From Social Engineering to Toys for the Rich: The Evolution of Doomsday Shelters

New Silicon Valley elites are indulging in building doomsday shelters.

01 The Craze for Shelters in Silicon Valley

According to a report in Wired magazine, as early as 2014, Mark Zuckerberg began constructing his massive 1,400 - acre estate, Koolau Ranch, on the island of Kauai in Hawaii.

There is a mysterious construction site on this estate. A six - foot - thick wall isolates the entire project from the outside road. Craftsmen and electricians involved in the construction are required to sign confidentiality agreements and not disclose the details of their work. However, no secret can be kept forever. People familiar with the matter revealed that this mysterious place is a doomsday shelter equipped with independent energy and food supplies.

When asked if he was building a doomsday shelter, Zuckerberg's answer was quite humorous. This tall man, rumored in American folk tales to be a "lizard man", said, "No, it's just a small shelter, similar to a basement."

Yes, a 5,000 - square - foot (about 465 - square - meter) "small shelter" - the noble "king of the lizard men" is about to return to his loyal fiefdom.

Zuckerberg is not the only new Silicon Valley elite keen on building doomsday shelters.

According to Reid Hoffman, the co - founder of LinkedIn, more than half of the super - rich are enthusiastic about buying doomsday insurance for themselves. "Developed islands" such as Hawaii and New Zealand are popular destinations for them to build doomsday shelters.

An abandoned doomsday shelter in New Zealand

These islands have a certain agricultural foundation and relatively complete infrastructure. More importantly, they are isolated overseas. The vast Pacific Ocean can ensure that their bunkers will be protected from the impact of "mobs" in the future doomsday.

Statistics show that in addition to Zuckerberg and Hoffman, other new Silicon Valley elites who already have or plan to have doomsday shelters include Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Peter Thiel, the co - founder of PayPal and the backer behind Vice - President Vance.

Critic Douglas Rushkoff interprets this preference for doomsday shelters as an elite betrayal of the social contract. The most powerful people in the world no longer believe they have the ability to make things better. Their greatest concern has become how to protect themselves from the threats of war, plague, electromagnetic pulses, artificial intelligence rebellion, and the "uncontrollable masses".

In the United States, this "betrayal" seems particularly obvious.

The risk - avoidance strategies of the elite groups in specific countries are always closely related to the forms of disasters in their history. German elites who suffered a lot from hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic prefer to hoard precious metals such as gold and silver and large amounts of cash. Jewish elites who have experienced thousands of years of dispersion regard a strong and resilient community network as the key to the survival of their ethnic group.

The Weimar Republic during hyperinflation

In contrast, only in the United States, in Silicon Valley, has building doomsday shelters become a popular trend.

This is partly because Silicon Valley is more sensitive to the advent of the "singularity". These new technology elites at the forefront of artificial intelligence really believe that a strong artificial intelligence with human thinking will have a subversive effect on human society. For example, Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of OpenAI, once suggested that before releasing a general artificial intelligence model, the company should first build an underground shelter for top scientists.

However, we can also trace this preference back to the special political and cultural problems in the United States. This problem is manifested as a deep - seated anxiety about the world completely destroying itself in a comprehensive conflict. We might as well call it the "Cold War after - effect".

The modern doomsday shelter was actually invented by the United States during the Cold War.

02 A Product of Fear

Counter - intuitively, doomsday shelters were not initially luxury items for a few powerful people. Instead, they were top - level designed by the federal government and deeply embedded in the public planning of American families and society.

In June 1959, the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration published an alternative civil defense manual, Family Shelter Designs. It stated: No matter where you are, a family shelter is a necessity.

This manual was a direct response of American society to the increasingly severe nuclear crisis between 1958 and 1962. At that time, the United States was deeply immersed in the real fear of a nuclear war.

In 1958, the Second Berlin Crisis broke out. The Soviet Union demanded that the United States, the United Kingdom, and France withdraw their troops from West Berlin, which was strongly rejected. In 1961, the Soviet Union blocked the border between East and West Berlin and built the Berlin Wall. In 1962, at the invitation of the Cuban government led by Castro, the Soviet Union planned to deploy five ballistic missile regiments in Cuba. The R - 14 missiles had a range of 3,700 kilometers. If launched from western Cuba, they could cover the entire United States.

A map of Soviet military deployments in Cuba taken by the United States

In the missile era, a nuclear war was changing from a science - fiction scenario to a possible outcome in real - world politics.

To remind the American public not to take the nuclear threat lightly, the manual clearly pointed out the targets in the United States that were vulnerable to attack and carefully deduced the impact of a nuclear war on ordinary people. According to weather forecasts, a large amount of nuclear radiation and dust would cover the entire United States in just 24 hours under the influence of planetary wind systems.

"We don't want war, but we must know that if we don't make full preparations, the enemy's weapons are powerful enough to destroy us," the manual stated.

03 Shelters Have a Long History

Doomsday shelters are products of the breakdown of order and the fear of death. The modern doomsday shelters originating in the United States are just a new and specific variant of this fear. The concept has accompanied the rise and fall of human civilization.

In medieval Europe, castles were typical "doomsday shelters". In ancient China, the most representative example was the "wubao" (fortified village) during the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties.

Caerphilly Castle in medieval Wales

A pottery model of a wubao from the Han and Wei dynasties unearthed in an archaeological excavation

Since the 3rd century AD, the climate history in East Asia has entered a new cold period. Crop yields decreased, the precipitation line moved south, and the Central Plains suffered from famine and destruction. Hungry nomads moved south in groups under the influence of the monsoon circulation. For those who experienced it, the surrounding world was filled with doomsday scenes never recorded in historical records: the Han Dynasty had fallen, the Jin Dynasty had fled to the south, and various nomadic tribes established short - lived, tyrannical, and bloodthirsty regimes in the Guanzhong region and the North China Plain.