“The tax law that congressional Republicans and US President Donald Trump enacted last summer has proved to be a massive boon for Amazon, slashing the corporate behemoth’s 2025 tax bill even as its profits surged and it moved ahead with mass layoffs that have cost 30,000 workers their jobs since October.
“Citing a new securities filing, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Amazon’s “current US taxes, an accounting measure of taxes incurred last year, declined to $1.2 billion from $9 billion” while the company’s “pretax US profit increased by 44.5%, to $89.5 billion. On a cash basis, the company paid $2.8 billion in federal income taxes last year after paying more than $7 billion in each of the prior two years.””
Their vents wouldn’t be just exposed anywhere. They’d be within compounds staffed by people who are kept fed just enough to buy their loyalty.
compounds on… the outside of the bunker. As in, not a bunker itself. Additionally, fed with what? I assume if billionaires are to the point of hiding in bunkers and paying “loyal guards” in food, that food outside is relatively scarce, and probably global transportation infrastructure is no more. Meaning they either have food stored onsite in the compound (which just means storming the lower-security compound first, getting a bunch of food, and then gassing the bunker to get even more goodies), or they’re somehow moving food from the bunker to the compound (which sounds like an easy way to get into the bunker).
You think they’re designing doomsday bunkers without thinking these things through? Or you think they’re not capable of building a compound around their bunker, so that entry points and air vents are kept secure? Or running automated warehouse hydroponic agricultural operations to feed themselves and their personnel after initial supplies run out? Or making a series of chambers with security checkpoints along the way so that they don’t expose their innermost chamber every time a guard opens the compound gates to let an armoured vehicle in?
Or do you think a band of ragtag brigands would be capable of overwhelming any defenses a billionaire’s money can buy?
no, it’s much simpler than that: I think that any system, no matter how well-designed, can be broken by anyone with the will and patience to break it. And in an apocalypse, there would be no shortage of people with the will to do it and the time to plan how.