Eva Bradley: As half baked as my dinner

I have always been a firm believer in Darwin's theory about survival of the fittest.
A world where the weak and stupid are rapidly culled makes perfect sense. At least it always has up to the point I realised I wasn't necessarily in the half worth holding on to.
The other night two depressing things happened in rapid succession. Firstly, I actually agreed to participate in a 20-minute Colmar Brunton telephone research poll. Once I got over the mild irritation of the call coming just at the moment the microwave pinged and announced my baked beans were ready, I realised rationally that it was most likely the only one I would receive that night and, ultimately, company was company even if it was with a stranger in the name of market research.
The second downer came when the call ended and I realised that should a natural disaster occur, not only was I likely to perish, but I very much deserved to, such was my total lack of consideration for being prepared.
The survey was on behalf of the Government, trying to establish with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per cent just how many Kiwis actually gave a damn about preparing for a natural disaster and just how likely they would be to survive should one prove imminent.
For me, the short answer was: not at all likely.
After conceding during the early line of questioning that not only was a natural disaster very likely, but that I "strongly disagreed" that emergency services would be able to assist me in any way should one happen and I would have to look after myself, I then went on to admit that despite this I had no survival plan of any sort and no immediate plans to create one.
The long silence at the end of the line as I admitted to each of my failings may have been so the interviewer could record my answers but most likely they were simply so he could shake his head with a disparaging mix of pity and dismay at such profound stupidity.
Was I aware that Christchurch had recently been hit by a major earthquake with significant loss of life? Yes.
Did I know that New Zealand sat on a major earthquake belt? Yes.
Did I live on the coastline and was I aware that earthquakes could trigger devastating tsunamis? Yes and yes.
So did I have a plan, a kit, had I gone to the gethru.govt.nz website, had I devoted even a moment of my life to considering how I might survive should the not-so-unlikely worst case scenario ever happen?
No, no, no and no.
It was clear from yet another protracted silence that the interviewer was absolutely itching to veer off-piste and throw in a question of his own: just how dumb was I?
Given that we both knew the answer to that one it hardly seemed worth his time asking.
At the close of the phone call, I was briefly quizzed about my age, marital status, dependents and income. Although this was under the guise of ensuring a representative sample of respondents, I could instantly see the greater gain of gathering such information.
When the time came for heroes to haul out survivors from the wreckage, there would be a blacklist of people like me who, although contributing significantly to the tax take, were simply too stupid to remain in the great Kiwi gene pool. For the record, I was officially single, childless, stupid and ripe for elimination.