WIth this problem nearing, what are some of the things you all are doing? ARe you panicking.... relaxed.... pessimistic... optimistic... what are your feelings on the situation.

answers to this would help me in my research paper in which i am focusing on how people feel on the upcoming crisis. thank you. Nisha

-- Nisha Kumar (nishak@hotmail.com), April 25, 1999

Answers

Sing with me... Its the end of the world as we know it, its the end of the world as we know it, iiiiiiits the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine......

-- buggie (end@ofthe.world), April 25, 1999.

pretty clear on how to prepare and how much to prepare for y2k, externally and internally,and progress is good, but the real challenge for me has been holding back the darkness that comes from seeing the "clear and present danger" to our liberties that those around me just do not want to deal with. MJ

-- (workshy@eagledesign.com), April 25, 1999.

Optimistically apprehensive at this point. If it wasn't for all of the unknowns and conflicting information...but I doubt we'll never know (nobody really does...that's the interesting part) until the time arrives :-)

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), April 25, 1999.

Oops...forgot to add on thing:

As I said, I'm apprehensively optimistic. When I began preparing early last Summer, I was very concerned about my ability to handle the situation if it gets bad. But now that I have the heavy stuff (the cottage-industry stuff that's getting hard to find) on my list out of the way, I'm more confident that I have a good chance of weathering the unexpected.

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), April 25, 1999.

Nisha I don't worry about Y2K I worry about you. If you want something to research try everything in your life that computers effect and the entities in charge. What if you have no heat, water, its bloody cold outside and you have a member of the family in critical condition in a hospital. How would you feel?

I worry about my dad that is 82 years old and my sister with her family that is in northern Canada. Y2k is something that evolves in your awareness. First you kind of get it and you read a couple of articles. Then you understand it and either face it or avoid it. Y2K is a gamble, rolling the dice of your lifestyle. Will it affect me or not,,, and chuck those dice.

Kind of interesting, just watched a clint movie, Kellys Heroes. Just reminds me of the old saying, Do you feel lucky punk (no offence)

Personally Nisha Y2K is a reality check, I have the trailer, wood stove, propane, lots of methods of lighting, plan on having a hot pot of tea on and reading some Kant or Jung or even Huck Finn if it gets dark and clammy in the house. Plan on helping out at the local food bank if I can. If nothing happens locally I will be doing lots of emails to see how folks are doing. No need to panic if you have a good contingency plan. Assess your risks and prepare. Bennett is right, there is no way to know each individuals risk, it is up to them. "take charge of your own life"

Good luck

-- Brian (imager@ampsc.com), April 25, 1999.

....and "but I doubt we'll never know...

meant to say "ever"...

:::thwaps palm on forehead:::

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), April 25, 1999.

I will sound like business,but I am telling the truth. We are in good shape, it is everyone else that worries me.

-- SCOTTY (BLehman202@aol.com), April 25, 1999.

I am in good shpe, but it is SCOTTY that worries me!

-- Worried (about@SCOTTY.dude), April 25, 1999.

I see it like this:

Either I can spend the last 8 months of my life enjoying myself, and appreciating what little time I might have left, or I can spend the next 8 months fretting and building bunkers and god-knows what else in a vain attempt to survive the impending apocalypse. It might not happen, but it it does I'm not sure I'd want to continue living anyway.

The most scary thing about Y2K is the possibility that the future of the human race will depends on socially retarded selfish paranoid mentally disturbed individuals living in bunkers whose only concern is their own survival. If these predictions are true, then nothing can save us... our response to this predicament has guaranteed our own destruction.

"He who tries to save his life will lose it"... I'm not a particulary spiritual person, but I think this is quite profound. When people become obsessed with nothing but their own survivial they become spiritually dead. I'd rather spend the next 8 months in a state of liberated bliss than slowly kill myself with worry.

I'm off for a coffee with one of my friends -just think- if these Y2K predictions are true: do you really want to live in a post-apocalyptic mess?

-- Matthew (u05mdp@abdn.ac.uk), April 25, 1999.

Reading the above, I found the comment about "post apocalyptic mess" most humorous. Why is it that for some people, all of reality is in black and white? Like either the world is totally going to end, or it's just not worth worrying about. Most of this country is going to be very disappointed when it turns out to be a disaster economically and with supply lines more than anything. (For the rest of the country, it MAY be the armageddon scenario. Who knows.)

How do I feel? Well you see, initially I felt scared, morose, depressed, angry, uncertain. Then I read enough to feel I could at least guess wildly at the 'probabilities,' and could see the various things needed to deal with that. Then I felt overwhelmed, trying to stuff years of knowledge into my head as fast as possible. Then I felt I knew what paths/approaches to take, so I began there. Now I feel reasonably confident that we will probably be fine... on the fairly humongous assumption that either it won't be so bad OR that someone in my neighborhood will get a clue, so when the time comes I won't be the only one with food in my town (which would be the same as having none).

And I thought Y2K effects were horrible and frightening. Then I thought they were just a drag and depressing to think of the corpses. Then I tried to shift perspective to AFTER the immediate effects have passed (to a somewhat smaller population) and thought of all the good things it could actually do for us. Then I spent (and continue to spend) massive money and time and energy, every spare we've got of everything, preparing for Y2K 'just in case.'

