https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/21/ftx-lobbyist-tried-to-buy-island-nauru-create-superspecies-lawsuit.html
Gabe Bankman-Fried, the younger brother of FTX's founder, tried to buy the island nation of Nauru to build a shelter to create a superhuman species in a lab.
This is an especially stupid prepper plan
You're totally safe on a Pacific island, it's not like sea levels are going to rise.
Genetic engineering is totally possible when the vast majority of humanity has been wiped out.
What apocalypse scenario is solvable via genetic engineering? Maybe a super pandemic, but a vaccine is way easier.
The obsession with genetic engineering all comes back to eugenics
@zogwarg Actually, that part MIGHT be feasible: Nauru's population is roughly 10,000 people, with GDP of roughly $10,000 per person. So if you had $10Bn to burn, you could offer *everyone* $1M in cash—equal to the average per capita income for a century.
Given that Nauru's going to be underwater if the Greenland ice sheet melts (in progress!) it'd be prudent of them to take the idiot's money and leave.
(On the other hand, even $1Bn would buy a LOT of Wagner Group murderers and rapists …)
@cstross @zogwarg Here’s the fun part, though - if every citizen of Nauru sold up to some dudebro and left that wouldn’t necessarily extinguish Nauru’s ongoing existence as a state with its own laws and constitution, so they could all sit in their penthouses bought with his cash and act as a legitimate government in exile, including the ability to pass a law rendering all the sales null and void so they could boot him back off the island and keep his money. And given that Australia has a strategic interest in keeping Nauru both independent and friendly to they’d almost certainly help out militarily if requested.
It seems that nauru is mostly a high plateau: topographical map here If the sea rises by more than 20m it's certainly a scenario where 1M wouldn't do you much good either way.
EDIT: If I were a Nauru citizen I still wouldn't sell, certainly not for such a low-ball offer ^^.
EDIT2: Corrected 10K to 1M, not as awake as I thought. Maybe not such a low-ball offer, but it would still be a matter of principle to refuse such an offer, more on ethical/dignity grounds than financial ones, certainly I wouldn't expect such a decision to be unanimous.
Apparently the elevated interior of the island was rendered effectively uninhabitable by phosphate mining.
My dad, who has been to Nauru, pointed out that Nauru has basically no arable land. So the survivalists would either have to somehow have food imported from the other .5% of humanity that survived climate change, or eat seagull. It's very reminiscent of the Masque of the Red Death. I guess since they're EA heads they'll even be taking lots of recreational drugs and having sex parties.
Aren't there stories about techlords (like Thiel) grabbing real estate in NZ? That's a lot better: natural resources, common-law legal system, English language. Of course you can't buy the entirety of NZ and declare yourself king, so it's probably not EA enough.
