There have been a lot of articles in recent years about billionaires building bunkers in remote locations like New Zealand.
This is just one example of a general trend of people who are adopting a sort of “bug out mindset,” fearing that modern society is at risk of collapse.
The rich are first in line here. They are building bunkers, and also acquiring massive ranches and other amounts of rural land. They are also among the people acquiring multiple passports. CNBC did an article earlier this year about the rich acquiring “passport portfolios.”
But lots of people who aren’t rich are doing this. I myself have an interest in exploring getting citizenship in Italy, where my family is originally from.
Another more mass market phenomenon is the large amount of interest in “prepping” (disaster preparation) is in line with this. As we watch the serious problems facing people in North Carolina and elsewhere in the wake of Hurricane Helene, it’s certainly not irrational to believe that you need to be prepared for something bad happening. I’ve noted before the rise in the number of people installing generators at their house, but electricity is actually becoming less reliable, and as many Americans have become much richer they are able to afford this.
Still, the huge number of people preparing for a major social collapse is notable. Nobody did this when I was younger.
We also see a related interest in primitive or survival skills. There are lots of places you can take classes to learn this stuff, TV shows oriented around them, etc.
Some people are pre-deploying these skills by moving to rural areas and homesteading, often trying to do so using pre-industrial techniques. This is hardly the first such back to the land movement, but it’s still notable.
Add all of these things together and what you see is a pervasive sense among people from many walks of life that all is not well in our society, and its basic stability cannot be taken for granted.
This isn’t just people talking either. People are spending serious money on this stuff. Maybe a bunker is a rounding error to a billionaire. But for an ordinary person, a second passport, a rural bolthole, a stockpile of food, and other things of that nature cost real money.
In other words, these people have skin in the game for their concerns.
One of the big debates online is between people who think that our current system is very strong, and those that think it is very fragile and will collapse soon.
I have tended to be in the former category. Nevertheless, the number of people who are making personal choices based on a belief that there’s a real risk of something very bad happening can’t be dismissed. Yes, there are definitely social manias that periodically occur, ranging from witch hunts to Dutch tulip bulb fever. But the wisdom of crowds is also a real thing.
Whether or not fears of collapse are fully justified, the fact that so many people are planning for one is definitely a bearish indicator about our society.
What do you think? Is our society stable or collapsing? Are you involved in preparing for seriously bad things to happen?
This piece first appeared at Aaron Renn Substack.
Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker and writer on a mission to help America's cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He focuses on urban, economic development and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in many publications, including the The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Photo: BobCSmiley conceptual Mars habitat via DeviantArt under CC 3.0 License.
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