Now that I have something invested in it I've decided I don't really mind if it happens and is a really suck-y experience. Humanity goes through these things, and maybe it's time we went through it again, and maybe afterward our populace will be a little more focused on survival, sustainable living, etc. At this point, after eight months of being worried and terrified about it, instead now I am actually going to be pretty darn disappointed if it's no big deal.

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 25, 1999.

Nisha: I'm disappointed.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), April 25, 1999.

Tells us, PNG, what are the extent of your own preparations there in Japan?

-- --- (just@wondering.here), April 25, 1999.

Last November I was REALLY scared. Now I am not so worried. I dont know if its the effective spinning and minimizing of the issue in the media or if its the three months supply of food, water, heat, light, weapons, books, games, toilet paper, medicines, ammo etc etc I have stockpiled that has eased my mind somewhat. Y2K is scary and bad but the threat of it has had the effects of making me a more critical thinker, more self reliant in every way, and galvanizing my community to work together for the common cause of protecting our vulnerable and loved members is nothing but a blessing.

-- hopeful (strongerevery@day.org), April 25, 1999.

Ok.. my original post was a little tongue-in-cheek.. like PNG my main emotion is disappointment. I am afraid.. who wouldn't be?

The problem is that like most people I am part of a society bases on mutual interdependence and specialisation of labour. This society is also based on hope and confidence, on the idea that there is a future related to the present.

I'm a student, I have no income, no property, no indepedent water/ power/food supplies etc. If I had some land(or a garden), a well, generators and everything else needed for self-sufficiency then I would feel a little better about the Y2K problem. I don't have these things, and there isn't really any way I get hold of them in 8 months(neither can my family, my friends, or most people).

I just have to hope that the measures being taken by private-sector banks etc are sufficient to avoid any serious problems. It is in there long-term interest to protect themselves, so I don't doubt the sincerity of their efforts. There _is_ a problem(I'm not _Milne_ fodder). But there isn't a lot that I can do about it, and if _everyone_ suddenly moved towards self-sufficieny it would produce the exact catastrophe/conflict that everyone is predicting.

I've lived in fear of a catastrophe like this all my life, but it hasn't happened _yet_. If someone told me 8 years ago that I'd still be alive today, then I wouldn't have believed them. But I'm here. The abundance of date-dependent embedded systems is horrifying; God knows what might happen.

Like PNG I am disappointed.. like depleted uranium shells, BSE(in the UK) etc etc etc... people should have seen this coming. Arthur C. Clarke wrote about it decades ago.

Y2K has the potential to be very very ugly, but preparing for it is akin to preparing for a nuclear war. There isn't much I can do.. and if I did seal myself off I wouldn't be able to protect myself from thousands of desperate people anyway.

The world won't end with Y2k; it will just become a violent, desperate, rather uncivilised place(it is already in some respects). I just don't see how any individual can protect themselves from something so potentially catastrophic. I just have to hope that it won't happen.

-- Matthew (u05mdp@abdn.ac.uk), April 25, 1999.

I represent a secular,doomster element;it is my OPINION that diruptions will be SEVERE.I do not base that on any world religious view but rether on my own assesment of the information available to everyone,and my own expierience as a personal manager.It's from a management perspective that I base my doom-sayer paradigm.y2k is the largest management task in human history and the largest computer task in human history.business managers do not work well together; they are petty, bickering,lying,insecure people.nation wide,managers of I.T. departments KNOW that their department can't possibly be finished in time,so they lie...every deadline is missed...and yet everything is fine, if you listen to the P.R. people. The stinker of it all,is that if you decide that it's likely enough that there MAY be problems and that you want to take personal preparations,once a certian number of like minded make the same decision,supply lines will not be able to keep up and there will be supply problems.This is happening now with things like water filters,wood burning stoves,and strike-anywhere matches,as well as other things....get informed and start prepairing yourself,don't just assume the welfare state will take care of you.think of life without stocked grocerie stores,running water,banks,or heat.How would you protect yourself from everyone else who did nothing and is now desparate?At my wife's suggestion,we bought guns before anything else.If disruptions are severe,cities will become places of death and disease.assess and prepair,it's the best cure for worry and angst.

-- zoobie (zoob@aol.com), April 25, 1999.

"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Ben Franklin)

"If you believe everything you read, you better not read." (Japanese proverb)

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." (Abraham Lincoln)

"In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for." (Paul Lutus)

"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change." (John A. Simone Sr.)

"Be the change that you want to see in the world." (M. K. Gandhi)

-- zoobie (zoob@aol.com), April 25, 1999.

I thank fate that I am living in the South. I can survive the heat although it may not be confortable. If I lived up north, where I could be without heat and power and below zero temperature, there is no doubt that I would move South, job or not. When will the exodus begin? Will it be January 2000 or sooner? With supply and demand, what will happen to the price of homes north and south? Homes in the north will drop as much as 50 or 80 per cent. Homes in the south could drop 30 % or zero depending on the income of people after the turnover.

-- Tom (curious@bbb.gom), April 25, 1999.

Nisha,

none of the above. I am concerned and preparing. I know God expects each of us to do what we can with what He has made available to us, but that He will provide what is neccessary beyond that point.

Matthew -

many of us are preparing as part of a group or community. You are right in that the survival chances of the lone wolf types are probably fairly low...but not communities...if you hang out here a while you'll see that there are several different sorts of preparers who post on this board...you might consider just what that means for the future.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), April 25, 1999.