Set my computer clock to 12-31-1999 and let 01-01-2000 occur and found that I could operate as normal. Does anyone know if this is a valid test?
Found the following article posted on another SI thread. It is very amusing to see the hype developing to the extent that the Surrey BC fellow identified himself and his stores. Guess that would be a good place to hang out if there is a food supply problem.
ottawacitizen.com
Monday 21 December 1998
Millennial fears drive survivalists underground
The Internet is abuzz with discussions on how to survive the 'millennium bug.' April Lindgren reports.
April Lindgren
The Ottawa Citizen
Rene Johnston, The ottawa Citizen / Bruce Beach is using the Internet to recruit people to join him in this massive underground bunker as part of a Y2K survival community.
Rene Johnston, the Ottawa Citizen / The 10,000-square-foot Ark Two shelter near Orangeville, Ont., consists of a central hallway, left, with several bus-shaped rooms running off it.
Rene Johnston, the Ottawa Citizen / Is one of the air intakes. A Web site describes the shelter as 'a refuge from social disturbance' in the event of millennial chaos.
Ark Two Web Site / A former computer science teacher, Bruce Beach is planning for the worst in the year 2000.
HORNING'S MILLS, Ont. - Bruce Beach is determined not to be among the hungry, cold, desperate hordes rampaging through Canadian cities if life as we know it collapses because of the year 2000 computer glitch.
While others fret over what will happen to essential power, water and transportation networks after Dec. 31, 1999, the 65 -year-old former computer science teacher is planning for the worst. Right now, that means using the Internet to recruit people to join him in the 10,000-square-foot underground bunker he's built near this picturesque hamlet, about 90 kilometres northwest of Toronto.
Mr. Beach originally built his subterranean warren as a nuclear fallout shelter. But these days it's been recast on his Ark Two Web site as "North America's largest and most advanced survival community ... a refuge from social disturbance and a base for the restoration of agriculture" in the event of millennial chaos.
"I get a couple of specific (Internet) inquiries a day, but so far it's largely just talk on the part of people," Mr. Beach says in a telephone interview from Kansas, where he is visiting his 98-year-old mother. He sounds disappointed but resigned. "God loves everyone and makes everything available to everyone. It is up to them to accept it or not."
Mr. Beach's vision for a Y2K survival community of up to 500 people is more grandiose than most. But it is not unique. The Internet is bristling with discussions of how best to survive if the millennial date change causes widespread failure in computers and in the microchips that drive millions of machines and devices. The threat originates from the use of two-digit year dates that would read "00" on midnight Dec. 31, 1999, which could cause computers to shut down or make errors.
There are Web sites on everything from Y2K real estate in out-of-the-way places to mrs.survival.com "for the practical woman who is preparing for an unknown future."
Other sites chronicle mainstream media stories such as recent reports indicating that the federal government has been advised to invoke the Emergencies Act if the millennium bug causes a countrywide disaster.
"I've purchased a hobby farm and I'm planning to fix it up as a place to go if things go bad," says Fred Walter, a thirty-something employee of a computer firm in Waterloo, Ont.
Mr. Walter, who has a master's degree in applied mathematics, is discreetly advertising on the Internet for compatible souls who would like to build their own retreat on his property. The idea is to share in costs and farm work.
Mr. Walter said he made his decision after becoming convinced power companies aren't adequately prepared for Y2K problems. If the electricity network goes down, he argues, homes in large urban centres will be without heat, gasoline pumps won't work, drinking water will become scarce, food will rot, food distribution systems will collapse and life in the big cities will get ugly. A worst-case scenario includes all this plus nuclear disaster if the computers governing a weapons system or nuclear power plant fail.
"I'm not doing this because I want to go back to the land," says Mr. Walter, who grew up poor on a farm. "I'm doing this because I want to have a place to go in case I need it."
Barrie Norman is also looking for a safe retreat in case things fall apart where he lives in suburban Surrey, B.C. He's considering low-priced houses in small towns where the forestry industry has collapsed.
"These small communities will be reasonably safe because they aren't easy to get to ... so the gangs of young men whom I think will be wandering around pillaging at random won't be very likely to be able to get hold of us."
The 51-year-old salesman of first-aid products is already assembling a survival kit. He's got medical supplies, equipment to can and dehydrate food and 125 five-gallon pails of grain stored in his basement.
The grain actually belongs to a friend who doesn't have enough storage space for her Y2K emergency supplies.
Mr. Norman is still calculating how much he needs to buy for himself and his wife.
"This (the Y2K problem) is not the end of the world, but it is definitely going to be the end of a lifestyle," he predicts, pointing to the Internet as his main information source.
