The Elites Jump Ship / Literature

Times where The Elites Jump Ship — or attempt to, anyway — in Literature.

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• Artillerymen: While it’s fairly understandable that all but a few of the mostly wealthy civilians on the Tiger feel more vulnerable than the soldiers and want to evacuate to safer territory (especially since some of them have families with them), the fact that they take their big bags of luggage with them instead of preserving room on the ship for the soldiers is less understandable. The ship they're on also abandons the soldiers still ashore after a while, although that is at least partially Colonel Wicklow's decision and not theirs. They end up blindly heading straight into Dom territory and end up tortured to death or sold into slavery.
• In the first book of The Ashes Series book, President-elect Hilton Logan is faced with a nuclear war being caused by Western Terrorists who are partially motivated by the sleazy actions Logan took to become president and his plans for the future of the country. The terrorists have murdered the president pro tempore and most of his chain of succession. Rather than stay in Washington D.C. and try to help the joint chiefs of staff resolve the crisis, Logan promptly flees to the countryside, waits until the missile exchange has ended, and then emerges, asserting his right to rule over what's left of America, and sending the brunt of the surviving military after anyone who won't recognize his authority.
• This is the core plot of Atlas Shrugged, as elite businessmen and industrialists disappear from the world stage in protest of growing socialist policies, forming their own community called Galt's Gulch. By author Ayn Rand's Objectivism philosophy, as well as the Humans Are Bastards nature of the populace, they're considered the heroes of the story.
  • Some fans of the book will occasionally talk of "Going Galt", i.e. abandoning civilisation as described in the novel^note ... although without the magical, thermodynamics-defying motor, invisibility cloak, and everything else that the novel creates in order to prop up the idea. On those rare occasions that they follow through, it doesn't tend to end well.
• Black Tide Rising:
  • Zigzagged with Tom Smith (the main character's brother) and his banker and pharmaceutical associates: They put a lot of effort into trying to stem the original outbreak, but they also set up fallback areas to flee to and ride things out for if/when that fails.
  • Social media CEO Mick Mickerburg gathered up an enormous yacht filled with his fellow executives, lots of scantily clad women, Private Military Contractor bodyguards, cooks, and luxury items and went sailing off to try and ride things out at sea, like so many others. His bodyguards then attempted to mutiny and rape, rob, and kill everyone else, and rescue ships that arrive some time later find just two survivors.
  • In the short story "Descent into the Underworld", Italian villagers come into conflict with the inhabitants of a nearby Elaborate Underground Base (complete with a movie theater and swimming pool) inhabited by wealthy American doomsday preppers. A year after the Zombie Apocalypse, the Private Military Contractors guarding the bunker and at least some of the rich families inside it plan to steal the village's harvest. They also kidnap a child as a Replacement Goldfish for a family whose daughter drowns in the pool.
  • In the short story "Chase the Sunset", several Canadian soldiers discuss a list of their upcoming assignments. One of those assignments is liberating a six hundred-foot-deep bunker that houses the Canadian prime minister, a NORAD general, ten members of Parliament, and "assorted aides, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives and mistresses."
  • The Valley of Shadows reveals that the Mayor of New York fled the city with his family for their private estate on Antigua very early in the plague, though he at least stayed in contact with the rest of the city government who stayed behind, in order to manage things remotely.
• Colony: Once the ship starts malfunctioning, the leaders of the ship (save its Puppet King) prepare to flee in a very small escape pod without allowing any public debate on who else gets to come with them. Most of them get talked out of it though. It ends up being a moot point, as the ship's chaplain takes the pod for himself and the ship's prostitutes. The book's basic premise could be considered this trope as well, with the elites in question being the top experts in their fields being sent out to find a new home for the human race with the rest to follow, which apparently never happened.
• The setting of The Compound is a compound, built underground for wealthy magnate Ray Yanakakis and his family, including protagonist Eli, to live in during the event of nuclear fallout. It's a massive, luxurious place with a lot of rooms and tech, created specifically so the family can survive while the rest of the world dies. The story deconstructs this by revealing that two of the family members weren't able to make it into the compound and got left behind, the fact that they're running out of edible food due to being there for years, and it all turns out that there were never nukes dropped at all, meaning they had no ship to jump from.
