Y2K: Party of the Century!
The End of Life as we know it.

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I have always lived with the foreboding about how delicate our current economic/social structure is, and have often dreaded all sorts of simple little things a mad-man could do to wreck havoc on the system, and how a few strategic cuts in certain key locations could bring a city to it's knees.

Someone once asked me how to disable the worlds biggest computer systems. We talked about all the usual sorts of things, take out the operators, cut off the phone lines, turn off the electricity, insert a virus, feed it bad data, corrupt the data that is already there, torch it. Well guess what. They are already programmed to self destruct about 13,753 hours from today, being June 06, 1998.

As I forsee it, things may happen something as follows: A few computer systems somewhere in an out of the way place will malfunction about August 1999 when they are trying to prepare their fiscal 2000 budgets. The episode will not cause much harm, but it will get into the news. Many people will ignore the incidents, but some will start making decisions to hedge their bets, not taking on new financial responsibilities, making unusual moves on the stock markets, buying up certain types of commodities, deferral of travel plans. The overall result of these decisions, will be a slowing of the economy, (If this is added to an already sluggish economy caused by other factors...)

About this same time, I forsee a move into rural areas by the best and the brightest of the computer programming jocks. Again, a hedging of bets. (If there is anyone who thoroughly distrusts a computer, it is the person that programs them for a living...) So if/when things do go south, because of the Year 2000 computer bug, they will be in a potentially safer environment.

I imagine that in North America we'll have a good idea about whether or not the phone/satellite systems (Internet/Financial) and power distribution systems are going to make it about a day ahead of time, since Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa will be hit before we are. (No news is bad news!)

Course if you are not on the power grid, or in the financial system, what does it matter to you?

Several European programming unions have declared that their programmers will not be on duty when the millenium comes. They are not about to miss the party of the century!!! So all the programmers are off-duty/partying/drunk on the night that they are needed more than ever.

Where the power does fail in urban areas, I forsee looting/rioting to break out within a few days, especially if the failures are widespread and both the phones and the power are disabled. The way a typical relief mission works, is that people from unaffected areas are able to provide relief and assistance to people in the disaster zone? What if there are many disaster zones scattered all over?

Will people want to go to work if they have to go into the center of an urban riot and risk their life to do so? How many computer systems will be torched as a result of the riots?

So in regards to taking out the worlds largest computers, year 2000 may potentially take out the operators, cut off the phone lines, turn off the electricity, feed it bad data, corrupt the data that is already there, and/or torch it.

You can forget about the virus. It won't be needed.

For those systems that don't immediately fail at the turn of the millenium, I expect problems from two areas. 1) A domino effect as one system after another fails as a result of not getting properly supported by the systems with which it interacts. 2) long term chronic problems with data integrity. (For example: The bank may never quite know how much money they owe you.)

See also:

Simple Emergency Water Pumps
The Bible and Y2K
Eat Drink and be Merry

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