no, it’s much simpler than that: I think that any system, no matter how well-designed, can be broken by anyone with the will and patience to break it. And in an apocalypse, there would be no shortage of people with the will to do it and the time to plan how.

compounds on… the outside of the bunker. As in, not a bunker itself. Additionally, fed with what? I assume if billionaires are to the point of hiding in bunkers and paying “loyal guards” in food, that food outside is relatively scarce, and probably global transportation infrastructure is no more. Meaning they either have food stored onsite in the compound (which just means storming the lower-security compound first, getting a bunch of food, and then gassing the bunker to get even more goodies), or they’re somehow moving food from the bunker to the compound (which sounds like an easy way to get into the bunker).

that would probably work better, but if the infrastructure for communication between bunkers exists in the bunkers, and 95% of the people located in bunker A and bunker B want to escape and kill asshole billionaire A and asshole billionaire B, all they have to do is coordinate a simultaneous attack using that same communication infrastructure. If the order to “get ready to kill xyz prisoner’s family” can be communicated, so can “get ready to kill Bezos”.

If blocking the ventilation doesn’t work, I can think of plenty of chemical and biological agents to introduce to a ventilation system that will produce the desired effect. Filters only catch so much, have a limited lifetime and will deteriorate, and can be hastened to deteriorate faster. I doubt they’re going to fit a HEPA filter factory down there.

And as for the armed guards, if the world is bad enough that the billionaires have hidden away in their bunkers, I doubt it’s a world where fiat currency has meaning anymore. About the only ways I could see armed guards being kept in line long-term would be to have their families all held hostage in the bunker as well, and/or explosive collars – and the latter can be hacked, I’m certain. The former, I’m sure they could try, but then you’re not relaxing in luxury in post-apocalypse bliss, you’re running a massive underground prison where every guard hates the warden and wants to help the inmates escape and murder the warden. That doesn’t sound easy or fun no matter how much money you have to throw at the problem.

Really, I find it unlikely that billionaires will be able to retain much in the way of long-term control if the outside world gets bad enough that they’ve sealed themselves inside a hole in the ground, no matter what kind of connectivity they have down there. They can build whatever they want now, while fiat currency still has meaning; but once it stops making sense to worship the dollar and the planet is on fire, they’re just some moron in a hole in the ground with lots of supplies. They’re a loot cache.

I didn’t say “the next term”, though, I said “when the dust settles and adults are back in charge.”

That might be ten, fifteen, twenty years from now – but there are young men in this administration committing crimes right now whose impacts will still be felt years down the line, it’s not just the ancient orange fuckwit; and those men will likely still be alive if nobody has doled out mob justice to them in the intervening years.

I have no idea who will survive that long, not in this powder keg; and justice delayed is justice denied. But conversely, someday, these morons are not going to be in power, nor their cronies or their controlled opposition, and it might just happen in our lifetimes if we work for it. And me, personally, I really want to see Stephen Miller’s face when he’s sentenced, even if seeing his corpse would be satisfactory.

Oh, I imagine they have supplies to last a year.

I say open them after 100-200y, make it a fun time capsule, then turn them into museums – “this is one of the places where we buried alive the biggest leeches in society after they constructed the most lavish palatial bunkers to hide in during a time of global turmoil!” – you can show people just what excess wealth to the point of detachment from society will drive a person to do, and what society will do in turn to them.

I do not believe in any deus ex machina coming in and saving the day, not at this point – but you’d better believe someone is going to hang for the multitude of crimes being undertaken by this administration, up to and including high treason, once the dust settles and actual adults are back in charge.