• Done horribly in the Dark Skies book of the Dark Shores series. When the enemy Derin, who worship the Seventh god, cross the wall and invade Mudamora, most of the aristocrats flee the capital Mudaire by ships, leaving the common people to suffer and starve. Made worse by the fact that at night Mudaire's skies are filled with Deimos, a kind of flying demonic horses, which kill anyone who is out in the open. Deimos also make fleeing Mudaire on foot impossible and for the same reason, very few ships with supplies come to the city's harbor. As a result, prices of shelter and food go up very steeply and common people are reduced to spending nights in overcrowded public shelters and eating rats (as long as rats last).
• Dirk Pitt Adventures: Atlantis Found has a cabal of ultra-wealthy Nazi descendants getting an inkling of a meteor that will come to destroy Earth and spending the next several decades focused on building immensely durable and luxurious cruise ships for themselves and their followers. And when further calculations show the meteor won't hit Earth after all they decide to cause a disaster of similar magnitude by using nanotechnology to disrupt the Earth's crust so they can still wipe out everyone besides their empire. On a smaller note, when the U.S. military attacks their headquarters, it's noted that members of the founding family think nothing of using their guards as Canon Fodder in an effort to ensure their own survival and escape.
• Down in the Dark: Rodrigo Durrell and Ms. Rhinehart, the two cabinet secretaries in charge of space exploration, managed to go to the Moon with their families on an "inspection tour" right before the dangerous asteroid intercept that ended up destroying Earth. The narrator views the two with slight contempt and notes that Rhinehart's daughter is the only five-year-old human left in the universe.
• Demonstrated by the Indian Prime Minister in Ender's Shadow. In the second book, Shadow Of The Hegemon, when the Indian Empire finds itself set up for invasion and conquest by China thanks to Achilles, the Indian Prime Minister flees the country rather than be caught by China. The third book sees Virlomi, an Indian graduate of Battle School, successfully free India, then deny the Prime Minister's claim of a government in exile and assume power herself, stating that it is a leader's job to protect their people, not run to safety and leave them to despots.
• Flood 1979: When a fracturing dam threatens to flood a lower class Latino neighborhood, the authorities plan to flood a (largely evacuated) wealthy neighborhood on the outskirts of town to divert some of the water. Many of its residents are unhappy about losing their houses, and one who refuses to evacuate tries to bribe an engineer to sabotage the diversion.
• Flood: As the Earth is slowly flooded, MegaCorp CEO Nathan Lammockson engages in a little bit of this; setting up first a secret city for an affluent minority in the Andes Mountains, then a self-sustaining cruise ship, an underwater habitat and also a small-scale Homeworld Evacuation, all of which experience at least some problems. None of these are just for Elites, but they do contain a fair number of them (with Nathan pulling some strings to get a woman pregnant with his grandchild aboard the spaceship). This causes problems on the spaceship where everyone on the crew is supposed to have necessary skills.
• The Fort (2022): The bunker the kids find has lots of food, records, and movies inside and was built about forty years ago by an eccentric millionaire, who evidently didn't plan on sharing it with anyone else in his life, since no one else knows about it. There's also a video cassette with recorded insults for any potential foreign invaders who might have found the bunker if he died before making it there.
• Heavy Object: In Volume 18, it's revealed that the elites in charge of various off-world colonization programs determined they wouldn't succeed for a number of reasons. Instead they redirected the resources into constructing self-sustaining bunker cities where they could ride out the apocalypse in comfort. They even funded the creation of a spaceborne Object specifically because its destruction would result in a cataclysmic impact wiping out the surface. Frolaytia ends up killing everyone in one of the cities on discovering the plan.
• Attempted in the final novel of The Interdependency. Once the leaders of several Guild Houses were convinced there really was a problem, their plan was to evacuate themselves and their families to the one place that would survive the upcoming collapse and leave the commoners to die.
