>We've lived through much worse without any sort of technology beyond fire and a big stick.

No 'we' didn't. A whole shitload of much smaller isolated communities did. The world added 7+ billion more people since then. Imagine chlorine doesn't show up tomorrow? How many people die in two weeks? How far do you travel when no gas comes out of the pumps. How much will you stand out at night if you're the only ones with power? How fast do working antibiotics run out?

The billionaires you're talking about are mostly ignorant fucking idiots with a god complex. The moment any complex system starts falling apart they are saying as dumb of shit as everyone else (during covid for example).

Most of the pasts anti-fragility is gone. We survive by means of very complex systems and if you lose too many key points in those systems they can totally collapse.

The unprepared bonobos in the west will absolutely go through some things. But we have a national guard and once people aren't commuting to work daily, we have plenty of fuel in reserve (or we will again if we ever conclude the stupid war with Iran). People are a lot nicer to each other in my experience once the lights go out and social and corporate media stop ragebaiting them to hate each other.

1B+ individuals worldwide currently live in squalor. They will barely notice. The real crime is that in the midst of the west's carboon footprint pigging, we won't bother to uplift their lifestyles with the most basic conveniences. And while I am no fan of the billionaires, they absolutely have public and private personas or their business ventures would implode. They absolutely have god complexes, but don't mistake that for genuine idiocy.