Apocalypse Then - Remembering the Y2K Hysteria

Pyromaniacs ^ | 1/7/09 | Phil Johnson

[XR7]

xactly ten years ago this week I preached in our church's morning service...It being the first Sunday of 1999, I decided to preach an appropriately forward-looking message on Matthew 6:34 and its context: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

In those days, the evangelical world was at the peak of the Y2K insanity, so I made reference to that issue in my message. At the time, Gary North was operating a heavily-trafficked website that included this:

We've got a problem. It may be the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced. I think it is. At 12 midnight on January 1, 2000 (a Saturday morning), most of the world's mainframe computers will either shut down or begin spewing out bad data. Most of the world's desktop computers will also start spewing out bad data. Tens of millions—possibly hundreds of millions—of pre-programmed computer chips will begin to shut down the systems they automatically control. This will create a nightmare for every area of life, in every region of the industrialized world.

North's Web site had links to more than 3,000 places where you could read similar doom-and-gloom predictions about the Y2K crisis. He grimly told visitors to his Web site that they had better heed these doomsday warnings, or they would certainly regret it.

Today, he admits, "I did not understand the Y2K thing in any sort of detail. I took someone elses [sic] word for it. . . ."

At the time, he was saying:

It took me from early 1992 until late 1996 to come to grips emotionally with the Year 2000 Problem. You had better be a lot faster on the uptake than I was. We're running out of time.

I don't mean that society is running out of time to fix this problem. Society has already run out of time for that. There are not enough programmers to fix it. The technical problems cannot be fixed on a system-wide basis. The Millennium Bug will hit in 2000, no matter what those in authority decide to do now. As a system, the world economy is now beyond the point of no return. So, when I say "we," I mean you and I as individuals. We are running out of time as individuals to evade the falling dominoes . . .. We are facing a breakdown of civilization if the power grid goes down.

(It frankly amused me that a postmillennialist like North, who had frequently derided premillennialists by referring to them as "pessimillennialists" would himself make a career of fear-mongering. But that is just what he has done. So much for the vaunted "optimism" of theonomic postmillennialism.)

In my message that morning a decade ago, I pointed out that the spirit of that kind of panic-mongering was 180 degrees at odds with a whole string of Jesus' commands in Matthew 6:25-33. I mostly just explained the biblical text.

I admit I wasn't prepared for the reaction I got that morning. There was a smallish group of people in the church who were fully into the Y2K hysteria, and they approached me in a phalanx as soon as the service was over. The guy who would have been their spokesman (if his wife hadn't kept interrupting him) was so angry he was red in the face and spitting when he talked. He said he was going to meet with the elders and demand equal time to tell the people of Grace Church they needed to start stockpiling food and preparing for the looming crisis. He likened me to me a holocaust denier.

I stood there and listened to them for ten minutes or so until they began to calm down a bit. I let them talk and did not interrupt, except to ask how they thought Matthew 6:25-34 applied to our society in 1999.

As the spokesdude began to lose some of his steam, he said, "Look: all I know is that if you're wrong, you are guilty of placing the people of our church in mortal jeopardy by not encouraging them to stockpile food and prepare Y2K bunkers. But if I'm wrong, the worst that will happen is that I will have to come back and apologize to you for losing my temper."

"Will you do that?" I asked.

"Of course I would—if it turns out I am wrong," he avowed. "But I am not wrong."

"I will look for you on the first Sunday of the year 2000," I promised.

He moved to a remote part of Idaho that fall because he wanted to be as far as possible from any urban area when all the computers started spewing bad data. One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse. He likewise moved out of state.

Ten years after the fact, not one of that group of Y2K cadets has ever come back and formally acknowledged that they were wrong, much less apologized for the scene they made that morning.

Gary North is now selling doomsday advice for a monthly fee—"approximately the cost of one movie ticket, a large box of popcorn, and a large soft drink per month."

My advice: the popcorn is much healthier for you.

Even if you load it with butter.

Seriously.

[XR7]

Remember?

[CommieCutter]

Up next: 2012.

[mnehring]

Well, if I where to mirror other doom and gloom predictions that didn't come true.. Y2K just didn't happen yet..

:->

[JRandomFreeper]

Dude... I'm surviving on food that I put away for Y2K. Food stores for the wrong reason are still a good thing.

/johnny

[Tijeras_Slim]

I have 2 pouches of freeze dried chili left, thanks for the meal idea!

[ZX12R]

Up next: 2012.

