In their wet dreams, it’s always like this: everything available for the picking, no authority or anyone to argue about it.
9 Likes
When your The Collapse is fundamentally a framing device for how you’ll totally throw off the shackles of the parasites and ascend to the throne of guns, MREs, and child concubines that your superiority deserves; I’d imagine that people exhibiting self-sufficiency without that job opening are not just a non-solution; but actively irksome; the way California is to libertarian techbros who can’t stand that its failure to be Texas hasn’t turned it into an impoverished 3rd world killing field.
16 Likes
… is that what the kids are calling it now
8 Likes
Delusions come in seven flavors, and “grandiosity” is one of them referenced in the DSM. “Grandeur” seems to have fallen out of favor for some reason but means the same thing.
10 Likes
If you become a cult leader, you can enjoy the post-apocalyptic warlord lifestyle, including the absence of legal or moral restraints, without losing the benefits of technological civilisation.
9 Likes
There’s also nothing stopping clowns like this from moving to Somalia or another failed state to be warlords. They don’t because deep down they aren’t serious about it. This is all cosplay and LARPing and some part of them knows it.
15 Likes
Apparently that was a thing (thinking about it, not doing anything about it), 17-18 years ago:
9 Likes
In most of the dystopian sci-fi I’ve read, these guys don’t end well.
10 Likes
Warlord, eh? I hear the Wagner PMC currently has a couple of positions to be filled at management level.
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Most paleoanthropology and studies of early agrarian societies doesn’t really agree with that as a blanket statement. Time spent improving living conditions, on leisure, and on fancy goods begins pretty early in human settlement anywhere. Even non-sedentary people’s spend a lot of time on unnecessary frivolities like beads which confer status. That’s why people populate particular areas and eat particular foods.
What does happen though is that at times of stress working all the time isn’t enough to get enough to eat or drink. They can’t magic it up. And they die or move on. But stable populations of people had significant leisure time.
Needless to say I’m not suggesting societal collapse is a stable situation. Our agriculture is incapable of surviving the loss of diesel. Our agriculture is not based on feeding people without huge transport and processing infrastructure. Most people don’t have the option of growing food in quantities to feed themselves even if they were capable of it.
If these guys have dehydrated glop in slop buckets and a secure well I guess they could survive a winter before their chronic piles killed them off one by one. What a life to aim for!
9 Likes
What amazes me is the naivety of these citizens who believe they will live in peace in a video game utopia. If society collapses and chaos engulfs everything, who’s to say that your fellow apocalypse fans will be sympathetic and not try to take their neighbor’s precious resources? I don’t think that solidarity and cooperation are part of these people’s mindset.
They are preparing to repel the poor hordes from their gates. But the real danger will be the CEO of the bunker next door, eager to take His resources.
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I’m sure they are interviewing pampered tech bros shampoo magnets.
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Warfare as a Service.
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And a convenient near-by Dungeon to raid for treasure and XP. 
How do they work?
9 Likes
That’s been the business model of mercenaries for millennia. Cyber warfare (or whatever the buzzword du jour is), discreet payments and money laundering notwithstanding, they don’t need a couple of tech bros to tell them how to run their business.
9 Likes
I was going to write something like “mercenaries are literally warfare as a service” but decided that it was too obvious to need stating.
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The best part of this is their bragging up of their resources and headcount, like it’s a deterrent.
Warlord: "Imma got tons of acres, and 15 dudes, and food for a year, and my kids right here, and there’s, like, kevlar in our reinforcements, so we can defend against anything but a really prepared army! "
:ragtag group outsmarts him because they know exactly what they’re up against:
Warlord: blank stare from top of pike
12 Likes
Right wing warlord fantasies don’t work out like the right wingers think they do. A bullet may be fatal, but so is not-so-careful application of poison, blackmail, and bribes. Seriously, these clowns don’t get what happens when you start going down the path of “they who has biggest dickus/stickus” results in. It don’t result in them being neo-feudal lords, it results in them being the first ones to die before even a shot is fired.
12 Likes
Are you a warlord, or did you willingly provide a well-stocked compound for some thugs you thought you employed?
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As some other mutant (I forget who, sorry) recently pointed out you’ll want henchmen, not thugs.
(Me, personally, I go with myrmidons. Style, friends, style.)
6 Likes
