each. The difference is whether the owner wants a minimalist space or a higher-end finish to escape the apocalypse.

The Ark will have all the comforts of a small town. For those stuck underground, there’ll be a community theater, classrooms, hydroponic gardens, a clinic, a spa, and a gym.

Why The Rich Are Prepping

There’s a market for this, but why? What do the rich know that the general public isn’t aware of, or is not being told?

Whether it’s asteroids, a rogue comet, the fears of global warming, or global annihilation, we don’t know. We do know that there multiple possibilities. In the 1990s, a group of astrophysicists, astronomers, and math experts calculated that asteroid 1997-XF11 would strike Earth in October of 2027. At the time it was believed it would be a colossal impact, threatening millions of lives, and the authors of the study spent two years concluding.

Two weeks later, NASA issued findings refuting the original conclusions.

Perhaps it’s as simple as a Carrington Event Level Solar Storm. We are currently heading into the peak of Solar Cycle 25. Already there have been geo storms interfering with radio systems, GPS, and satellites.

At least one person thinks it could be the threat of a Carrington Event.

“Basically, there is a 100 percent probability that our sun, generating what they call a GMD (Geomagnetic Disturbance), which is a solar storm, that hits hard, hits our Earth, and the magnetic field we have around the Earth, and can fry everything that is electric above the ground, including our entire grid.”

— Dennis Quaid, Tucker Carlson interview January 2024

Who We Know is Prepping

While Dennis Quaid sounds the alarm that there’s a 100 percent probability of a Carrington Event-level storm happening again, others are preparing to hunker down.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building a $100 million hidden compound on his private island watch. It’s reported that workers had to sign NDA agreements. But it's not just him.

South of the Zuckerberg compound, Frank Vandersloot bought a 2000-acre ranch and is building a bunker there. Sam Altman of OpenAI and Peter Theil of Paypal reportedly have an agreement to hit one of Thiel’s properties with a bunker. Allegedly, Bezos has a bunker on each of his properties in case all hell breaks loose.

Takeaways

What does Dennis Quaid know that we don’t? A 100% probability that it will happen seems high, and alarming, considering the number of scientific articles and papers I’ve read. In the past, since first hearing about the Carrington Event, there has been an alarming number of solar storm alerts.

Granted, it’s alarming. In Quaid's argument, he tells how experts have said 90% of the planet may die in the event of a massive Geo Magnetic Disturbance. Again, that is awfully high. Realistically, without having an exact figure, roughly twenty percent of the planet suffers from medical issues requiring electricity. Another twenty percent, maybe. That’s not 90.

The one thing, in the interview he did with Tucker Carlson, that Dennis Quaid got right was that it may not be as easy to come back from as people would think.

Without access to gasoline, diesel fuels, electricity to manufacture supplies, and a myriad of other things, rebuilding the grid won’t happen. If a Carrington Event happens again, the electrical grid may go down. If we’re not prepared, we could be in the Stone Age for a long time.

Asteroids, wars, nuclear annihilation, the collapse of society, global warming, the planet ripping itself apart, and the rich are heading into bunkers. With all their resources, all their money, and all their access to the world, what do they know that we don’t is a great question. A better question, why don’t they unite and make sure we’re ready for the worst days of the future?