Indeed. And before that it was the Harmonic Covergence, and before that it was the next ice age, and before that it was the Jupiter Effect, and before that...

[Lexinom]

Younger programmers today, and those yet to be born, will have another Y2K-like opportunity in another 30 years or so.

[Izzy Dunne]

I haven’t heard anybody talk about the Y10K problem.

[Moose4]

Hey, Y2K computer systems remediation gave me a good job for a couple of years. And in fairness, there *was* a problem—although not to the apocalyptic extent North and his ilk predicted. Systems that had to do arithmetic or sorting on dates where the years were stored as two digits might’ve been glitchy and had some weird results, and there would have been inconvenience, but I seriously doubt a doomsday scenario was ever even close to possible.

As it was, most companies I knew about already had their Y2K situations handled well in advance. One large financial company I contracted with was done by the beginning of 1998; the company I worked for when 2000 rolled around was taken care of by the end of first quarter 1999.

}:-)4

[anniegetyourgun]

Ya - why doesn’t everyone realize that all things are the same as always...each day follows the next....sunrise/sunset....nothing has changed in this country....no worries?

[faloi]

Food stores for yourself for the wrong reason are good. Whipping people into a hysteria primarily fueled by the people who have the most to gain from the hysteria (global warming anyone?) because you happen to have bought into it is not a good thing.

[faloi]

Some younger programmers are still trying to figure out leap years, apparently.

[SFR]

I recall that it was around noon and they had first reports from Australia, the announcer said “we now go direct to Sydney, Christie on your cell phone, how does it look, - Christie - everything looks fine, no problems so far -————
and her phone went dead.

[mountainlion]

Up next: 2012.

I vote for 2010.

[Lexinom]

Zune.

[G.Mason]

Thanks for reminding those with selective memories.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That’s funny. A guy I knew moved out to the Iowa countryside, convinced he could live off deer, pheasants and nuts and berries after Y2K. No one told him a gun and hunting license was required to take critters...

[Sig Sauer P220]

I have a greater fear of BHO on 01/20/09, than I had of Y2K.

[expat_panama]

Y2K just didn't happen yet..

--and this proves how very farsighted the Y2K'ers are.

[JRandomFreeper]

1231357314 works for me.

/johnny

[TonyInOhio]

Remember?

I do - I'm a ham radio operator and at the time was Emergency Coordinator for my county. We ran a statewide communications net during the evening of 12/31/99, just in case public radio systems went down.

My hamshack needed tidying, so I was cleaning and moving gear while monitoring the net. All was well until I reached to move a heavy piece of gear, whereupon I felt a twinge of pain in my lower back. The pain went away as Midnight passed, and off to bed I went.

When I awoke, I knew something wasn't right in the lumber region. It was a pinched nerve, and it kept me flat on the floor all day, watching bowl game after bowl game, like a mummy hooked on football. :)

Thus passed Y2K.

[IYAS9YAS]

Younger programmers today, and those yet to be born, will have another Y2K-like opportunity in another 30 years or so.

Please explain for those of us who are not programmers.

[JRandomFreeper]

No one told him a gun and hunting license was required to take critters...

Since when? I've borrowed some of the King's Squirrels here without permission or firearm. And they are Good Eats(tm).

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

The 1970, Jan 1st clock rolls over another bit. Geeks count seconds since Jan 1st, 1970. Yeah... I know... weird... but we're geeks. You expect us to count weekends?

So... anyway, the largest number of seconds that you can display is going to over-run the buffer. Chaos will ensue.

I can fix that problem for you if I can just marry your daughter for a short while until your beer fridge is empty. Seems fair.

/johnny

[Lexinom]

Many computers keep dates stored in seconds since January 1, 1970. The size of the number is typically four bytes, or 32 bits. A bit is a digit of either 0 or 1. (the last bit is the sign bit, unless using unsigned math which cannot be assumed.)

2³¹ seconds (%01111111 11111111 11111111 11111111) from January 1, 1970 is what date?

[stylin19a]

:) yep...we windowed to that year in some apps.

[Lexinom]

Heh :-D

[Augustinian monk]

“One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse”

Yeah, thats the ticket.

[XR7]

“One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse”

Yeah, thats the ticket.

That's the thing that caught my eye too.
Crazy.
Actually know of a similar situation.

[F15Eagle]

agreed

[buccaneer81]

That’s funny. A guy I knew moved out to the Iowa countryside, convinced he could live off deer, pheasants and nuts and berries after Y2K. No one told him a gun and hunting license was required to take critters...

