New Report Says Many Of America's Super-Rich Are Prepping

The New Yorker ran an interesting piece recently, it was called Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich, and it discussed the disaster plans of a number of wealthy Americans, particularly those working in Silicon Valley. The report alleges that many of the wealthiest people in America are planning for and expecting some breakup of civilization to occur. 

Some attribute worries to a possible political dictator causing unrest in the future, and there are also worries, according to the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, that artificial intelligence will be the catalyst that sparks a large civil unrest because of the growing share of jobs that it will take in the market. Hoffman estimates that at least 50 percent or more of Silicon Valley billionaires have already acquired some sort of insurance for themselves in the way of a getaway or evacuation plan should any “apocalyptic” type event occur. 

It's interesting that there would be a large number in Silicon Valley who might be preparing for some event, after all according to the market everything is going great right now (let's not consider the debt/liabilities at the moment). And a lot of people are encouraged that Trump is going to make things better for the nation as far as jobs and the economy etc. But those who have been planning, as this New Yorker piece details, have been doing so for quite some time and not just for the last few weeks or months.  They have been planning for years. But why?

Some of those mentioned in the report:

- Steve Huffman, Co-founder and CEO of Reddit

- Antonio Garcia Martinez, former Facebook product manager

- Tim Chang, managing director at Mayfield Fund

- Marvin Liao, former Yahoo executive and now a partner at a venture-capital firm

- Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta

- Elli Kaplan, C.E.O. of Neurotrack

It is said that those who are like-minded about prepping for some survivalist scenario, meet-up in silicon valley in order to discuss details about various plans that people are doing to get ready for any event that might occur. Those discussions include topics like cryptocurrency (Bitcoin), or details about property overseas in places like New Zealand and elsewhere, how to go about getting secondary passports, what should be stockpiled, and so on. 

It's clear that there are many wealthy individuals who are interested in survivalism, but it isn't clear what motivates each of them to move forward with making long-term concrete plans for some doomsday scenario. Interestingly, some of those detailed in the report mentioned that an earthquake isn't a high motivation for their preparations, even though they do live in California and the West coast is supposedly already long overdue for a large earthquake to take place.

For some its political motivation, or others it might just be because they want a backup. Since these individuals have a lot of resources available to them, it makes sense that they might take the time to establish a worst-case-scenario back-up plan for them and their families. 

Pics:
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Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/reddit-ceo-apocalypse-doomsday-prep-2017-1
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich?mbid=social_facebook