That doesn't make the epoch weird, just different. The Unix Epoch is itself weird. I personally like it mostly for being a neat little historical artifact, but it's not interesting in any sense. What epoch would your hypothetical programmers settle on if they all had their minds wiped of any existing epochs.

I bet you'd see a lot of Jan 1 1900, 2000, or year 1. Very few would pick 1970.

Other fun non-Jan 1 ideas might be December 26, 1791 (Charles Babbage's birthday) or February 5, 1944, (the date Colossus came online)