Hey, you, preserve your humanity. You’ll express gratitude later.

Alexandra Petri ’10, previously a columnist for the Washington Post, is now a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was awarded the 2025 Thurber Prize for American Humor for her book “Alexandra Petri’s U.S. History: Significant American Documents I Fabricated.”

Alright, Harvard graduates. Pay attention. Many of you aspire to become physicians, lawyers, researchers, and affect the world in significant ways. I’m not addressing you. However, there’s a non-zero chance that one graduate among you will be the individual who amasses an absurd, cartoonish fortune while making the world worse (that’s zeugma! I was an English major). This note is directed at him, just in case he reads the Harvard Gazette. I wish to address the dilemma that I’m sure is already haunting him: After the disastrous Event occurs that dismantles society and drives me into my opulent bunker, how do I maintain my sentinels’ allegiance?

Excellent query! Let’s explore it.

Alright, you possess your lavish bunker complete with its hydroponic farm, decontamination chamber, and a secure perimeter patrolled by sentinels. How, once currency loses its significance in human relations, do you ensure those guards remain loyal? Remember, they were your employees before. Now, you’re isolated in your bunker post-Event! Currency no longer holds value for them, and they’re significantly stronger than you! Stronger than anyone! That’s precisely why you hired them as sentinels.

What do individuals do for one another? Make them laugh? Bake pies? Recall their interests and inquire about them? Narrate tales? Provide therapeutic foot massages? Yes! Even better!

Oh, you didn’t consider that, did you? The groundbreaking technology you created to grant billionaires a secondary, bonus set of teeth that descends in front of their original teeth like a curtain, activated by a button press (I have no idea what billionaires desire) may have filled your coffers back in the past, but now you’re isolated in that bunker, and you must rationalize why you should still be in command. Forget algorithms! Forget stock markets! It’s just you and that powerful individual you employed, that person whose name is probably Greg (but what if you’re mistaken? Can you afford to be mistaken? Remember, your wealth is no longer relevant!).

Now it’s simply you and Greg. You and Greg, and, I hope, his family. You did remember to bring his family along, didn’t you? When you all boarded the helicopter and flew here? That’s the first recommendation I would have made.

Society has collapsed. Bang! You created significant value for your stakeholders, enough value that you commissioned a yacht too massive for any deity to lift, underwent surgical enhancements to resemble the vampire Lestat, and acquired this exquisite bunker on a secluded island. Now vast areas of the globe are uninhabitable, likely due to circumstances that people might attribute to you, had they survived the Event. You will be confined in this bunker for an extended period. And unfortunately, your financial resources are worthless now. How unfortunate because you had a wealth of it! Some of which was even bitcoin. Not that it matters. You can try telling Greg (Is it Greg? Perhaps it’s Jeff!) that you possess some bitcoin for him and see his reaction. Maybe it will amuse him. Perhaps that could initiate something.

Contemplate your guards seriously! What do they treasure more than anything else? Perhaps you can hoard some of it in the bunker! But what happens when it runs out? There’s no way to procure more, because society (as previously mentioned) has ceased to exist. After you’ve exhausted the last box of Jeff (Greg?)’s favorite cereal, what’s your plan? The production facility where it was once manufactured is submerged beneath the ocean or possibly being invaded by some Mad Max-like scenario. What it isn’t doing is producing cereal.

Imagine! Imagine! What do people cherish? The sun’s warmth on their skin? Fresh fruit? The aroma of a baby’s head? Doritos? Laughter? Joy? The sensation of being acknowledged? No, no! These responses are all incorrect. It must be something you can access after the Event! Something you can stockpile in advance and secure in a vault, to be dispensed at intervals to your guards only if you input a code that signifies you remain unharmed.

Or, wait. What do individuals do for one another? Make them laugh? Bake pies? Recall their interests and ask them about it? Narrate tales? Provide wonderful foot massages? Yes! Even better! Perhaps you can design a machine that does just that and sell access to it in the bunker, utilizing a unique currency of your own creation?

No, forget that; we’re back to money yet again. Remember, currency doesn’t exist anymore!

What is the one thing you have to offer others? What about you is worthy of preservation? Don’t assert it’s preposterous that you need to substantiate your value in this transactional manner. Don’t tell me you are important merely because you are a human being who exists. I understand that. But does Greg (Jeff?)?

Perhaps you should have contemplated that before generating all that value for stakeholders and instigating the Event. You should have thought about that prior to allowing the cereal factory to sink beneath the waves. I’m pleading with you to consider it.

If that fails, consider getting extremely, extraordinarily fit.