This administration hasn’t just been doing a bad job, they’ve been doing a deliberately awful job; kneecapping our global soft power in almost every way possible across multiple fronts (the killing off of global aid, our intelligence being leakier than a sieve, hostility towards allies, etc.) in a way that will affect the prospects of the country for generations, in almost exactly the way a hostile foreign power would want them to. People this stupid (don’t tell me they’re all evil geniuses, there’s a couple evil geniuses mixed in with a whole smorgasboard of evil morons), perpetrating this many crimes all at once, leave lots of evidence of their stupid crimes – there will be too much evidence to not convict someone of something. Probably a lot of someones.

whether the someone(s) that hang are the same someone(s) responsible is what determines whether this bullshit continues to be a cancerous growth on our government or not.

And all bunkers have an entrance. Entrances that can be sealed with concrete and rebar, to turn bunkers into tombs.

There are ads in Windows Solitaire now? Good lord. Goes to show how long it’s been since I’ve used Windows.

Just imagine separating bored office staff the world over from Solitaire, behind even a modest 99c paywall and a moderate barrier to entry like “having to install a third-party solitaire application” if they wanted it for free.

People would be calling for Nadella to be hung like Mussolini within weeks. It’s gonna be a good fun shitshow, mark my words.

I still have record of my reaction when I learned Windows Media Player had paid DLC on Windows 10. I made a video about it.

I literally can not fucking wait for them to start charging microtransactions for items under the “accessories” menu, like games, or tools like the calculator and notepad. M$ has been the best advertiser for Linux this past decade, and they’re only getting better at advertising it, I know that’s coming at some point.

yes I’m aware we are not the literal greatest country on earth (despite frequent claims to the contrary) and are in fact far from it, I’ve had many frequent reminders and am aware, vaguely, of how other countries do things better than we do. But by all means don’t miss the chance to remind the ones in the back who don’t know this, though I struggle to think of how many of those people would be on Lemmy.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but “donald trump cannot [xyz] because [abc]” is not a phrase that has meaning anymore in this country, as far as I’m concerned. It’s worth less than “liberty and justice for all”, and those words are cheap here, nowadays.

Literally how many times does this have to play out before people recognize the pattern? I have lost fucking count.

>talking heads on TV: “donald trump cannot do the thing because it would not be allowed”

>donald trump: does the thing anyways

>everyone: surprised pikachu.jpg

Not to mention, trying to think like Donald Trump, I can think of several actual tangible “advantages” trying to do exactly this would confer: 1. He could recruit the freshly pardoned racist murderer into his personal goon squad of racist murderers, ICE. 2. It would cause needless pain and suffering to the family of Massey, and the cruelty is the point. 3. It would invoke a media shitstorm on the left, while the right would paint it as “owning the libs” and “supporting our brave officers”, the usual horseshit. And finally, it would be further unlawfully expanding the power of the executive branch, something he has been doing literally all year.

If I’m wrong, I’d love to hear how.

how much you want to bet he gets pardoned by the pedo cheeto before serving the lions share of that sentence?

I’m in Pennsylvania and I couldn’t agree more. Do not come here – not just because the personal risk to a foreigner is incredibly high right now, but also because tourism is money and money is the only language these shitstains in office speak.

worse than a liar; a liar makes you doubt everything the liar says, but generally you don’t lose faith in all information as a result of one person being full of shit.

AI doesn’t just lie, it lies often enough, convincingly enough, and is ubiquitous enough now that it dilutes the truth and makes everyone (like OP) question harder the validity of everything they see – or, more easily, start believing in nothing outright.

LLMs are neat tools, if very flawed ones, but image/video genAI is a fucking Torment Nexus that should not have been made.

my god, the 1970s were the malaise era

we’re in the manbaby era

Take it from an American paying attention: if this PP guy I hear so much about takes after Trump so much, yes, this is exactly what will happen

Contrary to what many people may believe, while I’m sure the government has an idea of who has guns and who doesn’t, I doubt that idea accurately reflects reality. There are lots of ways in the US to get or make a gun that don’t involve anything beyond cash changing hands.

It’s only a matter of time.

Sounds like a fine way to end up eating a buckshot sandwich, but I’m not one to interrupt my enemy while they’re making a mistake.