RE: Y2K: Am I paranoid?

mark@unicorn.com
Thu, 11 Feb 1999 09:16:48 -0800 (PST)

Billy Brown [bbrown@conemsco.com] wrote:
>I remember talk about the
>embedded-systems problem in the power industry back in '97, and I wasn't
>even an insider.

I remember talking about Y2K bugs back in the late 80s. Doesn't mean that any of them were fixed. The Swedes didn't discover until late last year that their nuclear stations would all fail in 1999; luckily they could just switch the date back 'til 1990 and it all continued to work.

>There is no way to create the kind of total paralysis that the Y2K
>Doomsayers like to conjure up, and that means you can never get to the Mad
>Max situation in the first place.

Stop the food supply to the major cities for three days and the world will be a very different place.

The basic point is that at some level of failure it becomes impossible to fix, because of lack of supplies and because those who could fix it will bug out rather than stay and work on the problem. The question is, will we get to that level? I don't think we will in the West on a national or global level, but probably will on a small scale in various areas.

Mark