There are different types of apocalypse insurance. Pascal said you should bet on Christianity. Many of the über rich, like those who purchased condos in a former Titan missile silo near Salina Kansas, believe that money can buy you anything. Everything is for sale. After all, if your own soul has been sold, everything must be for sale.

No one knows exactly how many wealthy Americans have bought into the fear that the west is headed towards a Russian style revolution event, but the numbers are not insignificant. Many of them see New Zealand as a refuge. It is far enough out there to satisfy them. Evan Osnos, writing about this phenomenon for the New Yorker, asked Steve Huffman the 33-year-old founder of Reddit to estimate what share of fellow Silicon Valley billionaires have acquired some level of “apocalypse insurance,” in the form of a hideaway in the U.S. or abroad.  He guessed 50%. That is pretty good chunk of the wealthy.

One of the things that scares survivalists and also that scares me is Artificial intelligence.  “The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley, America’s second-highest concentration of wealth.”  Many of them, like Huffman asked “Is the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?”

There is something inherently barbarous about ultra  rich people taking such extreme measures to protect themselves from hazards that their own reckless disregard for benefits to other classes has wrought. Max Levchin, a founder of Paypal and of Affirm, a lending start-up, admitted this to Osnos, when he acknowledged,

“It’s one of the few things about Silicon Valley that I actively dislike—the sense that we are superior giants who move the needle and, even if it’s our own failure, must be spared.”

It shows the deep injustice of their wealth and the deep justice of their fears! If only these multi-millionaires and worse spent some of their money helping others, or even if they moderated the exploitation of workers and the system in their own favor, and spent less time worrying about how they can survive the impending troubles a solution to the problems might actually be found. That is perhaps the saddest thing about this profoundly sad movement.

Levchin told Osnos that he prefers to shut down cocktail party discussions on the subject by asking people instead,

“So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of fear that people bring up are artificial.”

In his view, this is the time to invest in solutions, not escape.

“At the moment, we’re actually at a relatively benign point of the economy. When the economy heads south, you will have a bunch of people that are in really bad shape. What do we expect then?”

We can try to escape or we can try to solve the problems we face. Which makes more sense?  When the wealthy and powerful are overcome by fears, this a  pretty good sign of decline. Or even collapse.