• In Alexander Belyaev's The Leap into the Void, a group of aristocratic and financial elites commission a German engineer to build a line of spaceships that will allow them to escape Earth on the eve of the impending global socialist revolution, wait it out on Venus (the novel was written before the scientists discovered just what kind of hellhole Venus actually was) until their loyal troops subdued the uprising, then return to claim their rightful place. Unfortunately for them, only one ship is actually built and takes off in time to outrun the revolution, and a socialist mole among the servants they brought along (because, of course, they wouldn't wash their own dishes) makes sure that the "parasites" are left behind on Venus when the ship heads back home upon receiving the news of the revolution's victory.
• The Liaden Universe novel Crystal Dragon is set during an interstellar war; when the invading enemy armies start getting near the planet Solcintra, the rich and powerful buy up all available shipping and take off for fortified hiding places farther from the battlefront, leaving the rest of the population to take their chances. (The fortified hiding places get wiped out, while the remnant population of Solcintra work together and survive.)
• In The Light Fantastic, a massive fire breaks out in Ankh-Morpork. The citizens from the richer quarters across the river are seen ''heroically'' chopping down the bridges to prevent refugees from invading to reach safety.
• The Locked Tomb: Nona the Ninth: Ten thousand years ago, the Earth was on the cusp of climate apocalypse, and the man later known as John Gaius was the lead scientist on cryostasis technology that would allow the entire human population to evacuate to a habitable exoplanet aboard a fleet of generation ships. Until, that is, the world's trillionaires pulled strings to get the project shut down, and its resources diverted to fund their own, private evacuation effort, and leave the rest of humanity to die. The callousness of it all, along with the flagrant lies and corruption required to keep the trillionaires' project going and convince the population that everyone would still be saved, is the reason for the Emperor's 10,000-year-long vendetta against their descendants.
• The Lost Fleet: While it doesn't happen all the time, there are multiple occasions when, after a Syndic planet insists on picking a fight with Geary's fleet, Geary observes the military, political and business leaders of the planet retreating to various bunkers or moons while leaving the common soldiers and workers behind to die. Whenever this happens he tries to specifically target wherever said elites fled to while often specifically ignoring those they abandoned. In both the final book of the original series and the The Lost Stars sequel series, CEO (later President) Iceni and General Drakon of the Midway system both specifically avert this by not abandoning their system in the face of enemy bombardment and/or alien invasions (although they are briefly tempted), choosing to remain behind (and execute a few Corrupt Corporate Executive's who they do catch trying to flee themselves) and share their planets fate, which builds their prestige when the day is saved.
• In Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death a wealthy duke and his fellow nobles attempt to wait out a deadly plague decimating the populace by holding a constant party in a secluded abbey which they close off from the outside world, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. It doesn't work out well for them, with the Anthropomorphic Personification of the plague itself arriving to kill them all.
• In the backstory of The Reclamation Project, humans abandoned the surface of the Earth when civilization collapsed, moving up to flying cities held in the air by anti-gravity.
• The Secret Runners of New York features a contagion that kills 99.5% of humanity. The narrator's parents and most of their acquaintances pay $17 million apiece to ride things out in an island refuge. When the narrator travels into the future and journeys to the island, she discovers that it was attacked by angry lower-class survivors who killed or chased away all the elites.
• In Six Wakes, it's mentioned that most of the Human Popsicles who signed on to the Dormire's voyage to Tau Ceti did so, in part, because the Earth is starting to become a Crapsack World thanks to Gaia's Lament. Hence the quote on the main page.
• Sold — For a Spaceship by Philip High is set in the aftermath of a global ecological catastrophe. A ruling elite who escaped into space attempt to return to Earth, but find that they are unable to survive, whereas those left behind have adapted.
• Star Wars Legends: In The Chaos Connection'', a newscaster mentions that the President, Vice-President and Joint Chiefs have secluded themselves in an underground bunker even as the government tells citizens not to worry about the escalating terrorist attacks.