Survivalists such as Mr. Walter and Mr. Norman envision a self-sufficient lifestyle that includes cords of wood for wood-burning stoves, fields of produce to fill root cellars, well water and grain stores that can be milled into flour.
Mr. Beach's plan calls upon Ark Two community members to purchase or rent a home or cottage near what he calls the "facility." Then if there is an emergency -- be it civil unrest, nuclear fallout or both -- they have a safe place to go.
Mr. Beach himself lives in a little white house in Horning's Mills, not far from the bunker. A native of Kansas, he settled here after marrying a local woman. Together they've raised five children.
Back in the 1980s, while bemused farmers looked on and infuriated Niagara escarpment authorities worked the courts to try to stop him, Mr. Beach began constructing what was then a nuclear fallout shelter on land owned by his mother-in-law.
He hired contractors to dig a massive hole in the ground, placed about 40 school bus hulks in the hole and then covered everything up with 30 centimetres of reinforced concrete and up to four metres of dirt.
See Survival on page A4
Survival:
Continued from page A3
Around the same time, Mr. Beach also formed Canada's Tomorrow Discovery Corporation to purchase a ship to train young people in underwater research and robotics. In 1986, however, the project went bust and 26 young Canadians were stranded in Chile where the 110-metre ship was being refitted.
The story made headlines as did the fact that Mr. Beach's corporation received $50 million toward the project from the federal government's bungled tax credit program for scientific research. Though the program existed for only about a year, it was so full of loopholes that it cost the federal treasury $4.2 billion before it was canceled.
Mr. Beach says no funds from Canada's Tomorrow were used to construct the bunker. He financed it using his own money, including what he earned working for the corporation, he said recently.
The Ark Two Web site does not solicit money. But Mr. Beach said he recently received a phone call from someone who is offering $1 million to complete work on the shelter.
That might do -- for a start. Less than 13 months before it might be called into service, Ark Two is a dusty, musty, claustrophobic, ramshackle place consisting of a central hallway with bus-shaped rooms running off it. Consistent with the map posted on Mr. Beach's Internet site, there is a kitchen with sinks and stoves. There are furnaces and diesel generators and air intakes and bits and pieces of dental equipment.
But everything looks old and rusty. And lights seem to be a problem: A tour conducted by Mr. Beach's 30-year-old son Bonnar took place in utter darkness except for the weak yellow beam of his flashlight.
The library consists of dusty wooden shelves empty except for a single, dated surgical journal. There are no computers in the computer room, no tools in the tool room, no surgical equipment in the surgery room and no drugs in the caged-in pharmacy.
"We are trying to make provisions," Mr. Beach said noncommittally when asked about supplies.
Y2K expert Joe Boivin believes the survivalists are over-reacting. "No one disputes that the world will see more problems than it has ever seen before," he says. But he predicts only minor disruptions in telephone and power networks, the key services required to fix everything else.
Mr. Boivin says his real fear is that the five per cent of society qualified to deal with Y2K-related difficulties will opt out: "It's in everybody's best interest to discourage folks from running away because if too many of those five per cent are not around on Jan. 1, 2000, then who is going to put it all back together?"
Concern about what's been called the Great Geek Migration reached a feverish pitch this past summer when American computer consultant Ed Yourdon moved from New York to a solar-powered retreat in northern New Mexico. "Y2K is sufficiently worrisome, in my opinion, that I'll make sure my family isn't there (in New York) when the clock rolls over to Jan. 1, 2000," the co-author of the book Time Bomb 2000 wrote on his Web site after he was accused of being a quitter.
Mr. Boivin left his job as director of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's Year 2000 strategy last year to set up the non-profit Global Millennium Foundation. It helps companies and governments deal with the millennium bug.
Mr. Boivin, who now lives in Ottawa, says he has made some preparations of his own. Spooked by the collapse of power and water services during last year's ice storm, he has stocked his apartment with drinking water and food that doesn't need to be cooked.
"This is modest by many standards," he notes. "I know people who have outfitted sailboats and are planning on sailing out into the ocean until the dust has settled, and I know others who are moving into very remote areas."
Mr. Boivin says he examined such options.
"I don't think (survivalists) have entirely done their homework because if things get that bad, it doesn't matter how far away you move, there will always be somebody who will notice the smoke coming from your chimney" and come seeking food and warmth. What's more, he suspects many city slickers "aren't going to last too long" trying to live off the land.
As for the sailboat "I'm not a sailor and I get seasick easily. Also I'd need a pretty large boat to take all the people I care for with me.
"I figure we'd better figure out how to solve this by reducing the number of major problems we have and also getting organized so we can put as much as we can back together after the turn of the century
|
