Chapter 2 - Likely Y2K Scenarios

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My intention here is to summarize a range of plausible Y2K scenarios, using such things as the Washington DC Y2K User Group's scale, as well as Bruce Webster's book, Edward Yardeni's scenarios, etc.

Any others that you think I should include her

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), August 05, 1999

Answers

I'd like to suggest INFOMAGIC but I suspect it would require some rather arcane explanations of such things as Charlotte's Web, Devolutionary Spirial, and something about Going to See the Elephant in Arizona;)



-- Kevin Taylor (Chiam123@aol.com), August 06, 1999.


I thought the Navy War College site and their extrapolations were very enlightening. Isn't that what this all boils down to....wargaming scenarios and 'what ifs"?

Jim Moore aka Lobo

-- James Moore (RiverMystFarm@webtv.net), August 06, 1999.


Perhaps a thoroughly depressed economy. This may just give us an opportunity to pull out of one more readily than we did the last time. Add rationing, etc. The challenges may be two-fold: first rebuilding the infrastructure, then rebuilding the economy.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), August 06, 1999.

Well, it has occurred to me that if possible, y2k related failures are/will be hidden as much as possible, for many different reasons .

So what if the general public never really connects the dots?

Assuming initially the grid stays up, things seem pretty normal, doomers get laughed at...while behind the scenes there is a slow failure taking place. Some things fail in 'wierd & wonderful ways', but the y2k connect is blown off in media to the mass population.

Any spectacular failures are blamed on terrorism...who knows what else, what if most people never GI?

Possible?

How to really address a problem that doesn't exist, at least to the masses?

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.


It seems that you're positing a degree of top-down control over our information channels that would be very hard to maintain. Certainly the __actual__ cause of Y2K-related problems would trickle out of the corporate and government bureaucracies. Executives and PR-flacks would be caught looking very foolish if not downright crooked for trying to put the blame on non-Y2k-related causes.

-- Alan Locklear (locklear@email.com), August 06, 1999.


Allan, Y'all underestimate the power of a lawyer who smells a lack of due diligence, or a defense lawyer who has to cover his corp's a$$ over due diligence. NOTHING is too far out for the defense.

CHuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), August 06, 1999.


I suspect that everyone will get it. All those brother in laws that sell computers at Sears that "told me its nothing but a hoax" will be telling me that" they knew it was going to happen like this". Especially those brother in laws that now have no job!!

Taz...who has never fogotten how to hoe corn!

-- Taz (Tassie@aol.com), August 06, 1999.


Ed,

I don't think it is sufficient to just cover anything Devolutionary in the Last chapter. The possibility that anything in the Range of an eight or a nine could promote a spiral in other areas of the World is nearly tangible. This is in fact something that is VERY Plausible. We may not see evidence of that here in the States, but the possibility exists if you are in Rural areas that are dependent on; JIT for their Food, Electricity, and Gas, and Water. I'm not advocating Chaos for the Masses. I just believe the Dependence is so prevalent that "isolated" pockets of "Devolutionary" pressures will be found most likely in the rural and perhaps even inner cities, though much less likely.

What will need to be done in the event we see "Devolution" in areas in the world? Is culture and society too strong for an animalistic survival mentality to prevail? How much dehumanization can a culture withstand before it ceases to resemble rational thought? How much disease can a society withstand and still be productive, healthy, reproductive, and contribute to it's survival?

You need anything else?

Heck, I could write a Tome myself.

Father

-- Thomas G. Hale (hale.tg@att.net), August 06, 1999.


Guess I'm getting too old and cynical; I tend to agree with Deborah that few people will make the "connection" between the disruptions and the cause (y2k). And I suspect that their "leaders" will do all in their power to shift the blame elsewhere for whatever happens. Wonder how the historians will write this up?

-- Norm Harrold (nharrold@tymewyse.com), August 06, 1999.

Insurance companies have lawyers too and investigators...and Y2K exclusions in many of their policies. If I were them, I'd try to make EVERYthing look like a millennium bug bite.

Hallyx

"The truth would become more popular if it were not always stating ugly facts." ---Henry S. Haskins

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), August 06, 1999.



True,that is one possible problem with the pre roll-over legislation. Any study of Y2k Scenarios has to include the save themselves legislation and the varying motives for same.

-- (y2kfallback@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

"Any spectacular failures are blamed on terrorism...who knows what else"

"And I suspect that their "leaders" will do all in their power to shift the blame elsewhere for whatever happens. Wonder how the historians will write this up?"