  • The second book of the Jedi Academy Trilogy has the Cardia star system (essentially the Empire's West Point on a planetary scale) about to go nova, and the governor being one of the first to make a run for it while ordering the evacuation to be conducted on basis of rank, and there being no indication of anyone high-ranking arguing with this idea and letting their subordinates go first.
  • New Jedi Order: When the bloodthirsty Yuuzhan Vong hordes prepare to invade Coruscant, wealthy and corrupt senators flee in droves, sometimes forcing vital military assets required to evacuate civilians or Hold the Line to act as their escorts. That being said, many senators don't run and are killed or captured, or only evacuated at the last minute. Unfortunately, one prominent surviving senator in the latter category is still an obstructive anti-Jedi Jerkass whose profile is enhanced by his bravery.
  • Star Wars: Light of the Jedi: Bell and Loden find a rich family and their guards loading up a massive starship with luxuries rather than taking refugees aboard and quickly intimidate them into stopping this.
    Chief Guard: What do you think you're going to do, Jedi? Cut right through the walls with your lightsaber? Fight off every one of us?
    Loden: Sure. Why not?
• Ben Elton's Stark revolves around the uncovering of a conspiracy by the wealthy to escape Earth - which is dying from global warming and associated ecological catastrophes - and set up a new home on the Moon. Although the elite's plan comes to fruition they soon discover that their new life is lonely and frustrating. This leads to the story's main antagonist throwing himself out of an airlock.
• Swan Song: With the threat of WWIII, timeshare survivalist bunkers have become a major thing, with middle and upper-class people paying $50,000 a year to stay there two weeks a year in the event that those two weeks will be ones the war starts in. Roland and his family are in one such bunker which does not fare well due to the owners having dragged their feet on costly, but important repairs.
• The Three Investigators: In The Blazing Cliffs, unpopular businessman Charles Barron is convinced that society is on the verge of collapse, and has withdrawn to a well-maintained self-sufficient ranch as he waits for his beliefs to be vindicated. A group of conmen fake a Benevolent Alien Invasion and offer to take Barron, his wife, and their valuables off-planet before an imminent war and then bring them back to Earth to be leaders of society once the war is over. Barron is prepared to follow their instructions (although to be fair, he does think that his employees will be fairly safe back on the ranch, and many of them already think the whole thing is fishy) before being convinced that he's being conned.
  Ranch Foreman Hank Detweiler: Why should they want Barron? He's no genius. He's rich, that's all. Do the rich go first class even on Doomsday?
• The Tower, one of two books which The Towering Inferno was based on, acknowledges the mindset behind this trope but largely averts it. A skyscraper is on fire, and the people in the penthouse are being evacuated by breach buoys but there isn't enough time to save everyone. The women are sent out first, then the leaders of the group (the mayor, the governor, a senator, one of the building's architects, the fire commissioner, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations) have a lottery to determine which of the men go in what order. One of the other people involved (another senator, Cary Wycoff) who's been excluded from the decision-making for being obnoxious and a bit panicky, becomes paranoid that the drawing is being rigged so that the governor, the architect, and the others will be among the first sent out and leads a riot against them which temporarily disrupts the rescue operations. Ironically, the drawing wasn't rigged (and Wycoff's own mental justification for what he's doing comes a lot closer to "elites jumping ship" mentality), every one of those leaders Wycoff is paranoid about drew a number which means they'll be evacuated later than he will, and most of them die before the rescue operations can be finished.
• Under the Dome: When Big Jim Rennie — acting town leader, prosperous used car salesman, and local drug kingpin — sees a cataclysmic explosion caused by the chemicals he'd stockpiled for cooking enormous amounts of crystal meth tearing through the town, he immediately retreats to the town hall's fallout shelter with a single Mook and makes no effort to alert the other survivors (most of whom die from smoke inhalation within hours) to take shelter there. Unfortunately for Rennie, there isn't enough air to last long.
