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

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2269)	7/25/1998 12:29:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

IMPORTANT!! Yardeni on the global food chain yardeni.com (get a pdf reader at adobe.com) 'is there a risk that fertilizer plants might fail as a result of problems with embedded chip systems?'

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2269)	7/25/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

' Specific Exposures in Public Safety In the months leading up to the new century many shortages in products and services were being experienced through a combination of stock piling, manufacturing breakdown or the widespread distribution problem that was hitting many organisations. Many supply chain problems were now being seen, below two examples of specific crisis that were developing in the UK. The availability of human insulin was seriously low by November 1999. The majority of the world's insulin was produced by Denmark's Copendrug who had experienced major production problems from October onwards, related to replacing systems for the year 2000. Tele-Dan is the only national telecomms operator, they had experienced severe problems throughout December and January 2000. Drugsrus the only other UK producer had also found themselves with a break down in their supply chain due to the year 2000 crisis in Brazil which supplied a high percentage of the raw produce. In the UK there are 1,400,000 with diabetes of which up to 345,000 are insulin dependent, in Greater Urbanville 40-50,000 people were affected. Power cuts meant that the effective product life of some of the drugs were reduced. Long term diabetes sufferers are also prone to blindness, liver and kidney failure and amputations. Diabetes conditions in the UK in 1997 accounted for a staggering 8-9% of the entire national health care budget. Complications caused by the breakdown in supply have meant that it is now projected that 9-11% of the entire national budget over the next 20 years. The combination of events over the year 2000 caused this group of people to suffer the worst. The involvement of the emergency services in identifying and distributing supplies was an extremely time consuming but vital exercise. Water Authorities were caught by the sudden and unexplained shortage of chlorine, a vital element in the water purification process. Over the past few years most water companies had operated a just-in-time policy, holding no more than 15 days stock. Investigations later found that a majority of chlorine was held in transit mostly in coastal ports and in the railway system. Some Chlorine was lost because of year 2000 defects in storage facilities. Disruptions to Urbanville's water supply caused more public anguish than other breakdown in infra-structure service. The sheer number of water emergencies around the country meant that the tankering of water, which was used during the Yorkshire drought was not possible. Several water companies were also affected by burst pipes with the combination of power cuts and sharp frost on the 3rd January. Considerable police resource was expended in calming the crisis and identifying the old and frail who were adversely affected. Bottled water was selling at five pounds per litre. The worst event on Urbanville's roads was the failure of the power backup system which affected ventilation in one of Urbanville main tunnels, this caused the death of 26 people through carbon monoxide poisoning. Gas detection systems had not been operating properly at the time. The rescue effort was severely complicated by traffic congestion particularly in the city on the night of the millennium, which badly impacted the emergency services. In an earlier statement the public were given the impression that traffic parking violations would be ignored by the courts due to technological problems, this caused increased problems on Urbanville's roads. The tunnel accident meant that an incident centre was set up locally, although understandbly the facilities were not of the minimum standard required. At least 10,000 anxious people called the emergency services trying to find out information regarding the names of the people affected by the accident, problems with normal communication channels had meant that it was not possible to broadcast an incident telephone number. Despite a last minute government campaign in November 1999 it is estimated that 9% of security and fire alarms were made defective by the arrival of the 00 year. At least 6% of alarms were set off causing chaos at connected emergency systems. Shortly after midnight a decision was made to ignore all system based emergency calls. In some parts of Urbanville the continual sound of alarm bells was instrumental in some orchestrated looting and arsons attacks. This report will not go into further detail as it may be deemed as predijucing the insurance class action against the emergency services. Significant police resource has been tied up over the past year in processing insurance claims, the prosecution of Directors for corporate negligence and individuals for looting and criminal damage. Many people celebrated by lighting bonfires and setting off fireworks, the combination of alcohol and fire caused an incident rate twice as high as Guy Fawkes night. In the period directly after the millennium the lack of communication and information was the greatest concern to the general public, particularly families who were concerned about missing persons stranded in the UK or abroad by the many transportation problems and several international strikes that had started because of working conditions. The first sketchy details of the nuclear explosion in Flamanville were broadcast on the 4th January. The confirmation by the Department of Environment Transport and Regions on the 6th January that the high radioactivity levels existed in some parts of SE England caused widespread concern and a flood of telephone calls to the emergency services. The Home Office in consultation with the emergency services were asked to draw up iodine distribution and evacuation plans by the Prime Minister for several parts of S E England. However, several days later radioactive levels were then considered on the `high side of acceptable' by a government spokesman. By January 10th services were starting to return to some resemblance of normality the stock market and the UK high street banks had re-opened. The main cause for concern was in some of the branches of the foreign banks, many economies were now in ruin in some parts of Europe and the far east. Investors again were very angry and violent scuffles broke out outside several of the banks worst affected. Prison rioting caused by the initial 34 hour powercut led to the military being used at three locations. In containing the trouble the Home Office decided to restrict all prison movement in and out and obviously prevented visitors at all high security prisons, this caused great hostility with the families at the time. The Prison Service also had major problems with their IT systems and those interfacing with the court service. The consequence to the police was a steady build up of remand prisoners in police cells, which were now becoming totally overloaded with people arrested over the millennium period. During January 2000 some of the Police's Criminal Databases were corrupted by a Year 2000 bug. A number of records within the Child Abuse Register were lost with no appropriate backup copy. Some local authorities also lost information from their Child Protection Files because they were unable to perform the remediation in time. Although no more than 50 records were lost, the Police and local authorities came in for a severe reprimand from courts later on in the year when the case against a known child abuser was dropped. ... corp2000.com