A week of tech billionaire weirdness: Apocalypse bunkers and giant space stations

• Occasionally, we get a glimpse into where tech billionaires really want to spend their time and money.
• This week, Wired reported Mark Zuckerberg is building a Hawaiian bunker.

As we head into the holiday period, most of us are spending our money on gifts for the family or, maybe, an end-of-year reward for ourselves.

What do you buy yourself when are you are the third/seventh-richest man in the world and, seemingly, a little worried about the state of humanity?

We have some intel this week in the form of a Wired report about the latest tech billionaire to build a definitely-not-for-the-apocalypse secret compound and, inevitably, the tech billionaires' platform of choice: Lex Fridman's podcast.

First, Wired's very detailed report on what it describes as a secret Hawaiian compound for Mark Zuckerberg (seventh-richest).

We already know that Zuckerberg owns a 1,382-acre estate on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. As Business Insider reported in 2021, Zuckerberg has found legal-yet-creative ways over the years to try and ensure that estate can stay totally private, to the occasional outrage of locals.

Per Wired, this private estate seems to require yet more privacy, to the reported tune of $270 million.

The publication spoke to workers helping construct a huge compound on the estate that has its own energy and food supply and includes a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter. Representatives for Zuckerberg declined to comment on this to the publication.

We are back on the apocalypse-bunker timeline!

Before the pandemic, several famous Silicon Valley figures earnestly tried to make their wishes to build/buy a post-apocalyptic hidey-hole a reality. It wasn't always successful, as PayPal cofounder and one-time Trump supporter Peter Thiel found when he tried and failed to build a compound in New Zealand.

Zuckerberg has not publicly talked about wanting an apocalypse bunker, but it certainly looks like he's in the doomsday prepper ranks.

Elsewhere in end-of-year escapism, we have Jeff Bezos (third-richest), whose boyhood obsession with all things space has got him thinking about a human civilization that lives beyond the stratosphere.

In a rare podcast appearance this week, Amazon's executive chairman and Blue Origin's founder was enthusiastic about escaping into space.

During an interview with Lex Fridman, Bezos spoke at length about how humans could become a multi-planetary species to preserve Earth.

Bezos explained his vision of a space-faring civilization — one shared by Elon Musk — could be achieved by shifting humans to "giant space stations" first.

"I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system," he said. "If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.

"That our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy. And we can easily support a civilization that large with all of the resources in the solar system."

Men with a collective worth of $293 billion are, presumably, difficult to shop for during the holidays. A new bunker and planet it is.