This may have been answered somewhere in here, but I’m too lazy to search for it. Any links would be welcome. Anyway…
Won’t we in the U.S. be made aware of the severity of Y2K-related breakdowns well before they happen? I figure it this way: It’s going to be 12:00:01 am, 2000, in Europe hours before it hits the easternmost part of America. Won’t we know what’s going on in London, France, Helsinki, etc. by early evening EST? Or are we too chauvinistic and geocentric to think about these things?
Just wondering.
The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx
Sure, we’ll know. There’s been some credit card glitches in England already. Hopefully, through common sense and luck, Y2K will rank low on the scale of mankind’s tragedies.
Yeah, Dave, I think that the western pacific will be the first to know the effects. But, we really don’t know how prepared anyone really is in that part of the world. And realistically, until the rollover actually happens to the computers that we are dependant on, it doesn’t matter whether Iran has a problem or not.
So, yeah, the impact will happen first in the western pacific and work it’s way back toward the US from there. But, there isn’t a lot we can do about it in the 17 hours or so, except to Stop, Drop and Roll
Gol-durn it! I’m getting pretty dad-burned fed up with people who massacre our profanity. The latest (relatively speaking) is “Friggin’”. Shouldn’t that word be the dag-nabbed venerable word, “fucking”? We don’t need any cotton-picking “Friggin’”!!!
Sheez! I mean< Jesus!!
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 1845)
JimB, I’m sorry, but I disagree with your assessment that until it hits someplace besides Iran, we won’t know the severity. This is the chauvinism I was talking about. There are plenty of places (Hong Kong, Sydney, just to name 2) where they have beaucoup computers and are just as dependent on them as we.
I agree that it will still be too late if the glitches are apocalyptic, but my main reason for posting was “if it ain’t so bad in the rest of world, I’ll know not to take my suitcase and sleeping bag out to the hill behind my house to wait for the Mother Ship.”
The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx
Might take a few days, maybe weeks for it all to come in.
the US, unlike New Zealand, has huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons run by computers. Credit card transactions of around 2,000 per second. I figure someone somewhere is going to experience something.