Below from Don McAlvany: Reuters: "FBI Director Louis Freeh's warned Thursday that right-wing extremists, religious cults or apocalyptic groups could turn to violence to fulfill their prophecies of Armageddon as the year 2000 approaches...he discussed at length 'a disturbing trend' toward the pseudo-religion of Christian Identity - and other hate philosophies...'Many of those who believe in this credo are engaged in survivalist and paramilitary training, storing foodstuffs and supplies and caching weapons and ammunition.' " (McAlvany) "The political left appears to be setting a giant trap which it plans to spring on the right over the next 6 to 12 months (or sooner), and "Millennial madness" and the "Y2K fanatics" will be blamed. Watchfor the growing use of the terms "cultist," "racist," "terrorist," and "hate" to be used against the religious right and those advocating preparations for Y2K."

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), August 06, 1999.


So... a chapter documenting and recapitulating the government's negligence and duplicity?

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), August 06, 1999.

In general conversations these days, most of my acquaintances agree with the assumption that, while the US may make it, the rest of the world will have serious problems.

This will impact our ability to import the huge quantities of products and materials that sustain our standard of living. What will life be like without cheap Chinese tennis shoes, or cheap Middle East Oil, or cheap anything?

-- John Zoltai (jtz@lanl.gov), August 06, 1999.


Hallyx you make a very good point.

Mumsie,

This is pretty much the 'who knows what else' I was referring to. Can everyone imagine trying to sort out this mess during an emergency? Will the bad guys wear black hats? (kidding, ha ha )

Also LOL on the chapter on gov.

John,

I have thought about this as well, Can you not iagine the wrath of certain nations against the 'Great Satan' for infecting them with this evil technology??

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.



This is not in the vein of the other responses, so maybe I am off topic, but have you read THE POSTMAN (the movie was crap; the BOOK was thought provoking)? People behaving badly made things worse than they ever needed to get, i.e., food riots that destroyed grocery warehouses and distribution security, etc., so that recovery could never get a foothold. Pockets of order and community developed where people were behaving cooperatively and democratically. POSTMAN was at 10 scenario, because that degree of severity developed as a result of how people responded to the earlier, lower levels of difficulty.

-- Kristi (KsaintA@aol.com), August 06, 1999.

I suspect that the world we rebuild will be very much like the world we have now in many ways. We did not get here by accident. We have JIT because it pays. When HDY2K has been fixed, JIT will again pay. In a highly competitive world, the economic edge counts heavily. To the best of my knowledge, we humans have never truly learned a lesson on the first spanking (where did I hear that?).

I would not be surprised by a renewed emphasis on morality and personal integrity. Many have suggested this and I think it is probable. The spirit of the American Enlightenment runs very deep in us.

In the meantime, I expect things to get very ugly. Too many people do not know how to take care of themselves and do not want to learn,e.g., people dying from summer heat because they will not wipe themselves down with a wet cloth to cool off.

As a programmer, I am concerned with the effect the public reaction will have on my line of work. We still have to complete the Y2K fix and maybe repair the hash that has been make of remediation. This COBOL code is going to be with us for a long time. I am assuming we will keep our computers because of the competitive advantage they provide. I anticipate a programmer's code of ethics with real teeth. We will probably have a requirement for demonstrated competence before we can touch a computer again (this has also been suggeted by others, of course).

-- James Moyer (jwmoyer@airmail.net), August 10, 1999.


