Yes, it’s real, and it’s not confined to rural regions of the US where the number of guns per capita approaches double figures: ‘doomsday dating,’ which involves a twist on the usual dating site, involves matching prospective mates with complementary resources and skill sets in order to ride out your chosen natural (or supernatural) disaster.
While there are plenty of crackpots out there who are stockpiling tinned goods in the event of their own personal ‘Shaun of the Dead’-style zombie apocalypse, imagining scenarios where they rescue a fetching young lass from a horde of ravenous zed-heads with nothing but their own bravado and a trusty cricket bat (it’s always young men with this fantasy, strangely enough), some of the more scientifically-minded doomsday scenario aficionados are looking towards the future. Those fearful of the kind of ecological wastelands that could be perpetuated by climate change are now engaging in what they call ‘carbon dating,’ or looking for mates with either the scientific or survivalist know-how to both endure and prevail in a world where an inconvenient truth may become the norm.
You may scoff now, but you never know; the whole ‘better safe than sorry’ approach has worked in the past, though rarely – many of us may remember the fears brought about by the dreaded Y2K Bug wherein all the world’s computer systems, which were programmed to only hand two-figure dates, were all scrambled by the date rolling over to 2000. Nothing happened, of course, but now with the 21 December 2012 Mayan calendar end date rapidly approaching, the next crop of doomsday planning is in full swing – and many of us would like to begin their lives in whatever Brave New World that awaits us with their own personal Adam or Eve to rebuild civilisation.
