But this one is funny — provided you’re not a paranoid. (Self-diagnose quickly before you continue reading. If you are paranoid, you won’t like what I’m writing and you certainly will not like the woman about whom I’m writing.)
For the wit, I bless Patricia Marx who writes regularly about stuff. (Her bio describes her as a humorist and as someone who can take baked potatoes out of the oven with her bare hands.) Yes, she’s a humorist but she does it through social satire. (Are social satirists my favorite people? I do believe so.)
Following the last New Yorker issue with its lengthy articles on cults, Marx enters the picture in the September 2 issue with ANNALS OF DISASTER: BUNKER MENTALITY: shopping for a home at the end of the world. I read my New Yorkers in the bath. Today, I nearly DWLed (drowned while laughing).
Seems that numbers of people are searching for bunker-homes because of what they’re sure will be happening someday soon. And there are specialized real estate agents selling bunkers; one agency is called Survival Realty.
I love the tours Marx took of a couple of bunkers. “…a prepper bunker in Missouri that features an inconspicuous entrance and a conspicuous arsenal of guns (not included in sale, but makes you think twice before criticizing the kitchen-countertop choice)…” And much more in that vein.
I began to realize I’m definitely an anti-bunkerist, given that I live on the 13th floor of a Manhattan high-rise which, although very nicely insulted, does not have 3-foot-thick concrete walls. So my appreciation for Marx’s article could be yours, too, if you’re equally not paranoid. Aside from laughing an awful lot, I gathered a number of questions to ask of certain relatives, you know whom I’m talking about, right?
The essence of the questions is, “What are you afraid of?” Here are the possibilities according to a 2023 YouGov poll (yeah, those 1000 respondents, probably the same ones who make us believe the polls are crazy-skewed), along with the percentage of these noble citizens who answered the poll:
66% The human race will be wiped out by nuclear weaspons.
66% We will be killed off by a world war.
53% The next pandemic could do us in. (A realtor who showed Marx around bunkers suggested she knew the 2019 COVID had been a biochemical weapon.)
52% Climate change will wipe us out.
46% A.I. will wipe us out.
42% An act of god will wipe us out.
37& An asteroid will do the job.
31% There will be a global inability to have children. (Bunkerism will cure this problem?)
25% An alien invasion.
Oh and multi$$$ people have bunkers, of course they do. As we know from following the news, multi$$$ people are about as nuts as certain of our relatives, who are not multi$$$$.
But read the piece. You’ll love it madly. Maybe while you’re waiting for the end times, but still.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Montana seems to be riddled with for-sale bunkers and this reminds me: send some money to Jon Tester. Of all the so-called endangered Democratic Senators, he’s the one most in danger.
Running against Tester is another GOP rich clone without any political experience who has been applauded by Trump. He shares Trump’s, uh, views? I bet he has a bunker as a second home.
I don’t have much money but I have sent a few bucks to Jon. You will not like having his opponent in the Senate.
* Reference to bunker pantry possibilities.