The Future is Analog: Learn to Fight
Rich People Aren’t Ready for the Apocalypse
The most disturbing moment of the pandemic for me was the day I realized those doomsday survivalist folks might not be so crazy after all. Sometime in early May 2020, barely getting by in a world with air conditioning, wi-fi, and Uber Eats, it dawned on me: I probably wouldn’t do so great in a post-apocalyptic world. And now that my wife and I are fully caught up on HBO’s The Last of Us, I’m convinced of my future worthlessness.
For decades, I have thrived in the game of business and life, taking for granted the Rule of Law, stable infrastructure, and a functioning electrical grid on which the game board teetered. Meanwhile, I regarded people who stockpile kerosene, canned beans, and shotgun shells in their storm cellars with—let’s be honest—smug superiority.
If you bet that the housing market was going to melt down in 2005, you paid a dear price. Your analysis of market dynamics might have been dead-on, but your timing cost you a fortune. On the other hand, those who wagered on a 2008 collapse made billions. The market was always going to fall apart—it was just a matter of time.
In a similar manner, doomsday preppers aren’t wrong—they’re just early. So far. The chance of our collective demise in any one year is a low-odds bet, but over the long run, it’s inevitable. In recent history, the arch of the universe has bent toward justice. Eventually, it will bend back toward anarchy. So as the locusts swarm, the preppers are going to retreat to their lairs, lock their gates, and leave the rest of us begging for entry.
“Let me in,” I’ll plead, “I went to Dartmouth!”
“Sorry pal,” the preppers will say, standing like Noah in newly-formed puddles on the deck of his ark, “we tried to tell you.”
What got us into the 1%, or reasonably close to it, will not sustain us in this new economy, and there will be precious little time to retrain. Learn to code? Don’t make me laugh. The future, my friends, is analog. So learn to fight. Learn to skin a buck, to run a trotline, and—while the internet is still a thing—take MacGyver’s Masterclass because the next phase of society will require skills they don’t teach at Ivy League graduate schools.
When the grid collapses, so will disappear our recently embraced tendency to not murder and eat each other. We will form tribes, and I don’t mean cute, Seth Godin-esque groups cohering around shared interests like pickleball or locally-sourced cuisine.
I’m talking about feral, Walking Dead-style packs of marauding savages fighting off rival gangs and zombies with fungi on the brain. We’ll eat organic all right, but it won’t be the farm-to-table variety. It’s going to be the digging-in-the-dirt-for-a-juicy-grub, stalking-raccoons, and sucking-the-nutrients-out-of-tree-bark organic.
You might be thinking, “Paul, you shouldn’t use the word ‘tribes’ because it’s insensitive toward First Nations people.” Thanks for proving my point. You know who doesn’t care about modern language protocols? The governor of Dystopiaville, which is where we’re all going to reside soon. When the Gov asks what skills you have to support the tribe, answers like “I’m a diversity consultant / investment banker / Instagram influencer,” will land your head on a pike.
We, the current, temporary elite—progressives and conservatives alike—have gamed the prevailing system to extract maximum value for ourselves and our children. But we are also the most ill-prepared for this imminent new economy. Sure, Elon Musk has a luxury fall-out shelter in New Zealand, but do you?
If you’re lucky you will empty bed pans. More likely, you will end up the involuntary courtesan to the Redneck Road Warriors who compose the new ruling class. Because in the coming labor market, there are only two jobs: fighters and fluffers. And nothing will put your modern anxieties, political distractions, and petty inconveniences into perspective like the hot breath of a Dothraki commando on the back of your neck.
No, I’m not beating the “we need a good war” drum. But whether we need it or not, it will find us eventually: A hard rain’s gonna fall. The levee’s gonna break (again). Winter is coming.
At some point, there will be a revolution, and those of us at the top will pay a very high price. Every day I don’t learn Krav Maga or hydroponics, I’m increasing the odds I’ll have to make it through the Apocalypse with my pretty mouth. But it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.
See you on the golf course.
What are the current fluffers going to do though?