Dr. Doomlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse

Well folks, I seem to have turned some kind of psychological corner as I look to the doomful future, and I have to tell you it feels very good. There will be no more wringing of hands from me, no more crying over injustice or bemoaning our predicament or cursing the stupidity of my fellow man. From here on out, self-preservation is the name of the game. As the saying goes, I feel much better now that I’ve abandoned all hope. I understand now the wisdom of uber-mind John von Neumann’s advice to Richard Feynman: "you don’t have to be responsible for the world you’re in." The fact that I was born into an insoluble, epic global mess doesn’t mean I'm obligated to clean it up.

The upshot of this revelation is that my thinking has taken a turn toward the Strangelovian. It’s clear that billions will die in the coming climate and resource catastrophes, but my odds of survival are quite good and getting better all the time. My working plan is to extract what wealth I can out of this dying system while that's still an option, as I prepare to bug out to somewhere with good long-term prospects for livability. So I’m going into hyper-capitalist mode, trying to accumulate resources which will, I hope, enable me to set up a comfortable doomstead somewhere remote from the coming tribulations.

12000 acres in pristine Patagonia — can anyone spare $12 million?

I have no doubt that folks like Ted Turner and George Bush, with their vast ranches in South America, and Bill Gates and the google boys with their properties in Greenland, are doing exactly this on a much grander scale. Imagine the “doomsteads of the rich and famous” that must exist around the planet — bailout billions can supply the off-grid estates of Wall Street take-the-money-and-runners in high style for decades to come. Of course this is mostly speculation; no sane member of the elite would dare make such preparations public for fear of the howling mob. I may not be a PTB, but I think I understand how their minds work.


A luxury doomstead built on top of an Atlas missile silo in upstate New York &mdash priced to sell at $2.3 million!

A glimpse into this mindset is provided by Morgan Stanley investment guru Barton Biggs, who in a recent interview warned of a potential breakdown of civilization:

"Is what’s happening now in Dubai and Greece, for example, a canary in the coal mine? In Greece, there is real chaos and anarchy, with mobs on the street. If Dubai goes down the drain, there’s going to be serious trouble, because they have a million or so imported workers from third-world countries. They are working their butts off, and they have been cheated for years, in terms of what they are paid and their food allowances. There are going to be real problems there.

You can make the case that it is not inconceivable that the barbarians could be at the gate in Europe, Japan and the US. It’s one chance in ten that’s going to happen but, as a person with wealth, you must ask what type of insurance to take out against that...

It sounds simplistic, but there’s nothing the matter with having some kind of self-sufficient farm that is not close to the big cities. It sounds almost stupid, but it sure paid off in occupied Europe during World War II. I don’t think periods of anarchy are going to last a long time in countries like the US. But could we have four or five months of anarchy? I think there’s one chance in ten that could happen."

In his 2008 book Wealth, War and Wisdom, Biggs suggested building polar cities as refuges from global warming, and recommended that investors have self-sufficient safe havens “well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.” Like any good investment guru, Mr. Biggs has seen the future and is warning the investor class to prepare.



Designs for polar refuges &mdash note that Svalbard is a long way from Port au Prince!

For those of us of more modest means, how does one prepare for such a breakdown? Building resilient communities where you live is the most common answer, and for most people this is probably the best option. But I have more of a Daniel Boone mentality, and would prefer to be at a safe distance from the erratic behavior of millions of matrix folks whose world has suddenly crumbled. Dmitry Orlov’s idea of riding out collapse in a boat is interesting, but it seems to me you’d be fighting a lot of entropy just trying to keep your vessel seaworthy as global supply chains go down. I would prefer an off-grid residence in Canada, or perhaps some place in South America, where I can, in a worst-case scenario, live off a ten year supply of freeze-dried food. A ranch in Patagonia looks rather pleasant, but at the moment I don't have twelve million dollars, so I guess it’s time to stop my doom-mongering and give the capitalist roulette wheel one last spin.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see many people’s thinking shift into escape mode rather soon, as the sheer number of Haiti-style disaster areas around the planet becomes unmanageable and the First World finds itself inundated with desperate refugees. How long before those who still have wealth begin to flee toward the poles, where they’ll be able to watch it all come down in Wagnerian style? (The Collapse will of course be televised and well-attended by concerned celebrities, for as long as the media matrix stays operational). This could turn into a case of “white flight” on a global scale — the thinking will be: let Gaia cull the population and clean up the mess we’ve made, and after the apocalypse we can re-emerge and rebuild a livable world for our kind. Before this happens though, the aboriginals may try to take bloody revenge upon the northern peoples, who, with some justification, will be blamed for bringing this cataclysm upon mankind. I’m not a big proponent of Race War, but it’s not inconceivable that this is what we’ll be facing if the bottleneck starts to squeeze and humanity finds itself in a crude Darwinian struggle for survival.

"There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!"

As I ponder these possibilities in my Strangelovian state of mind, my reaction to the “polar doomsteading” idea of people like Mr. Biggs is similar to the Russian ambassador’s response to Dr. Strangelove’s plan to survive a nuclear war: “I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.”