• Variable Star: The Conrad family, the wealthiest people in the galaxy, develop a faster-than-light starship they use to escape Earth with a few servants when the sun goes nova. They catch up with Joel's Generation Ship and offer to help save its people. Some of them are sincere, but Richard is just planning to steal the ship's supplies and then abandon the people onboard.
• Occurred in the backstory of the Wayfarers series; when Earth's biosphere collapsed, the wealthy elite took off to colonize Mars instead, while those left behind were forced to cannibalize the remaining cities into the Generation Ships of the Exodus Fleet and wander the galaxy until some friendly aliens found them. There's still a bit of tension about this between the descendants of the two groups.
• When Worlds Collide: Attempted but averted when a rich wall street tycoon tries to buy his way into the Homeworld Evacuation with now worthless money despite having refused to finance the building of the rocket ship earlier. He gets laughed out of there.
• Wool: In the backstory, members of the American government used a super weapon to wipe out everyone in the world except for a couple hundred thousand Americans they'd put in silo-like survival bunkers that they'd spent years making in preparation of the event, feeling that their actions are necessary to keep humanity from being destroyed by a war. Notably, the vast majority of the people they got to go into the silos went in under false pretenses and had no idea that the world was going to end. Zigzagged if you accept the sequels and prequels as canon, given that they state that the original people behind the slaughter are still alive and running things due to having themselves frozen for cryogenic shifts and some of them eventually plan to blow up 49 of the 50 silos (including their own) in order to completely destroy knowledge of the old world.
• In World War Z, a few prominent examples are seen:
  • The Corrupt Corporate Executive who created a fake anti-zombie vaccine known as "Phalanx" (actually an anti-rabies vaccine he started selling when the zombie virus was still known as "African rabies", even though it was neither rabies nor from Africa) runs off to an Antarctic research facility rented from Russia in order to escape both the zombies and prosecution for his crimes. It's implied at the end that the Russians are planning on kicking him out so that he can be extradited to the US for his crimes.
  • In a clearer example of this trope, a huge group of A-list celebrities — with a lot of No Celebrities Were Harmed going on — take refuge in a beautiful, reinforced mansion on Long Island... which is broadcasting 24/7 to the people. In an inevitable turn of events, hundreds of desperate refugees break into the mansion looking for some form of solace or shelter, the scene descends into chaos and anarchy, and most (if not all) of the celebs are killed and their bodyguards and other servants either abandon it or turn against their bosses.
  • Queen Elizabeth II is noted as being an incredibly rare subversion, as in-universe, she refuses to leave the UK during the zombie attacks, although she sends her family to a more secure area.
  • The Chinese government remains stationed in a secure bunker while issuing chaotic and bizarre commands which whittle down the army outside, "ordering wave after wave of conscripted teenagers into battle." It gets to the point where a rebel coalition begins fighting a two-front war between them and the zombies before nuking their bunker.
  • The South African government retreats to a bunker where they finalize a solution that involves a The Needs of the Many sacrifice, although it is noted that at least one of the cabinet members there would "rather be fighting in the streets than cowering in a bunker" and is only there due to orders. This becomes known as "The Redeker Plan", originally devised during apartheid to be used to shield "important" members of society in case of a mass uprising by the black population, and revolves around setting up safe zones with civilians to distract the zombies while the government and military fortify and regroup elsewhere. With the exception of Israel (which had prepared enough to not need to before the Great Panic) and possibly North Korea, the majority of the world's surviving countries ended up using their own version of it.
  • Seemingly defied by North Korea, though the interviewee theorizes they're actually a massive case being played straight. The entire country vanished off the face of the Earth shortly before the Great Panic, and later expeditions discovered that the NK government had constructed massive, underground shelters to ride out the Zombie Apocalypse. However, rather than any sort of benevolence or equality, the narrator thinks it's actually a case of Kim Jong-il taking all his servants with him, as the people of North Korea are little more than slaves to their dictator. However, none of this is confirmed, as no contact has been made with anyone in North Korea since their disappearance.
  • Also defied by Israel, who wall off their entire country but first invite others to come while there's still time.

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