Article By Rob Quinn
Tool could signal when billionaires are fleeing to their boltholes
If you’re waiting for a sign that the ultra-wealthy are quietly heading for the exits, one programmer thinks he’s built it. Los Angeles-based artist and coder Kyle McDonald has launched the Apocalypse Early Warning System, a website that tracks private aircraft worldwide and flags spikes in flights by the rich, Futurism reports. The tool compares real-time jet traffic with typical levels for that day and time, then issues a 1-to-5 alert score—5 meaning activity is unusually high compared to the past year. He says the system listens to a “network of radio receivers around the world that pick up aircraft signals, showing their positions, altitudes, directions, and identifying information.”
While it could signal that billionaires are fleeing to their compounds, McDonald stresses it’s not a doomsday predictor and should be weighed against other information; big holidays or political events can also send the score soaring. He says when he looked back at the data, the biggest recent spike came April 6, the day Iran fired a large volley of drones and missiles toward Israeli and US targets, a correlation McDonald tells Business Insider “freaked” him out. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s real,'” he says.
McDonald says the jump came around the same time as the moment that spurred him to create the system: President Trump’s warning to Iran that a ” whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” McDonald has a track record of using data to spotlight hidden trends, including an earlier project that helped show Los Angeles police helicopters sometimes turned off or altered their transponders. Whether his new dashboard would help anyone in a real crisis is uncertain, Futurism notes, but in an era of wars and climate shocks, it offers one more way to watch how the powerful move.
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