C U R R E N T F E A T U R E S T O R Y by the Editors at ReligionToday.com
September 17, 1998
Y2K: The worldwide computer crash
Bob Rutz and his wife are leaving Southern California. They're afraid that the Y2K computer crash on Jan. 1, 2000, will cause power outages and anarchy. The Rutzes are building a Christian community called Prayer Lake in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, and hope to take 100 families with them.
..."I look at it as Judgment Day," said Rutz, 66, an engineer. "Instead of putting up the barricades and piling up the bodies, we've got to minister to those hurting people down the road."
...To err is human, but to really mess up you need a computer, the saying goes. As the year 2000 approaches, that's what a lot of people are worried about.
...Y2K, also known as the millennium bug, is the name for the now-famous programming glitch that has left millions of computers around the world unable to recognize dates beyond 1999. On Jan. 1, 2000, computers that have not been fixed, or made "Y2K compliant," will begin running amok, automatically shutting down or
producing bad data, causing malfunctions in the systems they control.
...What happens next is uncertain. The most extreme scenarios picture computer failures that short-circuit the nation's electric power grid, cause havoc in transportation systems, banking and finance, healthcare, government, and telephone systems, cripple the economy, and bring on food shortages and anarchy.
...Most people who read the newspapers or watch television are confused. Should they expect the world to go down in flames or merely be prepared for some annoying personal discomfort? Most regard Y2K with mild to moderate anxiety, and some are making modest contingency plans in case of shortages, such as buying propane heaters and stocking up on several months of canned food and bottled water.
...No one can say how long such shortages would last or how severe they would be, but the mail-order survival-supplies business is booming. President Clinton warned the country in July about Y2K's potential dangers, saying there is no need to panic but that business and government must prepare for problems. Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) heads the federal government's Year 2000 preparedness committee.
...The United States is the world leader in fixing its problems, with a few other nations, including Australia, Canada, and Great Britain, close behind. Other countries in Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia, which already is in the midst of a serious economic crisis, lag in preparedness.
...Y2K, to whatever extent, is guaranteed to happen. Digital devices, which are subject to the millennium bug, are present in every nook and cranny of life. The problem is worldwide and so enormous that there is not
enough time to fix it completely. The extent of disruptions will depend on how many computer bugs -- in everything from PCs to water-treatment plants and nuclear power plants -- can be detected and fixed before Jan. 1, 2000. Some can be fixed easily, while others contain "embedded" microchips that must be replaced because the computer codes are "burned" into them.
...A flourishing subculture, including a number of professed Christians, is predicting drastic, even apocalyptic, changes. Some are stockpiling food and water, buying guns, and heading for the hills.
...The Y2K angst is mounting. Will electric systems shut down and blackouts result? What will happen when businesses can't depend on their financial records to bill customers, and if government benefit checks aren't issued properly? What if computers freeze up in railroads, elevators, factories, oil rigs, power plants, telephone
systems, military communications, air traffic control systems, automated teller machines, security systems, and home thermostats?
...Will there be a domino effect? Will shutdowns to key factory equipment cause layoffs and slow the economy? What if bank records are faulty? What if businesses sue the companies that provided them with
software or embedded chips that malfunction because of Y2K, creating a tremendous volume of lawsuits?
..."I'm becoming increasingly worried about the ripple effect of problems that will be difficult to anticipate, and almost impossible to avoid," says Ed Yourdon, a mainframe computer programmer who has written two dozen books on programming, including Time Bomb 2000 (Regency Publishing). Yourdon, a widely quoted Y2K pessimist, and his wife, Jennifer, recently sold their New York City apartment and moved to the mountains of Taos, N.M. He estimates that 100,000 people in the United States are preparing for catastrophic events by
doing everything from storing supplies to forming militias.
...Yourdon expects many deaths from hypothermia and starvation or in civil unrest resulting after industrial shutdown, a stock market crash, and food riots. "It won't be the end of civilization, but the year-2000 problem could indeed trigger a depression on the scale of the Great Depression in the U.S. during the 1930s," Yourdon says. He is warning computer programmers who are busy fixing the problem to leave their city jobs and head for safer places before Jan. 1, 2000.
...John Baace of Gartner Research Group in Scottsdale, Ariz., which has studied the problem since 1989, says half of the companies around the world will experience disruptions of their operations. "We stand on the
threshold of a unpredictable and uncertain future," he told the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee May 7. "No one is completely sure what impact this year 2000 problem will have on us personally, on the economy, or on society in general."
...Occurrence of Y2K at the turn of the century has caused some to expect a millennial doomsday. The more extreme Y2K survivalists are whipping up hysteria and hunkering down in desolate locations in Oklahoma and Arkansas, far from cities, where they can store and grow food without fighting off hungry neighbors. Some are outfitting caves with survival products and hand-cranked radios. The Cassandra Project, an online resource guide, has classified ads full of people looking for houses in the mountains or hoping to start a Y2K community.
...Extreme pessimists call it TEOTWAWKI (tee-OH-tawa-kee): The End of the World as We Know It. One such person is Bryan Elder, 32, who was a marketing major at the University of Arkansas and ran a hydraulic service company until he began studying biblical prophesies and other "spiritual texts" a few years ago. He is preparing for TEOTWAWKI, planning to live in a cave near Cassville, Mo., that accommodates 125 people for as long as seven years, he told The Dallas Morning News. Elder also is expecting nuclear war, bombardment by asteroids, incineration by solar windstorm, and the flip-flop of the North and South Poles.
...Others are somewhat less radical, but still very concerned. Gary North, a prominent figure in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which advocates using biblical law to govern the United States, is regarded by some as the Paul Revere of the Y2K movement. North, who has a doctorate in history, calls Y2K "the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced." He has moved from Tyler, Texas, to northern Arkansas, which offers solitude to separatists.
..."Everything is tied together by computers," North says. "If the computers go down or can no longer be trusted, everything falls apart. And it matters not a whit to the computers whether we accept this fact or not. They do what they've been programmed to do." |
