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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: B.K.Myers who wrote (7451)	7/30/1999 10:56:00 PM
From: B.K.Myers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

Here's Cory's latest WRP. I'm including part of the WRP in this posting, but there is more to this article as well as another article that talks about the 50 – 500 employee businesses lack of Y2K awareness: kiyoinc.com How bad I think it will be... And what you can do about it by Steve Heller, WA0CPP (stheller@koyote.com) I can assume that everyone reading this newsletter takes Y2K seriously. The question, of course, is how bad it will be. I think it is going to be very bad. In fact, the best possible case for which there is any hope is another Great Depression. Why do I say this? Ironically, my main argument for a terrible outcome is based on one of the primary Pollyanna arguments: "They'll work around it. They always do." The key here is not "it", which we all agree is shorthand for "whatever problems arise because of Y2K failures". No, the key is who "they" are: the engineers who keep our industrial infrastructure running. Yes , they do work around it on a regular basis; in fact, that happens every day. But what would happen if these engineers were not available? Who would work around these problems then? I think the answer is obvious: no one. And what would happen to our civilization in that case? The answer to that is just as obvious: i t would cease to function until and unless it were rebuilt. The reason I'm so concerned about a long-term outage of the infrastructure is that I don't believe that most of the engineers will survive very long after rollover. To see why I'm so concerned about this, let's start with what I expect to happen soon after rollover. On January first, there'll be a spike of errors in process control systems that will cause widespread power outages, communication outage s, and other immediate effects. However, some power companies will manage to keep the power on in many places, and many people will breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, this relief will turn out to be premature. Over the next several weeks, breaks in the supply chains to the power companies, primarily fuel supplies, will result in a gradual degradation of the infrastructure. Water treatment plants will run out of supplies, hospitals will stop functioning properly due to lack of drugs and other supplies, and this will be repeated in every industry. The economy will grind to a halt. But the most serious problem, in the north at least, will be frozen pipes. If the power's off for more than a few days in the middle of winter in Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other northern tier cities, th ey'll be devastated by frozen water pipes and sewer line backups. Plague will follow shortly. Most of the inhabitants of the northern cities will die within a matter of a few weeks, from cold, disease, fires started in an attempt to keep warm, or random v iolence. This is bad enough, of course, to qualify as a disaster ranking with the Black Plague, if not the extinction of the dinosaurs. But wait, there's more: Most of the engineers that could actually rebuild the infrastructure, or work around the problems in the remaining infrastructure, live in the cities. If we lose too many of them, we may end up in the sort of devolutionary spiral postulated by Infomagic. Obviously, there's nothing you or I can do to get the engineers to move out of the cities to someplace safer; the information about how bad it might be is widely available on the Internet, not least via this newsletter. If they haven't fig ured out yet, it's not likely they will. more..... B.K.

To: B.K.Myers who wrote (7451)	7/31/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 9818

I concur on the Clorox. I've been known to travel to out-of-the way places where the availability of bottled water is iffy. A while back I visited Angel Falls in Venezuela. It's a wonderful trip, a couple of days up river to the falls, sleeping out in jungle hammocks along the way (and a plot of ground behind the bush for a latrine). The guides/oarsmen always had coolers of Kool-Ade for us to drink, but I never saw anyone bringing in water. I presume they were giving us river water. Despite my discomfort, or perhaps because I didn't want to know, I never asked. Needless to say, I survived the experience. When I got home I did some research and ended up carrying a small bottle of Clorox, carefully packed, when I travel to remote places. The only time I ever used it was in the Wolong province of China, where I drank river water. I survived that experience as well. I think for those whose personal comfort level requires only a modest preparation for the unavailability of water, a jug of Clorox is a reasonable approach. Karen p.s. I recommend Angel Falls to anyone who hasn't been there. The trip upriver winds through dense growth covering mountains that are called tepuis. They look like the mesas in the western U.S. but with vegetation. There are parrot sounds everywhere and wispy clouds among the tepuis. This is the part of the world that inspired Arthur Connan Doyle to write "Lost World." As you drift through, you can almost picture a pterodactyl taking off from one of the cliffs. Cool.