What was he going to do? Wrestle the deer?

[backhoe]

Oh Noes! It's

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Ditto turkeys w/ my .22 Marlin. I shoot the CB cap and they never hear it coming.

[dilvish]

When I got in Y2K discussions with people I used to make them look at the expiration date on my drivers license. AZ had recently switched to DL that expired when you turned 65 which for me and most Arizonans was a date that started with 20. Then I’d say: if ADOT can handle it, which you can see they already have, what makes you think nobody can or has?

Nobody ever had an answer to that. None of them ever admitted they were full of crap after 1/1/00 passed without incident either.

[conservativeharleyguy]

Yeah, for Y2K my neighbors bought closets full of food, and saved hundreds of gallons of water, and generators, and drums of fuel, and blankets, and huge piles of firewood.

I just bought lots of bullets and a mean dog.

There is no wrong reason to buy ammo.

[Dixiekraut]

Yeahhhhh...

Forget Y2K..let’s focus on GLOBAL WARMING!

It’s “series”...could be “hughe”!

:-)

[JRandomFreeper]

What was he going to do? Wrestle the deer?

You'd be amazed at what a pointy stick with a little wrapped twine can do when placed across a game trail.

Just saying...

/johnny

[IYAS9YAS]

I can fix that problem for you if I can just marry your daughter for a short while until your beer fridge is empty. Seems fair.

You'll have to wait 16 and a half years for the marriage. I wouldn't bother, as the beer fridge is defended by Razor wire, 220 volts, and a 64 digit encryption code that fires pepper spray for a wrong entry.

As an afterthought, putting the pepper spray thingy in was a mistake as remembering 64 digits gets difficult after several beers.

[Borges]

By my estimate that’s about 136 years. So subtract the 39 that have passed since 1970 and we have about 97 years to go.

[JRandomFreeper]

So can I have some cardboard and shoe polish to make a "Will code for beer" sign?

/johnny

[IYAS9YAS]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Ramius]

It was Y2K that made me finally quit lurking, sign up on FR and make my first post.

The alarmism and just flat plain nuttiness of the Y2K posts during 1999 had driven me nearly to madness. And new year’s eve, 1999 I finally could take it no more. I signed up and posted something... spouting off about how Y2K was all a bunch of hype and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to happen.

Mainly, I think I was merely making sure to be on record *before* 1/1/2000 so that my I-told-ya-so’s would have some shred of credibility. :-)

Granted, it wasn’t *all* hype. There were a great many systems that would have had problems, and that they didn’t is the result of some good work by lots of programmers. But the over-the-top EOTWAWKI blathering was too much.

[XR7]

Y2K was X-42’s (Clinton’s) “bailout” plan for dummies. Some estimate that the Y2K hysteria resulted in trillions of dollars, that would have been otherwise unspent, being spent by the government, businesses, and individuals on Y2K “upgrades” and the associated effect the infusion of all that new spending had on the economy - not to mention the propulsion of Microsoft stock into heights of astronomical values previously unknown. When G.W. Bush took office, everything would have imploded - but then the Golden Goose was discovered: FannieMae and FreddieMac.

[Ouderkirk]

One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse.

Me in reverse. My now ex-wife believed it all, hook line and sinker. She bought two years worth of MRE's. Stockpiled beans, rice, water, and all that. By the time it was all over, the MRE's, beans and rice were infested with insects and mice.

[dilvish]

We should remember that there was a legitimate bug and had it not been fixed would have caused major problems. A lot of the upgrade money spent was legitimate. Some wasn’t. And of course that golden goose did explode, I’m in tech, remember the dot-com meltdown, a lot of that was Y2K unwind as a lot of companies had bought the system of the future and didn’t need anymore. Sales for many companies suffered dramatically largely because Y2K inflated them.

[IYAS9YAS]

Well, if’n I did it right, January 19, 2038 at 3:21 AM. Think I got all the leap years and the recent leap second in there.

[SamAdams76]

Come to think of it, what ever happened to Jethro Tull? Not the rock band but Freeper who was posting doomsday threads here all through 1998 and 1999. After January 1, 2000, he literally fell off the face of the earth.

[dilvish]

It’s 2038. That’s when the date runs out of ticks. Of course it’s not that hard a fix, they just have to move zero, and it’ll primarily be at the OS level.

[Lexinom]

Bingo!!!

2038bug.com

[COBOL2Java]

Y2K was very profitable for COBOL programmers like me! [Damon Wayans impression] Mo money, mo money!