> Faith in humanity: buy stocks. No faith in humanity: buy gold.

Speaking to a friend who bought stocks recently, they said, "I'm bullish on America."

I might say if you are the opposite of bullish, then buy gold. And if you have no faith in humanity, buy a survivalist bunker.

If you have no faith in humanity as a whole, make friends with the people around you. When things go bad, people help each other out, and if you believe in a societal breakdown, the people around you are going to be your biggest resource, not your greatest threat.

society will not break down if your neighbours are going to remain your friends.

The breakdown happen precisely because you can no longer trust even your neighbours. You got the cause and effect backwards.

Societal breakdown is what happens when you can't trust institutions. When that happens, your neighbours are the ones you help and that help you. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/30/egyptians-make...

As far as I can tell, the extreme versions that turn into warlordism occur mainly in response to outside threat.

The stock market is not the economy, don’t make a false dilemma on being bullish on America or not. You can totally be bullish on America and imagine a reset of the prices on the secondary market.

> And if you have no faith in humanity, buy a survivalist bunker.

What’s the rent on a bunker these days? If it’s cheaper than an apartment in SF I might go in on it

The best thing you can do is make friends with your neighbors. Surviving disasters is a team activity.

Unless you think the bombs are going to fall, you'd be better off getting some sort of cabin than a bunker. Living underground has a lot of challenges; it's expensive to build down there and you'll constantly be fighting moisture and mold.

I think the threat model is packs of desperate people looking to take your stuff, not bombs.

Being underground won't help much if your assailants decide to smoke you out. To stop that you'd need to shoot back or have a very robust and well designed fortification, with air filtration and redundant hidden vents. If you were committed to fighting back, an above ground fortification made out of reinforced concrete would be easier/cheaper to construct and would probably give you a better view of your surroundings. You'll also need several people you trust living there with you, so you could keep lookouts stationed around the clock and cover for each other.

All in all, it seems like a hopeless scenario. A better approach is probably to make friends with your neighbors and try not to look like you have anything worth stealing.

> If you were committed to fighting back, an above ground fortification made out of reinforced concrete would be easier/cheaper to construct and would probably give you a better view of your surroundings. You'll also need several people you trust living there with you, so you could keep lookouts stationed around the clock and cover for each other.

A castle. You're describing a castle. :)

Invest in bunker REITs in Eastern Poland![1] Either way bunkers tend to be blown up by one side or another...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf%27s_Lair

> try not to look like you have anything worth stealing

I think you said it all :)

If you're only building a small "bunker", it's not that expensive to build down there. Just a backhoe, a few hours, 6 sides of concrete and a tin roof.

I bet you can build your own luxury bunker somewhere in midwest for way less than a dinky studio condo would cost ya in SF. The real issue is the cost of land and zoning laws, not the actual entity built on that land (obvious exceptions apply, e.g., we are talking about buildings that fit a few families tops, obviously not something like a highrise with over a hundred of units).

The survivalist bunker idea is so stupid for the kind of people I see investing in them. These are Silicon Valley guys with $10+m in the bank but have never even been in a fistfight. If the shit truly hits the fan they are going to be very quickly relieved of their nice bunkers by a few Bud Light drinking boys 2 years removed from their Army deployment.

That's why the bunkers are in the mountains of New Zealand with some serious physical security. Your Bud Light boys are going to be duking it out with the rest of the riffraff in the suburbs while the bunker owners are going to be on a private jet.

I have a REIT (in the UK) Tritax that speclises in big box warehouses for amazon and the like - that's going to recover.

> Faith in humanity: buy stocks. No faith in humanity: buy gold.

Nothing like a good oversimplified false dilemma for a complex economic situation. Don’t give the secondary stock market a greater purpose than what it is.