The Progress Report

Y2K and the Collapse of Modern Civilization

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

We now know how civilization could end, and exactly when. Not
with a nuclear war, not with famine, and not with pestilence.
No, the collapse of civilization might be caused by a ridiculous
computer error. Something bad will happen on January 1, 2000.
The problem is called the "millennium bug" or "year 2000" or
Y2K, K meaning 1000.

The problem began back in the 1950s when computers first came
into use. Back then, believe it or not, computer users did not
have TV- like monitors. The input medium was punched cards which
held 80 characters. Those 80 characters were called a "record."
With so few characters, the programmers squeezed as much
information into a record as possible. For the year, they only
put in two digits, so that 1959 was entered as 59.

Computer memories were tiny back then, and disk space was very
expensive. So the dates were also stored in memory and in disks
with only two digits. Records had to be as small as possible so
that as many as possible could fit in memory and disks. If
anybody thought of what would happen in the year 2000 when the
two digits 00 would be treated as 1900, programmers and managers
figured that the old program code would be long replaced with
new programs.

Even after punched cards were replaced by monitor terminals,

years continued to be coded with two digits because new systems
had to be compatible with the old ones. Over time, computer
memory expanded and disk space became ever less expensive, but
few thought of the year 2000. There was a hint in 1970, when 30-
year mortgages extended to 2000 and programs dealing with that
had to be fixed. We are now seeing ever more signs of the
problem. For example, some credit cards expiring in 2000 or
later have been rejected by computer systems.

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The problem will escalate in 1999 when many systems look ahead
one year. But most system crashes will occur in January 2000,
when software will crash, freeze, or malfunction due to the
wrong date. Since January 1, 2000 is a Saturday, the problem may
not be realized until Monday, January 3, the big hangover after
all the big year-2000 parties.

Of course many people in government and business now know about

the problem, and are spending many billions of dollars to fix
it. Estimates of the global cost to reprogram or replace
computer systems range up to $1 trillion. At best, Y2K will
cause interruptions and a decrease in productivity as resources
become devoted to repairs and replacement rather than new
technology. At worst, some alarmists claim that the entire
global economy will collapse as computer systems world-wide
crash. They say this will be the end of civilization. Some are
taking this quite seriously and are cashing out their
investments. A few are even moving to remote areas away from
possible chaos in the cities.

One of the problems is that many systems continue to use very

old programs, and the original programmers are long gone from
the field. In some cases, the written programs and documentation
are missing. So it takes much time for a programmer to figure
out how the program worked and where to fix the date problems.
Secondly, there is now much communication among computers. Even
if one company is year-2000 compliant, the computers it talks to
may not be, and may pass bad data. Third, a big part of the
problem consists of computer chips now embedded in many
products, such as cars, televisions, machines, and military
equipment.

Another worry is that many countries have only just begun to

examine, let alone fix the problem. Even if the problems are
mostly fixed in the US, if Europe crashes or computers in Japan
don't work, trade will come to a halt. That alone could cause a
global depression. Add to that satellites not working and a
possible disruption of the distribution of goods, including
food, and we could be in deep trouble. The problem is that
parallel to the physical production and distribution of goods
there is a financial counterpart: goods go one way, and money
goes the other way. You buy food; the store gets money. If the

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financial chain is broken, the physical goods will sit there and
rot. The most scary aspect is the possibility of computerized
nuclear missiles malfunctioning in the U.S., Russia, and other
nuclear powers. If the U.S. defense system cannot operate, there
is a danger that some regimes could take advantage of the
situation, such as taking over the oil fields in the Middle
East.

Despite this pending possible doom, most folks are going about
their business as usual. Many businesses are doing nothing,
figuring they can fix the program if and when it crashes. The
stock markets don't seem to reflect the problem. Are the
alarmists wrong, or are we living in a fool's paradise? The
problem is, nobody really knows. The year 2000 is a wild card in
the global economy. It might be no worse than a bad blizzard, it
might cause a minor recession, or it could be the end of
civilization.

Personally, I am not yet in a panic, but I am concerned, and

will watch events closely, especially during 1999. There are
several web sites that are examining Y2K. I suggest not reading
these in late the evening, if you want to get a good night's
sleep.

Source: http://www.progress.org/fold44.htm

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Ten years ago, the crazed and unsaved paranoids were
overconsumed by their hysterical belief that mankind's computer-
structured civilization would collapse into total disarray
precisely on January 1, 2000 at 0000 hours, all because of a
'computer bug' or software date programming error, where the
last two digits of every year were written.

It is analogous to fearing that your car, secretly rigged with a

bomb, would detonate upon reaching 100,000 kilometers on the
odometer, incinerating you inside.

How outlandishly insane is that? What's next? December 21, 2012.

The 13th count on the pagan Mayan calendar.

All right, back to Y2K. There could be dozens of crazed Y2K

'survivalists' living in the woods of the American Northwest for
a decade now, and they still wouldn't resurface from hiding.

The 'predictions' preached and espoused by the Y2K

'survivalists' was that when the clock precisely struck 0000
hours on January 1, 2000, everything that ran on computers was
virtually rendered useless. Economies, stock exchanges, banks,
cyberspace (Internet), power grids, other forms of critical
infrastructure, would shut themselves off. Modern jet aircraft,
civilian and military, that ran on computers, would not take
off.

What if military generals and admirals took hold of the Y2K

hysteria? There would have been mass troop and naval deployments
in every corner of their countries to prevent invasions. Jet
fighters of the period that ran on computers, like the F-15, F-
16, F/A-18 would not take off because the Y2K computer bug had
disabled their computer-controlled flight control systems.

In cities and possibly towns across the globe, people would have
scrambled to every food store they could find and loot the food
supplies for survival. There would have been mass bloodshed and
starvation between people untrained in survival skills because
they would have killed each other.

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People's life savings and 401ks would have been eliminated
entirely overnight, because the computer bug had frozen their
bank accounts.

National economies and stock exchanges would have been driven to

the ground overnight, because Y2K killed the computer-based
commodities exchanges.

Y2K 'survivalists' across the world, living in rural areas,

separated from human civilization, would have fared much better
off had the Y2K computer bug did its work...

...BUT Y2K DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!

The events that the Y2K conspiracy theorists envisioned never

came into fruition. Human civilization continued as normal when
the clock struck 0000 hours on January 1, 2000, cities across
the world welcomed in the New Year with 15 minutes of fireworks
displays, the first year of the 3rd millennium A.D.

No civilization collapse, no destroyed national economies, stock

exchanges, foreign invasions, mass starvations, critical
infrastructure shutdowns, loss of 401ks, life savings and frozen
bank accounts, etc.

What did you think about Y2K?

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