"Doomsday Preppers," an American reality series that ran on the National Geographic channel from 2011 to 2014, explored "…the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it." The movement continues today, with Silicon Valley technology executives among the latest participants in this survivalist world.
A more recent documentary, "Silicon Valley's Doomsday: Prepping for An Economic Apocalypse," shows how tech preppers are readying themselves and their families to live out a technological apocalypse in style, complete with bunkers, off-grid homes and guns. These executives are spending anywhere from $200K-400K on the low end to millions on the high end for so-called "billionaire bunkers."
Unlike the tin-foil-hat preppers of old who were concerned with a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, pandemic, super volcanoes or other natural disasters, the tech preppers' number one concern is social unrest. They fear that the automation they build to increase productivity is creating massive job loss that will destroy the very economy it created.
The documentary includes an interview with underground survival and bomb shelter manufacturer Ron Hubbard, who reports "business is booming." He states that most of the individuals who are part of the current prepper movement are professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, with a high concentration of tech executives. This is a mainstream phenomenon, but is not discussed in the mainstream.
Former tech executive Adam Taggert gave up his Silicon Valley lifestyle as a vice president for Yahoo to prepare for a new world he sees as inevitable. He sees the next 20 years as looking completely different from the last 20, with the greatest changes in the economy, energy systems and the environment.
Today, Taggart's business advises people on how to prepare for collapse. Many of his clients are among Silicon Valley's wealthiest. Compared to prior preppers, these tech preppers are driven less by emotion and are more analytical. "The data is telling me this, therefore a prudent analytic person like myself should take these steps." With this group of preppers more like Spock and less like McCoy, what is it about the data that concerns them?
Name any job or profession, and there is likely a startup tech company working on how to automate it. Their vision of the future sees most humans not having sellable labor. With industry sector impact varied, the next logical question is, "What professions should be avoided because they are likely to be replaced by robots or software automation?"
No More Accountants?
In his article in Fast Company, "Bet You Didn't See This Coming: 10 Jobs That Will Be Replaced by Robots," Michael Grothaus shares the story of talking to a friend who had his own accounting firm. The friend said he would happily pay for his daughter's college education, provided she wouldn't pursue a degree in accounting.
This wasn't the first time Grothaus heard a parent say they didn't want their child to follow in their footsteps. A lawyer had recently told him the same thing. In both cases, it was because they felt that future job prospects in their fields were bleak due to one thing: automation.
