The Apocalypse Early Warning System tracks private jets around the world.
They have endless amounts of money. Sophisticated bunkers. Private jets. Might the oligarchs of the world know – or be warned – in advance of a nuclear apocalypse?
So goes the theory underpinning the newest project from Los Angeles artist and coder Kyle McDonald, who has created what he calls an Apocalypse Early Warning System by tracking private jets around the world. If a large number of jets suddenly flee city centres, transporting their likely affluent passengers to bunkers and isolated resorts, he figures it might be a warning sign for the rest of us.
“I want people to laugh. I hope they see it and they feel the sort of humour of our situation – that we’re locked in a battle between the ultra-wealthy and the working class,” McDonald said. “And remember, there’s still things we can do. We’re not completely downtrodden and lost of all hope.”
McDonald’s project uses publicly available flight data to track the locations of private and business charter jets, planes often boarded by the super rich, and chart a “historic emergency level”. It looks at how many planes are flying at one time compared to a baseline and rates it on a scale of 1 to 5. If the level spikes, McDonald’s system can warn followers by text or email.
The apocalypse tracker hits on a growing divide and sense of resentment between working and middle-class Americans and the very, very rich. In the US alone, the top 1% of the population holds 31.9% of total wealth, according to the Federal Reserve. The bottom half holds 2.5%. The richest person in the world, SpaceX, Tesla and X mogul Elon Musk, has increased his wealth by more than US$50 billion ($84b) this year alone.
People have cheered when orcas sank yachts belonging to the upper echelon, and watched with glee as Russian oligarchs’ yachts were tracked and seized after the invasion of Ukraine. Billionaire moguls, once something to aspire to, are now seen as money-grubbers by large swathes of the population who believe that no one individual should hold such vast wealth.
But if they know about an impending apocalypse a few hours in advance, McDonald figures, the rest of us could use publicly available data to know it, too.
It’s true that some billionaires have become apocalypse preppers, as detailed by author and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff in his 2022 book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. Most are not building literal sci-fi style doomsday bunkers, though some are, but creating guarded and well-stocked apocalypse additions within already existing structures, he said. Rushkoff, who studies human autonomy in a digital age, has questioned this bunker trend and supports calling more attention to it to emphasise the preposterousness.
“As I asked the billionaires, ‘How are you going to pay your Navy SEALs to protect your compound once your Bitcoin’s worthless?’” he said.
He sees the apocalypse tracker as more of an indicator of billionaire panic rather than an actual world-ending, destructive event. Rushkoff has tried to persuade some billionaires to use their funds in a different way, such as by taking some of their wealth and trying to prevent a catastrophe.
For McDonald, the idea for the end-of-an-era warning system occurred to him as the war in Iran expanded and the risk of a nuclear event seemed like a possibility not to be discounted. The tool is a response to his own anxiety, as well as the broader nervousness that appeared to be building in society as global and political unrest dominate headlines.
Several of McDonald’s past projects have centred around the issue of surveillance, including an app he made that uses facial recognition to identify ICE agents. Another app led the Secret Service to raid his home nearly 15 years ago, after he installed a program on computers at a New York City Apple store to capture pictures of people staring at screens. His latest project before the tracker, called MyEpstein, shows which of your contacts appear in the Epstein files.
McDonald said he likes to flip surveillance around to use it to peer into the actions of the powerful.
“I am interested in creating this culture of accountability, and instilling a general sense of you can’t just do whatever you want because you have power,” he said. “I also want to encourage everybody else to feel like, ‘maybe there are some things we can do.’”
McDonald’s warning system does not identify the owners or passengers of individual jets, and he said he has no interest in doxing anyone. Jet tracking uses public data, and billionaires hate it, including Musk. The X owner suspended the account in 2022 of a then-college student who built a bot to follow his jet’s location.
The system has not risen above a level 4 since McDonald published it, and he has programmed it to take into account dates like major holidays and control for those likely vacation times.
“My general goal here is to give people that kind of hacker mentality to be able to look at what’s happening around us and not just see noise, but to actually see some of those patterns,” McDonald said.
If his warning system does trigger an apocalypse alert, McDonald said he joked to a billionaire he knows, “I’m staying with you”.
And if the ultrarich do flee cities in droves, it could give people a limited amount of time to make emergency plans of their own. The very wealthy will already be several steps ahead to safety.
Where does that leave the rest of us?
“Behind,” Rushkoff said.
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