Vice and CNN show their viewers the doomsday bunkers of the well-to-do

It's been more than a year since I've written about preppers, so when Vice uploaded The Apocalypse Escape Plan Of The One Percent, I could not resist this shiny object.*

Doomsday prep is bigger than ever, and it's all thanks to the one percent. Thomas Morton reports.

I'm not that sure that the couple from Georgia being interviewed are from the richest one percent, but they have enough spare cash to afford one of these bunkers.

This isn't the first time the news media have looked at the doomsday bunkers of the well-to-do.  Last year, CNN showed its audience This doomsday bunker costs $3 million.

For $3 million you could have a fully loaded bunker converted from a nuclear missile silo in Kansas. Developer Larry Hall explains why the units are sold out.

When Vox wrote about the rise and fall of the American fallout shelter, which I embedded in Vox on nukes for another fake doomsday, it may have been premature.  These are fallout shelters with style!

*I know I promised "something about the Golden Globes," but I when I saw an opportunity to get back to this blog's roots, I took it.  I'm still in a somewhat serious mood.  Don't worry; I'll get to it.

Zombies meet preppers on 'Fear the Walking Dead' Season 3

The big entertainment news this weekend is the opening of the "Wonder Woman" movie, which I plan on writing about tomorrow, when the final weekend box office numbers come in.  Today, I am featuring another entertainment story more in keeping with the the general theme and tone of the blog, the return of "Fear the Walking Dead."

According to the previews, this season looks like it's going to explore what happens when zombies meet preppers, two labels that haven't been used on this blog for the same entry since Drink and drive with "The Walking Dead" five years ago.  It's about time they do so again.  Here's a clip from AMC's YouTube channel that is a parody of the kinds of ads one might see in the middle of the night on Fox News.  It asks "Are You Ready for TEOTWAWKI?"

Get to know the survivalist militia leader from the upcoming season of Fear the Walking Dead, Sundays at 9/8c.

This video is dripping with the reasons Greer and his readers think are behind the current zombie apocalypse craze, the rural-urban disconnect, the fear of urban hordes ravaging the countryside (explictly mentioned in the clip), a lack of faith in progress, a not so subtle racism, and a desire to shoot their fellow Americans.  I almost wonder if the producers read those two blogs of mine for inspiration.

Follow over the jump for more about the survivalists and the upcoming season.

More from the Archdruid and his readers on zombies, part 1

Apparently, I’m not done with The Archdruid and his readers on zombies, which is appropriate on another night when “The Walking Dead” is on.  In Fascism and the Future, Part One: Up From Newspeak, which I linked to in The Archdruid on Fascism, part 1, Greer linked back to his previous essay on the subject, Fascism, Feudalism, and the Future.  That entry from 2007 opened with the classic image of collapse that lends itself to the Zombie Apocalypse.

One of the things that I can’t help noticing, as someone who listens for narratives in the ways people talk about the future, is the way that certain motifs reappear over and over again in discussions surrounding peak oil and the future of industrial society. These are distinct from the great mythic stories that shape so many accounts of the future – the myth of salvation through technological progress, for example, or its usual debating partner, the myth of redemption from an evil society through apocalypse. The motifs I’m speaking of here are more self-contained and more flexible, and pop up in most visions of the future in circulation these days.

One classic example is the image of mindless, marauding hordes spilling out of the dying cities and ravaging everything in their path. This one has been a recurring cultural nightmare in the western world for a couple of centuries now, since the cities of the industrial world disconnected themselves socially from their agricultural hinterlands and began filling up with immigrant populations. Read such classic fictional treatments of the theme as Newton Thornburg’s Valhalla (1980) and it’s clear that on this side of the Atlantic, at least, it roots into the enduring emotional legacy of American racism, the terror of the dark Other on which the shadow of white America’s unacknowledged desires has long been projected.

You can look through history books in vain for examples of urban populations invading the countryside en masse in the twilight years of civilizations, but the motif remains stuck firmly in place. The inhabitants of Willits, one of the few American towns that have taken the imminence of peak oil seriously, have apparently laid plans to blow up highway bridges leading into town from the south, to keep those imaginary mobs at bay. Willits is in liberal northern California, but it’s embraced the same fantasy that leads survivalists on the opposite end of the political spectrum to indulge in wet dreams about automatic weapons blazing away at marauding hordes.

The very first comment noted the connection to our culture’s current interest in zombies.

Erik said...
mindless, marauding hordes spilling out of the dying cities and ravaging everything in their path.

And the late resurgence of pop-culture interest in all things zombie-related is surely not a coincidence...

With that, Greer’s readers were off to the races.  Follow over the jump for more.

