Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich - The New Yorker

 

"Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley & NYC among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort. For them, 'Contemporary life rests on a fragile consensus' For some it’s just 'brogrammer' entertainment, a kind of real-world sci-fi, with gear;  others worry about  institutional collapse, i.e. where  shipping is lost   a scenario  called W.R.O.L., “without rule of law.”) How did a preoccupation with the apocalypse come to flourish in Silicon Valley, a place known, to the point of cliché, for unstinting confidence in its ability to change the world for the better? "