Doomsday Castle|末日避难城堡

by Marcus Maurice

Sometimes crazy people should not be allowed to have children.

　　The year was 1999 and the closer it got to December 31, the crazier people got. The doomsday scenarios people were coming up with were the end of humanity as we know it and a computer virus that would crash the banking system, so people had stocked up on canned food and built shelters to prepare for the worst. Then, when the clock struck midnight around the world, very few problems happened. Governments worked normally, money was readily available at ATM machines, and some crazy people had a lot of canned goods to eat. Basically, all the worry about Y2K was for nothing.

　　While it has been 14 years since the turn of the millennium, there are still a few people out there who think the world will be ending soon. One of them is Brent Bruns who is building a castle with his 10 children to shelter his family deep in the forests of South Carolina. This month, National Geographic Channel (NGC) features Bruns and his family on Doomsday Castle.

　　Unsurprisingly, the castle actually began as a bunker in 1999. Since Y2K passed with little trouble, Bruns is now focused on what he believes will be the apocalypse—an electromagnetic burst which will cause power failure across the US and send everyone back to the Dark Ages. On the show, Bruns wants his family prepared for anything and everything, so he launches fake tear gas attacks on them and has trainers come to teach them survival and sniper skills. Will the family survive the craziness of their father and finish the castle, or will they run away to be normal kids? Find out on NGC's Doomsday Castle.

末日避难城堡

有时候疯狂的人不应该被允许有小孩。

　　时间是 1999 年，愈接近十二月三十一日，人们就愈疯狂。当时人们所想出的世界末日情节就是我们所知的人类末日，另外还有一种计算机病毒会使银行计算机系统全面当机，因此人们都事先贮备了罐头食品并建造了避难所，好为最糟的状况做好准备。接着，当世界各地的午夜钟声响起时，发生的问题寥寥无几。政府仍然正常运作，自动提款机里很快就提得到钱，而有些疯狂的人们也有很多罐头食品可吃。基本上，所有对千禧危机的担心都是多余的。

　　虽然千禧年到来已有十四年之久，但世界上还是有一些人觉得世界末日很快就会到来。其中有一位就是正和他的十个孩子在南卡罗莱纳州的森林深处建造一座城堡来保护家人的布兰特．布朗斯。本月国家地理频道的《末日避难城堡》节目将播出布朗斯和他家人的故事。

　　事实上，这座城堡在 1999 年开工的时候原先要被打造成碉堡，这点并不令人惊讶。由于千禧危机并未造成什么麻烦，因此现在布朗斯把心力放在他认为将会发生的末日大灾难：有一场电磁波引起的大爆炸将会导致全美各地电力中断，并把所有人带回黑暗时代。在这个节目中，布朗斯要他的家人对任何事情都要有所准备，因此他用假的催泪瓦斯攻击他们，并聘请教官来教导他们生存及狙击的技巧。这家人会在父亲的疯狂行径下生存下来并盖好城堡，或是他们会逃走去做个正常小孩呢？观赏国家地理频道的《末日避难城堡》节目来找出答案吧。