Vancouver Courier
for November 1, 1998

You get up on January 1, 2000, perhaps a bit hungover from celebrating the millenium a year early, and you notice the power is off in the house. Shit. Well, what the hell, I’ll make some coffee, and eggs. But the gas is off too. You notice that there’s no evidence of power anywhere in the neighbourhood – you wonder if Charlie and Jane in Richmond are having the same problem. But the phone’s dead too.

You talk it over with your spouse who suggests you get into the car and listen to the radio, after all, it’s battery powered. But you can’t unlock the car. And there’s no water coming out of the tap.

Suddenly you’re conscious of neighbours talking on the street. You go over to speak to them.

It’s happened, you’re told. Starting at midnight computers started crashing all over the world. Don’t go to the store for food, the lineups are around the block and dog food is selling at $50 a can and unless you have the cash, forget it. The credit card machines are down and so is the cash machine. Besides, how would you get there? Your car’s computers are all time reliant too and even if you have an old clunker, here’s hoping you have gas because gas pumps aren’t working. No sense going to the office – assuming you could get there – because not only is the security system not working, neither are the elevators.

And it could happen. Many sane, very rational people are saying it will happen. Some sane, very rational people have build veritable fortresses in the wilderness tightly secured, guns everywhere, and stocked with a year’s food.

No … this isn’t some sci-fi exercise. It’s the January 1, 2000 computer breakdown.

I know nothing about computers except how to use them. For scientific explanations you must go elsewhere. Suffice it to say that when they began to build computers in a big way they decided that to digitilize the entire year they’d just use the last two numbers to save money. It wouldn’t turn up 1.1. 1999 next New Years but 1.1.99. The problem is obvious. Next year it turns up 1.1.00 which is no year at all to the computer.

The ramifications will be many for reasons which I have trouble understanding but one expert told me that we have half a dozen or more computers in our car which will simply grind to a halt at this unprogrammed for event. The problem is worse – it is, according to many experts, too late. There’s the apparently true story about a large telephone company which had a champagne party to celebrate them becoming as they say, y2k, or free of the problem, when a vice president asked, not so innocently, what the hell good was it to have a telephone company that works when there’s no power in the grid?

What are some of the other problems?

Banks will be inoperable. Nothing is done manually anymore and while they have been busy with mergers and computerization of services, their ability to do what they supposed to do may vanish in a nano second.

There will be no fresh food for a couple of reasons. You may be able to overcome refrigeration problems at the store or in your home with a generator, but the large supply houses will not. The food system is almost entirely geared to fresh meat and vegetables and no one will be able to deliver. Canned food will be all that’s available and that only until supplies run out. Canneries are computerized too, you see.

The greatest threat of all is to public safety. There are enough hungry people around now to pose a safety risk – what happens when half your neighbours, who didn’t stock up on canned food, are suddenly very hungry indeed. Worst of all, those houses with food will be known. Fortresses – which in varying degrees will be built – are by their very nature advertising themselves as places one can, taking risks to be sure, get food.

The police? Where do you suppose they’ll be? They’re in the same fix as everyone else and besides, all their call systems depend upon computers.

There will be no pension and welfare checks and when they do start being hand delivered, there’ll be no one capable of cashing them.

And what about hospitals? How do they function without the computer chip?

The trouble is compounded by the fact that instead of fixing this problem over the past 10 years by replacing old chips, we’ve simply piled new bad chips on old ones.

There will be no public transport – no boats or planes.

In much of the world, Asia, Africa, eastern Europe there will be no help available because those who usually help will be themselves helpless.

Scare tactics? Sensationalism? Play it that way if you wish.

But I don’t think so. We’re too late to fix it and very nearly too late to even ameliorate the horrors.