Rich Foolery

Rich Foolery

Shhh! You’re not allowed to whisper a peep of it to anyone, even the government doesn’t know about it! But funny how people will gossip. D’you want to know? Can you keep a secret? Nah, I don’t think you can… Oh alright then, I’ll tell you, but be sure to keep it to yourself. Promise? Wait until that person walking behind you moves away… Ok, now listen, I will say this only once. There are super-rich Americans who have sent purpose-built bunkers to New Zealand and have had them installed. They want to be sure of their survival in the event of a nuclear Armageddon. They must know something, the rich usually do.

It’s happening so secretly that even local councils haven’t a clue, or maybe they’re taking back-handers? Oh, not bribes, our officials wouldn’t dream of it! Nobody in our ports has seen anything arrive that could possibly be construed as a bunker, and stevedores are talkative people. Perhaps those massive US Globemasters could buzz over our national parks and drop them in secret spots by parachute. They’d have to drop excavators too because the bunkers would need to be buried very deeply. Maybe they’d have to use special drills, because all the disturbed earth would surely alert any nosey-parkers. It’s rocky in national parks so it won’t be easy digging! Hang on, could those blurred bits on Google Earth be hiding something? Just the same, you’d think the secret would be well and truly out when the manufacturer of the bunkers told news reporters that they’ve sent thirty five of them out here already! Thirty five!

Logistics must be tricky though. There would have to be a team of workers to do the burying and setting up of the bunkers. Now there’s the first conundrum! The workers would have to be experts and very competent. But what would the rich bugger do with them after the bunker’s been installed? Come Armageddon, or Doomsday, the workers, or at least one of them could easily spill the beans or even worse, try to usurp the rich bugger! The obvious answer is of course to shoot the lot of them once they’ve done the job. But no, that won’t work. What’s then to be done with the hitman or men? Hitmen are dangerous buggers! Cyanide? No, come to think, the ultimate would have to be robots, all the work could be done by robots! But then, how do they get rid of the people who design and programme the robots? Oh there’ll be a way right enough, a secret way, the rich can do anything! Money talks!

Provisioning and fuelling the bunker is also a tricky business. You have to know how long it takes for nuclear fallout to dissipate. Maybe a year, or two, or as many as five. And then, how many people are there be preserved? Our rich bugger will want to take his immediate family of course, and we have to think of inbreeding, so if the rich bugger wants to start a brand new population, he’d have to take a genepool along. He’d probably want to have a look at Noah’s diary because he did alright in the repopulation game. Canned and dried food would be ok for three or four years, but they’d need a lot of storage space! And then there’s water. Perhaps the space programme would have all the answers for that. Power, could be a problem too. Kiwiland is nuclear-free, so no matter what, it can’t be nuclear! Solar panels might work, but how long will the sun disappear behind a nuclear dust cloud? The panels could also alert the Mad Max types who might have somehow survived, so that rules out solar panels! If they use it, they’d need an awful lot of diesel and delivery would be difficult because of its bulk! Power just might be the hamstring, but wait, when Armageddon happens, with nobody checking their entry, they’ll like bring nuclear with them anyway! Rich sods have no respect for our culture or the environment.   

So how would it all play out for a rich bugger when the second big bang actually happens? Well, it’s a given the rich are in cahoots of the president, so he’d be able to give a heads up when he’s going to push the button. He’ll have his own action plan well and truly sorted too, because he’s got a few bob salted away too! So, anyway, the rich bugger gathers his family and his concubines, sorry a slip of the tongue, that should be, ‘genepool’, and they board the jet he’s had on standby for as long he’s hatched the plan. He’s going to be the pilot, unless the pilot’s part of the genepool, which is possible. The bomb goes off, or several of them, all orange and mushoomy, but the rich bugger’s jet can outrun the billowing toxic, destructive cloud of nuclear fission! Of course Kiwiland isn’t going to experience the fallout until sometime after the explosions – which is why the ‘safe place’ was chosen in the first place! There’s no airstrip, so the jet soft-crash-lands and is able to unload its cargo of new-humanity’s nucleus in safety and secrecy. They hurry to secure the bunker, fire up the power plant and close themselves in their safe, comfortable cocoon while just about everyone else perishes . Everything works a treat.

The rich bugger knows very well that there’s a strong possibility that radiation-impaired Mad Max type baddies will want to attack and rob everything the bunker has. So that’s why the rich bugger has armed the bunker to the teeth! As time goes on, one of the genepool people rebels at the harem-style life and conditions imposed by the rich bugger. She selects a weapon and blasts everyone! Sadly, mad with loneliness a short time later, she walks out into the fallout and new-humanity fizzles out.

On the other hand, if that doesn’t happen, once well settled in his bunker, the rich bugger relaxes, feeling safe, feet up on the table reading a newspaper. Oops no newspapers, reading a book or the bunker manual. Suddenly the bunker begins to shake! After all they’re in the Shaky Isles! The bunker site, you see, sits upon a fault line, a section of the Ring of Fire! The nuclear explosions caused a massive shift in the Earth’s crust and in the resulting violent plate-movement, the bunker with its cargo of new-humanity slips gracefully beneath the Earth’s crust and into the magma below.

It would be far better for the rich buggers stay where they are and leave their fancy trappings in their own country! Don’t you reckon?  Now remember, don’t tell a soul about this, it’s all top secret! We don’t want to alarm anyone, do we?