The Doomsday Club

Waiting for Armageddon is, in a curious way, one of the morbidly titillating preoccupations of our time. Novelist Walker Percy has written of "the old authentic thrill of the Bomb and ... the heart's desire of the alienated man to see vines sprouting through the masonry." Since the days of the bomb-shelter boom in the early '60s, nuclear holocaust has receded a bit in the apocalyptic imagination, replaced now by visions of economic collapse--industry's furnaces grown cold, fleets of cars broken down, and frenzied looters rampaging in the street.

But it is instructive to note that the Doomsday mind, like so many things, can be turned to profit. A group of California land developers has founded something called the Scott Meadows Club--712 acres of fertile Sierra wilderness in Northern California's Siskiyou County, all set aside as a secret retreat, once civilization as we know it has disintegrated. For a modest membership fee of $12,500 and annual dues of only $300, members are allocated space in a "security building" to store a year's cache of dehydrated food for each individual in the family; the payment also provides for an ample supply of water, access to electricity and even a place to pitch a tent.

Prospective members are driven to the site blindfolded, and once they join, they are threatened with immediate expulsion if they reveal the camp's location. So far, 50 families have signed up; the goal is 300 members, including doctors, dentists, and forestry and agrarian experts to ensure a self-sustaining community. When the end comes, the promoters say gleefully, they will dynamite all approach roads to keep the rest of the ruined world out of this Utopia.

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