• Voroxpete
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    6 hours ago

    This is actually the premise of a Cory Doctorow short story.

    spoiler

    A wealthy techbro makes a bunker for him and his coterie of close friends. Eventually they all die of legionaires disease because their septic tank leaked into their water system. Meanwhile back in the city, everyone just rolls their sleeves up and gets on with the work of fixing things. People organize food collection points, set up field hospitals, work to get production of critical supplies back on line, etc.

    The story is called Masque of The Red Death (obviously a nod to the De Sade story). It’s collected in Radicalized. I’ll also note that the title story of that collection is about a group of people who start killing healthcare CEOs. Not sure why I felt like that was worth mentioning, certainly doesn’t feel relevant to anything happening right now.

    Edit: Cory’s publisher actually put up the title story of Radicalized for free online - https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/ Again, not actually relevant to this thread, but maybe of interest to people anyway. Personally, I think the whole book is worth grabbing. Then again I have a personally signed copy so I’m probably biased.