Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Ken who wrote (8040)	8/15/1999 11:59:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

OH-watch Ron's response to my ARMY article I just posted!! "Until I hear it from Koskillem's mouth, I won't believe it". Yeah Ken.... Considering you've never put together a military briefing in your life (AND I HAVE), I guess that gives you some form of hidden expertise. Besides, you have the unique ability to take a mundane briefing and derive apocalyptic revelations of martial law from it. One can only imagine what sinister undertones you would derive from classics like Bambi and Ol' Yeller. As for those slides, I've seen that briefing before, but I decided to go through it again to see if they had changed anything. And guess what?? Nothing changed... Nada, Ninguna cosa, nichts..nothing. It's the same old "We're not sure what's going to happen, but we can take a one-time freak incident and try to extrapolate the worst case scenario from it" In fact, I really shouldn't need to respond to your post because they state their uncertainties within that briefing. But for the sake of "doing my Doodie" and deflating your "Doodie Condom" with a necessary "reality slap" to your hysterial ramblings, I guess I'll start here with a few examples from their slides: Nowhere in that briefing have they indicated that the power grid will completely and irreparably fail as you try to claim. Note "bullet #2" in the following slide: cr-iiacfs1.army.mil They are stating that it is unlikely that we will know what will happen until the actual date of transition. Now note this slide where it discusses the actions of "uninformed" people (remarkably it would seem to resemble yourself): cr-iiacfs1.army.mil cr-iiacfs1.army.mil Now let's look at what I considered the most negative slide in that briefing: cr-iiacfs1.army.mil The simply come out and state that 2 "small" contingencies crashed the power grid for all of about 6 days in the worst case. But they fail to explain that the grid crashed during a period of the year where electricity demand was especially high (that was a hot summer as I recall). During winter power demand is often 1/2 that of the summer months. With appropriate public service advisements encouraging people to turn off everything but the most essential of appliances, that demand will likely be even smaller, thus lightening the load on the grid. And that is important Ken... because that blackout occurred due to unexpected instabilities that were produced when a hydro-plant went off-line in Washington State, and a storm caused a tree branch to short out a heavily loaded transmission line, knocking out switchese and circuit breakers all through the HEAVILY LOADED system. All of which caught the power engineers unawares and slow to react, QUITE UNLIKE the events that will occur over the new year when EVERYONE will be watching intensely for any anomaly. Moreover, the military is trained to brief for worst case scenarios, because those are the only kind of scenarios in which they will become involved. There are staff officers who do nothing each day but spend their hours thinking up disaster scenarios that would make your head swim. And then they brief on those scenarios and what operational plans the military should have prepared in case that scenario plays out. They are not making predictions Ken... but briefing on a worst case scenario under which military troops may be required to respond, not to subvert or overthrow our democratic systems, but to render assistance and aid to local authorities. That's a big difference.