PBS NewsHour on preppers

I promised "more news about the anniversary later." I'm working on it, but first here's a video clip about preppers that I found while searching through PBS NewsHour's YouTube videos about Hurricane Sandy one year later: Survivors of Sandy ditch N.Y. to prepare for doomsday.

Some Hurricane Sandy survivors have begun to study up on "doomsday prepping" in case another environmental disaster hits. City slickers by day, survivalists in the NYC Preppers Network head up to the Catskill Mountains on the weekends, armed with just the basics to practice living off the land. Paul Solman reports.

Solman is right; these people and those like them are easy to make fun of.  In my case, I would have felt like a rusty former expert on the skills they were learning, based upon my experience backpacking with the Boy Scouts in my youth.  I did all of the things they were doing when I was 12.  I could have taught them, just like I was taught by the adults in my troop, most of whom, including my dad, were ex-GIs.  They had to know this stuff to survive in the Army.

Solman was also right about the positive moral of the story.  The people in this group had to learn how to survive through the power of community.  That's something I hope they take back to NYC with them.

Drink and drive with "The Walking Dead"

I'm starting to ease out of the "I can't be all doom all the time" mood I had this morning, so I'm looking at the lighter side of DOOM!  Right now, that's taking the form of featuring a pair of fan creations that help hype the beginning of the fourth season of "The Walking Dead."

First, the Typsy Bartender shows his viewers how to make a Walking Dead Cocktail - "Grave Denial".

This cocktail will leave you zombified...THE WALKING DEAD COCKTAIL. It's based on the TV show/comic book and it's loaded with alcohol. If you drink this you will pass out! It contains almost every liquor known to man!

There are more horror and science fiction drink recipes where that one came from.

Next, CNN Money features the winner of a fan contest to design a Hyundai for the zombie apocalypse.

Galpin Auto Sports has brought a Hyundai Santa Fe inspired by 'The Walking Dead' to life and equipped it with knives and machine guns to deal with the undead.

I've also joined the hype machine.  Monday, I left a comment about the show over at Kunstler's blog.  Here it is, reformatted and updated.

Al Jazeera America had a segment on The Stream Friday about Americans being “Obsessed with the Apocalypse.”  It documents how people at the grassroots level are starting to realize that things are falling apart and they are getting ready for whatever comes next. It’s bubbling up into entertainment shows, including reality shows such as “Doomsday Preppers,” scripted dramas such as “The Walking Dead,” and movies like “The Hunger Games.” The news, which is supposed to tell us about reality, is avoiding the reality, but entertainment, which is supposed to be about escapism, is confronting it. Go figure.
...
Speaking of the apocalypse, zombie or otherwise, here's a meme from Facebook: The government is shut down, the CDC is closed, and "The Walking Dead" begins Sunday. Coincidence?

I know where I'll be 9 PM Sunday--watching "The Walking Dead" with my wife.

Preppers in Reuters and National Geographic, a murmuration

James Howard Kunstler titled this week's missive of doom Murmuration. It was surprisingly dispassionate in tone while being full of factual content and rational analysis. I found that combination not to be an accident, but I digress. What Kunstler had to say about his topic showed more insight than usual into humans as a social animal.

Investment guru James Dines introduced another seminal idea on Eric King's podcast last week. Dines's work over the years has focused much more on human mob psychology than technical market analysis - which he seems to regard as akin to augury with chicken entrails. Dines now introduces the term "murmuration" to describe the way that rapid changes occur in the realm of human activities. The word refers to behaviors also seen in other living species, such as the way a large flock of starlings will all turn in the sky at the same instant without any apparent communication. We don't know how they do that. It seems to be some kind of collective cognitive processing beyond our understanding.

Dines goes on to suggest that the political stirrings and upheavals of the past year represent an instance of human "murmuration" that will lead to even greater epochal changes in geopolitical and economic life.

My response was to praise him.

I like the concepts of trust horizon and murmuration, as they connect me to my scientific roots. Trust horizon recalls event horizon, something that marks the surface of a black hole. If we hit the event horizon, then we'll be sucked into the black hole with no escape. Of course, the center of a black hole is a singularity, so I suspect you don't want to extend the metaphor that far! As for murmuration, that's an even better one, as I'm an amateur astronomer, but a professional biologist who has studied animal behavior. Since humans are just a very smart social mammal, we shouldn't be surprised at how our behavior reflects that of other social animals, including coordination of group behavior by murmuration. Thanks for adding those concepts to my vocabulary. I'll be sure to blog about them and credit you for inspiring me.

That was yesterday morning. Yesterday evening, I encountered the following on Reuters as an example of a murmuration that is starting to change behaviors and become noticed--and noticed in a big way.