So what the deal with stocking up for Y2K? Are you doing it? Topping off your gas tank maybe?..or perhaps filling your cupboards with bottled water and canned food?
Is stocking up merely a paranoid act…or a smart move?
It’s always a smart move to be well-stocked. Is it a little paranoid to be doing it for Y2K? Heck if I know, but if that’s what it takes to get people to do it, I’m all for it.
CSIIBITSI
I’m not doing a bloody thing. You see, I live in the Connecticut River valley, where, if six months go by without a hurricane or blizzard (depending on the season) messing things up, we consider ourselves fortunate. So I have canned and dried food in the pantry, several flashlights with working batteries, a phone that runs on phone-line current (and two cell phones), and bottled water (although the last is really for the cat, who hates the taste of the chlorinated tap water).
Is stocking up for Y2K paranoid nonsense? Yes. Is stocking up for some other problem a smart move? Also, yes.
As I’ve said before: if you know of some place that is so free of earthquakes, blizzars, hurricanes, tornadoes, squirrels falling into transformers, and drunk drivers running into utility poles that buying a flashlight would be a bad investment, let me know where it is: I’d like to move there.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
Based on the results, paranoid stupidity. 
One of the first “The Sky Is Falling” books to come out about Y2K was The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos, by Michael S. Hyatt. I reviewed it for the paper back in December 1998 and saw how the author was playing Chicken Little. Now the books editor has asked me to re-review it, in light of what actually happened. This is gonna be fun.
At the end of his book, he lists a number of “scenarios” for what might happen. He starts by saying he will not even consider the idea that “the year 2000 computer problem will be a nonevent” because, “Based on the facts we have seen in the first nine chapters, it is simply not a viable scenario.”
Uh, yeah, sure…
If this author has any smarts, then he already has a “Y2K Hoax” book ready, so he can work the circuit telling everyone how even he was taken in by the Y2K propoganda being spread by the evil One Worlders.
Actually, if he has any smarts he’ll do like other failed prophets and pretend it never happened. The book jacket claims it was on the New York Times Bestseller list, though I know it started in Christian bookstores and gained popularity from there. In any event, he got his royalties already, and I’d bet he’s already started on his next book, claiming to see some other future disaster and hoping folks forget about this one. Indeed, that’s one reason the editor asked me to re-review it – to remind people about some of these idiots who make scary predictions and then just move on to the next one when that one fails.
What I did for Y2K:
We’ve got a pretty fair-sized pantry and chest freezer, and have tended to keep a lot of food in them all along, including about five gallons’ worth of half-gallon bottles of frozen water in the freezer, to help it stay cold longer in event of power outages. I think I filled up an extra two gallons’ worth of water bottles for the fridge.
Other than that, I made sure I had about $100 worth of cash on hand, and that neither car was near empty on gas. (If half full, I didn’t take the trouble to top it off.) I checked appropriate web pages to make sure my computer (including major software) was Y2K compliant. That’s all - no generators or nothin’.
Then I kept track of the news yesterday; once Guam, New Zealand, etc., entered 2000 bug-free, I ran some errands, and got online to make some posts about the LBMB bug. 
David, I think it’s great that they’re asking you to re-review that book!
Oh yeah - made sure I was stocked up on beer. Have to think of the important things!
David B wrote:
Early in the 1990s, an acquaintance of mine (who has since become a Y2K survivalist living in the backwoods of Oregon) let me thumb through his copy of Bankruptcy 1995. It predicted that the U.S. Federal government would have to decale bankruptcy in fiscal 1995, because by then its annual budget deficit would be over $800 billion. (The authors based this on the shape of the budget deficit graph over the previous couple of years, extrapolated out to 1995. They didn’t seem to understand the concept of short-term fluctuation.)
My Survivalist acquaintance swore by that book at the time, just like he swears by his 1000 gallon propane tank and 5-year food supply now. (Although I’m betting he’s mighty disappointed that civilization didn’t collapse at the stroke of midnight last night. )
Er, declare bankruptcy, not decale bankruptcy.
Apparently paranoid nonsense.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
I bought a flashlight. Because I didn’t have one. Other than that, my shopping habits did not change.
to the Y2K bug and all of its believers. Oh, and I’d like to nominate Y2K: The Movie that was shown on NBC in November as the made-for-TV flick “Least Likely to Be Repeated.”
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
I wish MST3K were still running, or it would be.
Hey, you can always cover up your previous Chicken Little errors with new Chicken Little Predictions. Remember how all the computers were supposed to interpret the date 09/09/99 as “end of file”? Because 9999 is used as the end of file code in some programming languages? Yeah, I see the connection.
But no one really noticed that nothing really happened on September 9th, because they were waiting for January 1st.
I say, they should refocus attention on February 29th, talking about how, since most programming languages were written before the Gregorian calendar was invented, the computers will all intepret this leap year as Steve Jobs’ birthday, causing dogs and cats to live together and other real wrath of -od type stuff.
I myself am much more freaked out about the coming apocalypse associated with Y2.001K, when the masses figure out that the Third Milennium A.D. lasted only 366 days. Or 364 days or whatever.
I’ve said it before. In computers, 1K is not 1000, it is 1024. Therefore, Y2K is not due until 2048. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Well, heck, we all know that the really BIG date-related software bugs are going to hit on January 19, 2038, because of the way dates and times are stored internally in C and C++ programs.
See http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html for the long version of the story.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
The look on their faces when the world doesn’t end. . .
PRICELESS
For everyone else
Happy Y2K!!!
SterlingNorth
I make my grand return and already I screw up.
Try clicking here!
SterlingNorth, the link you provided in your last post gives me the following message:
It does this because it sends me to the URL http://adex3.flycast.com/FlycastUniversal/ .