questioning Y2K

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I had a really serious talk recently about going to a remote cabin with:

1) water from a well
2) wood burning stove
3) lots of dehydrated food for "deep storage" of several months supply of

The thought was that the electrical companies in the United States share a power grid. If a few electrical companies' power go out then a domino effect will occur due to the fact that energy companies have few reserves and depend on buying residual power (excess production) from each other. A few failures and black outs will results.

This seems (unfortunately) reasonable ** IF ** power outages do occur. I have read (from computer programmers some of which are on this List I think) that such outages are possible or even likely.

• WHY *** would any outages occur? How can a simple date cause such problems? Can you (computer programmers) explain how the appearance that it is January 1, 1900 will do anything more than screw up billing cycles (for power companies, Social Security Administration and others)? Why should a bug like the 1900 vs. 2000 make much difference to power generation? (or computerized nuclear missiles and any other nightmare scenarios one can dream up)

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