Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t

No.

and are preparing for end times?

Yes.

They fantasize constantly about their wealth becoming even more disproportionate to the general population - even if it, in absolute numbers, collapses. They crave more power over people, and are deluded enough to think that in a crisis scenario, their wealth will mean anything.

Here is a silly take:

The billionaires could use their doomsday bunker money to try and help solve the global issues we are having instead of just saying "fuck it I'm going underground."

The idea of a doomsday bunker being dumb and mostly pointless aside, a flammable moat is the best defense system they can come up with? In a doomsday scenario, why would someone waste precious good fuel to set a moat on fire for a few days? Instead of using, say, booby traps?

And of course Yudkowsky, the writer of the world's most boring Harry Potter fan fiction had to chime in with an even worse take.

Doesn't matter. They're going to burn with the rest of us. They won't be able to keep staff as it gets worse, and many of them lack any real ability to care for themselves. Pampered fucks are facing a grim future they made sure was going to happen.

I say we convince them society is collapsing, let them hide in their bunkers, wait for the flaming moat fuel to run out, then wall them in.

bunkers are terrible in general because of air/exhaust problems. If you know where they are you can just tape all the vents shut. What they should be investing in is submersibles.

Either way this a grotesque squandering of society's resources.

Urge to build guillotines intensifies.

Funny how that if collapse happens, only their security guards will be enjoying those bunkers.

Podcaster Christina Randall, who has over 1.58 million subscribers, thinks so. Randall recently observed that Zuckerberg’s reported bunker is one of approximately 15 end-of-days projects being undertaken by billionaires worldwide and said the Biblical Book of Revelation, which predicts the end of the world, is being fulfilled. “Revelation 6:15 says that the kings of the Earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains,” Randall said.

Okay, the guardian

I told you guys. I've been waiting for you guys to catch up for ages, so we can go drag these fucks out of their homes, now they've gone and built moats

This is the best case scenario.

1. We the under classes scare them into their bunkers.

2. We cut off all forms of communication with them.

3. We seal them in so they can't change their minds.

4. We switch the rules to "Socialize the profits and privatize the losses."

There is only so many in the .0001% that need to be taken off the board and left to play with their toys inside their gilded cages. If they go voluntarily then how can they say that it is wrong, especially if no one is listening.

This just proves how capitalism rewards the inanely stupid - these parasites cosplaying as doomsday preppers (who already are not known for their firm grip on reality) don't realize that any event which would cause them to need such a bunker would also most likely destroy the very thing that attributes any kind of value to the power-coupons they've been hoarding - ie, the economy that only exists thanks to the working class.

Also, good luck to them when the well-armed rent-a-goons they hired to protect their little bunkers finds out the money they are being paid is all of a sudden completely worthless and that the governments that guaranteed private property rights is no longer around to protect them from the very same well-armed rent-a-goons. It would be a shame if nobody was around to film the anarcho-capitalist comedy that would ensue...

10 Zuckerfield Lane

I love how they think we're going to try to break in and hurt them. We really are just going to entomb them in their bunkers and seal off any intake and exhaust.

If we as a species survives the climate collapse and finds a way to flourish again, archeologists will find these bunkers and think they where built by slaves to celebrate their rulling pharaohs.

Oh, and billionares getting bunkers is a new trend? Bill Gates has had one since he was CEO of Microsoft and HE was following the trend already.

It's a sign that they're paranoid as fuck and never learned to share or play nicely with others.

I wonder if this is part of a cyclical history and this is how we ended up with kings/nobility in the first place? Like we've been in this situation before where the Earth's climate goes to shit and the only people with the resources to make it through the Dark Ages are this class of wealthy individuals who were also the cause of the Dark Ages, but were able to build bunkers/castles to make it through their obscene wealth that they had accumulated.

So at some point in a few hundred years, we'll have these kingdoms carved out, all centered on these new tech billionaires and other families that were able to carve out their own fiefdoms. I'd love to see a "fantasy" series that starts out as sort of typical Fantasy, with maybe medieval technology, but then gradually over time it's revealed that they're survivors of a post-apocalypse (though I'm sure it's been around for decades, I know Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series kind of fits in that realm, along with Dungeon Crawl Classics for an RPG). The "Great Families" will be revealed to be the Musks, Gates', Bezos', Zuckerburgs, Ballmers, Ellisons, Pages, and whoever else has been building their own bunkers in secret.

Sure, seal yourself up in a bunker and deplete your very non-renewable fuel to keep you safe from the outside.

In a real case scenario they may find themselves walled in anyway.