There is plenty on earth, and a very high quality of life if it weren't for the insane concentration of wealth and overconsumption (think mega data centers to spare us from thinking, among others) resulting in environmental ruin.

And if we got along instead of divisiveness, nationalism, and religious wars, incredible unlocking of value tied up in militaries and relieving consequent mass suffering.

It's a choice.

People have chosen poorly.

There is a conspicuous lack of ceiling mounted escape hatches. A realistic belief in rapture necessitates avoiding being trapped in vaulted ceilings.

In the event of the Rapture America is doomed. How is a country that loses 60% of its population supposed to compete with the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Shinto, etc... countries that were almost untouched? Does the Left Behind series even talk about this? I've never read the novels, but what little I know of it made the scope seem focused on the USA. Does the rest of the world just carry on as normal and it's just America that goes all Mad Max?

Honestly, one would expect New York City to be one of the less impacted locales on account of the cultural diversity and general high level of sin according to Evangelicals. Same with California. It's the Midwest that gets wiped out.

ah, light black on dark white, my favourite reading setup

Reminded of the spoof "subscribe to have certified athiests look after your pet post rapture" thing.

"Linked theoretically, conceptually, and politically, both to each other and to their unacknowledged or obfuscated ideological origins in accelerationism and nihilism, these endeavors, and their proponents in government and technology sectors, represent the ultimate preppers, ready to start anew somehow and somewhere else: in a self-contained unit like Biosphere 2 or HI-SEAS, on the newly discovered “habitable” planets, or on Mars."

Hmm... I think it's a lot of convoluted, wordy sentences just to paint a scary picture of an invented strawman the author disagrees with.

It's ironic because the usual accusation levied against "preppers" is that they're weirdos who are afraid of fellow man, but the author is playing the same game. It's all nebulous yet clearly connected: the Apple campus in Cupertino, 1960s civil defense posters, the NSA, Sim City 2000, Biosphere 2, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, rural gun nuts, Christian doomsday cults... and what are they working toward? Unclear, but it's obviously something bad.

I found the article interesting until they brought up the Apple headquarters. It’s just an office building. Steve Jobs was obsessed with people walking around and bumping to each other. That’s why it’s a circle. The landscaping mimics the area around the Stanford dish where he liked to go on walks with people a talk through things. That’s it. Jony Ive brought the minimalist architecture. No greater meaning. These types of articles tend to lose their way when that try to attribute meaning to things that have no specific meaning.

This is a thoughtful piece, and I'm surprised that most of the comments here are focusing on the evangelicals who are thirsty for the Rapture. While misguided, those people aren't much of a problem, as they are mostly waiting for the end times, grandiosely sure that they are among the chosen.

All that discussion of evangelicals is really a setup for the real focus of the article: people like Yarvin, Musk, and Theil, who have the power to actually have the influence and money to cause significant damage to society. And they are acting on it. Although there are cranks on the left who think the solution to the problems of capitalism is its demise, they are not in a position of power. It is ironic it is the so called conservatives who are actually trying to destroy society as we know it.

There is no rapture coming. The idea of the rapture didn't even exist until Morgan Edwards came up with the idea in 1788. It didn't become popular until John Nelson Darby developed and popularized it starting around 1827-33 by conflating verses from different books of the Bible.

In Matthew 24:40-41 (also Matthew 13) it speaks of one being taken and one being left, but the people being taken are being destroyed by an invading army, like happened in Jerusalem in 70AD when the temple was destroyed. You want to be the one left behind. You also see this in Genesis when the people were taken away by the flood and they perished.

In 1st Thessalonians 4:17, it talks about being caught up but it isn't speaking about what we understand as the rapture today. It is referring to a convention where a Roman ruler would triumphantly return to a city and the people would go out to greet him and return with him to the city.

The beast was Nero (his name in Gematria adds up to 666). All of the end times events either happened 1900 years ago or aren't ever going to happen.

After reading this very well-written essay, what jumped out at me was "this is rich person psychosis". It seems like the easiest answer. Rich people know they are destroying the world, and rather than dial it back, they have mentally cracked and are fantasizing (and probably literally fetishizing -- in that it becomes sexual) about end-of-days. They've completely internalized what was a niche Evangelical position since Hal Lindsay (who I am surprised did not pop up in the essay). I know the trope that these folk must be sociopaths, which is why I opt to believe they aren't, and have just damaged themselves with the contradiction they represent. (As for the peasants who believe this? Collateral damage from hero worship.)

I enjoyed the essay from a recent-history perspective, but damn does it scare me.