The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the world careening from one crisis to another over the past few years, it’s no wonder some people are prepping for the end times.

The global coronavirus pandemic put everyone on notice that perhaps the world is not as safe as it once might have been, along with the anti-democratic celebrity of Donald Trump, Russia’s war against Ukraine and more recently the attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent attack of Gaza by the Israeli military.

Everywhere you turn in the news, there is one cataclysm after another, many caused by climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Out of control wildfires, unprecedented storms, and yes, clear evidence that icebergs are melting and sea levels are rising.

The top film of the year on Netflix just happened to be “Leave the World Behind,” an American apocalyptic psychological thriller film released in 2023. It was written and directed by Sam Esmail and based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam. The film stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon.

From a beach house on Long Island, they attempt to make sense of the gradual breakdown in civilized society when an apparent cyber attack — preliminary to a larger invasion from Asia or the Mid-East — hits the U.S. and cell phones, computers TVs and other devices stop working.

The film topped the streaming charts in 2023 and was number one film on Netflix, with 41.7 million views. One of the funniest scenes involves hundreds of Elon Musk’s self driving Teslas crashing into a pile of rubble on the only interstate on-ramp and bridge leading to New York City.

The irony must not have been lost on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who owns a majority share in Facebook, Instagram and other online platforms that have been sued and accused of spreading misleading information all over the web and even potentially helping to destroy democracy and the world.

So if you had managed to mislead millions of people and make billions in the process like Zuckerberg, where would you build your end of the world bunker? Maybe Canada, Switzerland or New Zealand? It might be wise to avoid building in the U.S., since people all over the world now hate us. We are ripe for a cyber attack, in spite of all the braggadocio about how great the military is here. You might want to avoid beaches and any ocean or coastline, since all the science says sea levels will continue to rise no matter how many solar panels and wind mill farms we build.

So where did Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, co-founder and CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, plan to build a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker with its own food and energy supplies to prepare for a major hurricane and other doomsday disasters?

On the Hawaii island of Kauai, according to a Wired investigation, in the middle of the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific.

According to planning documents and interviews, the plan involves a 1,400-acre compound protected by shelter doors made of metal and filled in with concrete, common in bunkers and bomb shelters.

The Zuckerberg “ranch” is called Ko’olau Ranch. The partially-completed compound is set to include more than a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms, including two stand-alone mansions, 11 treehouses, guest houses and operations buildings, and of course a fitness center.

When a reporter for Time magazine followed up on the story, they reported that the intent of the shelter is “not clear,” which is absurd on the face of it. By now everybody knows why people build protective bunkers to hide in. When the bad shit goes down, and the poor masses figure out just how screwed they are, who do you think they are going to blame and go after?

In response to questions from Time about the project and the purpose of the bunker, Brandi Hoffine Barr, a spokesperson for Zuckerberg and Chan, noted that Kauai County encourages homeowners to build shelters. The county started offering residents a tax break for building hurricane-resistant safe rooms two decades ago.

Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Building an Underground Bunker in Hawaii

So they got a tax break to build a fancy hurricane shelter, which they might also use in the event of other doomsday disasters.

“Mark and Priscilla value the time their family spends at Ko’olau Ranch and in the local community, and are committed to preserving the ranch’s natural beauty,” Hoffine Barr told Time via email.

They added that 80 luxury homes were slated to be built on the property before the couple bought it, and they’re now developing on less than one percent of the land, leaving the rest for farming, ranching, conservation, open spaces and even wildlife preservation, they claim.

Time reports that Silicon Valley’s elite have been buying up property and trying to build end times bunkers for years. Right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who provided Zuckerberg with his first half a million to build Facebook, and made Elon Musk a millionaire when he merged his online bank with one Musk was building and turned it into PayPal, tried to build a similar bunker in New Zealand.

Related: A Faustian Bargain? Elon Musk’s Behavior Hints That His Time is Almost Up

To their credit, the local town council shot down Thiel’s plans for a similar bunker in New Zealand. Authorities cited concerns that the bunker-like home would negatively impact the surrounding landscape.

But apparently in Hawaii, the Zuckerberg’s bought off all the local opposition before they bought all the property and started building, forcing any worker who came near the place to sign a binding non-discolusre agreement.

A number of rich entrepreneurs are reportedly selling luxury underground compounds in case of a catastrophe, while super-rich doomsday preppers like Douglas Rushkoff, author of the book Survival of the Richest, advise people on how to protect their own food supply, among other end times survival concerns.

The cost to buy all the land and build the new Zuckerberg compound is estimated to be at least $270 million.

Imagine how many news reporters you could hire for $270 million, or how much television advertising you could purchase to help beat Donald Trump and others of his ilk in next year’s elections.

Instead of preparing for the worst by building an underground doomsday bunker on an island in the world’s largest ocean which will one day in the not too distant future be underwater, why does it not occur to Zuckerberg that with all his wealth and social media power, he could do much to save us from fascism and war, to help protect democracy and preserve the Earth for future generations?

To paraphrase Forest Gump, who liked to say, “Stupid is as stupid does,” Zuckerberg’s entire life, career and legacy will be promoting the selfish gene and burying altruism under a stinking pile of selfish stupid shit posted on all his platforms.

We have a new slogan for this age.

“Selfish is as selfish does.”

A simple Google search turns up all kinds of articles about “luxury doomsday bunkers” around the world.

Where would you pick?

11 Luxury Doomsday bunkers around the world

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