The Masque of the Red Death

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/02/doomsday-bunkers.html.
Following my exploration into the world of doomsday bunkers for the elite, I came across a story from a British-Canadian author called Cory Doctorow, The Masque of the Red Death. This is of course the title of a famous 1842 novella by Edgar Allen Poe about the attempts of the wealthy elite to lock themselves away in a castle while the plague devastates their land. Doctorow's 2019 story has the same basic plot, but it is set in the present day and is about super-rich doomsday preppers, the same kind who might be planning to "bug out" to New Zealand when "the shit hits the fan". The novella is one of four in an anthology called Radicalized. It was inspired by the author's feelings of living in the United States during the Trump era. (Unlike me, he is very leftwing; I regard that era a bit differently, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/01/donald-trump-portal.html.) The central character is called Martin Mars and he is a high level financier with a very ruthless and pragmatic outlook on life. He knows something is coming which he calls "the Event"; this has the same meaning as the "black swan event" although in this story there is no doubt that it is a spontaneous, natural and unplanned crisis. At the moment he thinks is just perfect, not too soon and not too late, he leaves his luxury mansion in the city and heads for the hills in his armoured car where he has built a luxury underground doomsday bunker. He invites thirty of his friends to join him. He plans to wait out the apocalypse in comfort until things have calmed down and then return to resume his privileged lifestyle. He feels no sorrow at the fate of the millions left behind to die. He sees this is a normal dialectic of society in which the human herd is organically culled, what he euphemistically terms "market adjustment". The common folk who have no bunker to retreat into and so will inevitably perish Martin gives the chilling epithet "unnecessariat". In his bunker he has a radio scanner so he can keep up with what's going on in the outside world. Also sometimes he and his fellow hideaways venture out to see what they can scavenge. This goes very badly in some cases; for example when they try to raid a community of heavily armed hillbillies. They also have to threaten prowlers who drop by in the hope of a place inside the bunker. In the city where they used to live, the breakdown of sanitary infrastructure has led to an outbreak of dysentery that kills most of the people it infects. Martin and his smug bunker dwelling cohorts assume that they are safe from such epidemics, but they are wrong. Despite the very grim ending to the story I don't see it as a tragedy. In fact I can't help feeling a sense of satisfaction, that Martin is receiving just desserts for his own attitude and choices. It also exposes the entire fantasy of elite survivalism that I detail in the background link above. The book Radicalized contains three other novellas but if you want to read The Masque of the Red Death as a standalone, it is available as a free audio-book on the author's website, one that has a great name, see: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/12/leave-world-behind-review.html.
And: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2024/05/everything-for-everyone-piw-in-fiction.html.