The rich are busy with survivalism, not only buying insanely expensive luxury bunkers, but a whole survivalist community is going up in Texas. (Where else?) Oh, pardon me, they refer to it as a long-term sustainability community, not a survival community. This is a country club based community, with capacity for about 1,600 people. I imagine we’d be talking rich white people here. I’m not in the least rich, and I’m not all the way white, but I’ve had a longstanding interest in sustainability, especially when it comes to Indigenous people having their land stolen over and over, and their ability to sustain themselves ripped away in order to give yet more to people who don’t give one shit about sustainable resources. Now it looks like sustainability and clean energy are really only for those who can afford it, and are allowed into the country club. I’d be willing to bet that every asshole who buys into this place has fought any initiative on climate change and clean energy tooth and fucking nail.
Trident Lakes is a 700-acre, $300 million development that’s billed as a “lavish country-club community” that’ developers say is “part private resort, part safe haven.” Trident Lakes CEO Jim O’Connor and spokesman Richie Whitt said the 400 planned condos will be able to house about 1,600 people total. The condos will range from 900 to 3,600 square feet in size and feature underground floors.
O’Connor understands there may be an inkling to look at Trident Lakes as a “doomsday survival community,” but said he doesn’t view his development in such terms. “We’ve evolved it into long-term sustainability instead of a survival community,” O’Connor said. “The concept is to build a community that will last two centuries or longer. That means we’re looking at designs that include earth structures that won’t be exposed to the elements.” Part of that longevity feature is building most of the condos underground.
O’Connor plans to make the community sustainable by including “off the grid” sources of food, water and energy. Communal greenhouses, an air purification system and even a DNA vault are also planned for the community.
On the upscale side of Trident Lakes, O’Connor plans on adding an equestrian center, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. O’Connor and Whitt haven’t disclosed a set price to move into the community yet. Whitt said the condos will be comparable to owning a second home.
[…]
“We’re looking into using different energy sources and innovative amenities,” O’Connor said. “This is not only a place to go in an emergency, but also a place people can enjoy living in year round.”
Via Houston Chronicle.
Greenwashing as far as the eye can see. With helipads and artificial lagoons in a dry area.
Yes, 3 massive lagoons, because one of anything is never enough for the moneyed.
Where are they going to house the servants who’ll do all that work?
I would call these developments “Targets” or “Traps”-all the filthy rich in one convenient place…
Also, I’m guessing they aren’t going to eat the grass in the golf course or the shooting range.
Are they planning on doing all this gardening and polo for themselves?
Or are they going to need servants?
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AndrewD #4
or for a more Twilight Zone vibe
“Feedlot”.
They call it a “Sustainability Community”.
You can’t even make a joke that says more than just those two words.
One of my in-laws is a survivlist. He has his cabin in the woods with his supplies and his generator. His talk about it made me fully realize that survivlism really is just a pastime for the worried well-off. I made one comment about no matter how much you plan, you will eventually run out of something you need, but he didn’t even respond.
You know how in a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction they’ll have that compound full of snooty rich people engaging in decadent hedonism while the reast of humanity suffers and starves outside there walls?
This is that compound. We can only hope it gets the climactic finale where the starving masses overrun their walls and butcher the inhabitants.
The first, very basic, thing which all these doofuses seem to ignore, without which they’ll be totally buggered after The Apocolypse:
“This is a plough. This is a horse. This extremely complicated-looking tangle of leather and wood connects the former to the latter…”
Czech American
It’s also a daily reality for quite a lot of people. Funny thing is you don’t see those wealthy folks book holidays in Aleppo to show off their superior skills or try “crossing the Mediterranean in an old boat”. It’S almost as if it’s only fun as long as there’S a civilisation to fall back upon.
Nice clear kill-zones and fields of fire. They’re going to defend that in an apocalypse with, what, lawyers?
Giliell:
It’S almost as if it’s only fun as long as there’S a civilisation to fall back upon.
Actually, it makes no sense either way; if it’s a natural disaster there’s going to be a more-or-less flat probability of death -- it won’t matter to a tsunami or a nuke what your net worth happens to be. Unnatural disasters are generally political and if it gets to the point where attempting to survive is relevant, the odds are not in your favor.
I’ve talked to lots of survivalists (as a security guy and given some of my other useless specialized skills, they often interpret me as a gun nut/kindred spirit) and they usually seem to have weird ideas like “99% of everyone will die off” and it’s fun to reply, “then there’ll be plenty of stuff just lying around for the taking.” My observation is there’s a lot of overlap with conspiracy buffs because both survivalism and conspiracy theories rely on accepting odd low-likelihood events as quite likely. While a nuclear war is not a low probability event, any individual in the US’s surviving the war isn’t, and those that don’t survive won’t have anything to worry about.
(Nuclear war isn’t a natural disaster but plagues, WMD and tsunamis don’t target anyone specific.)
Of course there’s a chapel. No doubt sustainable. I see a dystopian storyline beginning in one of these compounds as the social fabric slowly disintegrates in the face of growing uncertainty and fear from events both inside and outside the walls. Reminiscent of Oryx and Crake, but with more Indians (using actual survivalist skills) stopping by to see if they’s died yet so they can get their land back. (They stopped attempting to render aid ages ago, when it became clear that the terrified inhabitants are racist as all fuck; they helped the servants escape, though.)
(I mean, 1600 people, of whom 1500 will be older white men? Don’t sound so sustainable to me.)
I am curious who’s going to be restocking their totally sustainable retail mall. Also, do they realize the restaurants won’t be open when they go there during an emergency?
I know the short answer is no, they do not. When Wilma was still a Category 5 and looked like it was going to stay that way, management at the country club I worked for honestly expected staff to come in the day before landfall to do storm prep rather than, you know, prep our own homes and evacuate. It’s not like the residents were going to put their own pool chairs away. Gosh.
Onamission5
Yep, it’s kind of funny to imagine how people who generally lack the life skill of making a sandwich would cope once the process starts with “sow grain” and “plant strawberries”.
Marcus
It’s why I’m generally no longer interested in short after apocalypse fiction like The Walking Dead: they get the logistics all wrong. I mean, seriously, they’re strapped for guns and ammo in the USA?