That would require a kind of gentlemen's agreement similar to a "fight of the two champions" in lieu of a a battle between two armies. That sort of civilized behavior never really caught on when the stakes are high enough. IIRC Saddam Hussein offered the same to George W. Bush in 2003, but somehow the US didn't accept this offer.
While you celebrate your victory in your bunker, the "defeated" side may have just cut off the antenna and sealed the entrance to your bunker. Who's a winner then?

Then you might have stopped 20 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/world/vatican-science-panel-told-by-pope-galileo-was-right.html

I find that strange, every supermarket cash register does just that: You (or the cashier) press a button, the item or vote is counted electronically and the machine prints a reciepe that you can check and throw into an urn. Voila: Instant results and you can still count the paper votes.

In fact, you could use a slightly modified McDonalds cash register as a voting machine, they seem to be designed for just that.

What does luck have to do with fitness or mediocrity? I'm pretty sure that you and me have no inherent genetic advantages over somebody who finds himself on the wrong end of an environmental disaster. I admit that there may be exeptions, like people who willingly live in cities in a dessert without sustainable water supply or near the ocean but below the level of said ocean.

Not so long ago, my company had "blank" access badges. In case one is lost, there's no need to give a thief or spy a hint which doors it might open for him.

It's not enough that a government says that the money has value, people actually have to believe it. In 1923, the German government could have announced that the value of the Mark hasn't changed at all for 20 years, but in fact the value dropped close to the paper the money was printed on.