Left Behind: Futurist Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth.

For this special issue of b2o, we have explored Musk’s SpaceX, the NSA’s control room, Biosphere 2, HI-SEAS, and Apple’s new “Spaceship” headquarters. In them, we find deep political, ideological and even theological deployments of technology concerned with escape from planet Earth. These projects and structures necessarily downplay and deny their impetus: the deleterious, long-term effects of human-induced, industrial-scale problems such as resource extraction, environmental destruction, and war. The common throughline to these projects is the often unarticulated and disturbing conceit that the viability of Earth to sustain a high quality of life for élites, and, by extension, for the vast majority of the population is no longer assured. In such a scenario, escape to the stars, as best imagined in Cold War-era pulp science fiction, should not only be welcomed but perhaps hastened; a secular Rapture or “Left Behind” for Dawkins-esque technofetishists who pray at the altar of “disruption” and “innovation.”