As part of my graduate research, I stumbled upon the "The Theory of Dissapative Structures" by Ilya Prigogine. I think the theory can give us a sound base by which to predict possible y2k induced failures in our economy and infra-structure. Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel prize in chemistry. A dissapative structure can be described as an "open system" ie... one that is continuously exchanging energy with the environment. Prigogine gave a striking example: Human Cities. Cities take in energy from surrounding areas (power, raw materials, food, etc), transform it in factories and businesses, and return energy to the environment. Cities (one can insert: counties, countries, nations, or the world) are maintained by a continuous dissipation (consumption) of energy. Another example: just as water moves into a whirlpool and also creates it at the same time, energy flows through and simultaneously forms the dissapative structures (city, nations, etc)). The more complex (interconnected) the system, the more it needs energy to maintain all the connections in that system. We can then say that the dissapative structure (city) is vulnerable to internal fluctuations. Dissipative structures are therefore described as being "far from equilbrium" (In science equilbrium is not equal to balance, the term really describes the random dispersal of energy. A simple example: in chemistry, when equlibrium is reached in a chemical reaction, the reaction stops and some or all of the reagents are used up.) A key point is that the "connections" can only be sustained by a flow of energy (materials, resources), thus the system is dynamic. Prigogine further described dissipative structures as a paradox: the more intricately connected the structure, the more unstable it is. (Believe me, Prigogine describes all this in some very complex and elegant mathematics!) The constant movement of energy through the system results in fluctuations. If those fluctuations are minor, the system can damp them down and they do not alter the system's structural integrity. However if the fluctuations reach a key critical size, they "preturb" the system. This creates an increase in the number of new interactions within it, thus causing chaos in the dissipative structure (city, nation, etc). These shifts can be sudden and nonlinear, with multiple factors acting on each other at once. Keystone fluctuations (like electricity, oil, raw materials, other key resouces) in a SMALL group can completely change the behavior of the system.

What the heck is my point? When we talk about problems that may occur due to loss of power, services, riots, stock market crashes, bank runs, etc we generally discount the effects international fluctuations. That is because most people have no idea how energy and raw materials flow throughout the "global" system. We are at a point where if you (ie business, nation) are not at the testing phase, you are probably are in for a rocky ride in Nov, Dec, and Jan. How many disruptions are needed to cause a serious pertubation to the global system? Who knows! But my point is that it probably won't take many to really cause havoc, especially in those societies who are seemly stable at the surface but are extremely complex (interconnected) structurally.

-- MMireles (red_drum@msn.com), August 10, 1999.


Fascinating post, MMiriles. Thanks.

But I had a comment in regard to Kristi's mention of the book, THE POSTMAN (which I didn't read, but I did see the moviei).

She said: >>People behaving badly made things worse than they ever needed to get, i.e., food riots that destroyed grocery warehouses and distribution security, etc., so that recovery could never get a foothold. <<

One of my greatest fears relative to the government's lack of leadership and general gutlessness is the unbridled rage that I think is likely on the part of possibly millions of people at having been duped, misled and lied to all this time.

I keep thinking about how some will feel who bought the company line about 3 days of food and water as if for a winter storm -- and did little or nothing beyond that to prepare. At the end of that 3 days (or 2 weeks -- it matters little), many, I believe, will feel they have nothing left to lose. What else can be lost when hope has run out, when there are no other options left if things are really bad, or WHERE things are really bad relative to goods and supplies?

The sense of betrayal (by govt, corporations and *society* at large) will be immeasurable and the rage, for some, uncontainable. I have said before, I fully expect some people to die of shock, and others from grief and broken hearts. I expect there to be suicides, and I expect that there will be murders and other violence (rioting, vandalism, etc.) as vehicles for expressing the rage. Again -- for some, there will be nothing left to lose by behaving in such a way, especially those who have marginal *impulse control* or marginal lives to begin with.

Ultimately, government will be massively distrusted, probably for generations. Technology too. It's popular today to talk about *personal responsibility.* After the fall, there will be no need to promote such a philosophy -- people won't put their trust in anyone but themselves and their VERY local communities (when communities actually form).

If things are bad enough that the federal government and local and state governments collapse, our form of government will change drastically, forever. It would take a very long time for centralized government to be trusted in any way.

Patricia

-- Patricia (psanthuff@mindspring.com), August 12, 1999.


I have some comments on Chapter 2.

>> As noted earlier, I've decided not to focus much attention on the TEOTWAWKI scenario of level-10 in Table 1, for the same reason I've ignored level-0. If indeed we have a collapse of the economy, a collapse of the US government, combined with a long-term (> 1 year) shutdown of the infrastructure and widespread social chaos, it will be a whole new ball game. I can't avoid devoting one chapter to this worst-case scenario, at the end of the book, but it won't be considered throughout the bulk of our discussion. <<

First, your reason for not discussing Level 10 is not at all clear. You said Level 0 wasn't worth talking about -- that can't be true of a Level 10 event.

Further, I think if there's a chance that could happen (and there is), it's all the more impotant to talk about, there's all the more need for SOME people (your readers) to have had the chance to think things through a bit and discuss them with others, pragmatically yet hopefully.

Finally, every time I myself start to dip into denial (soooooo seductive it is to want to believe nothing really bad will happen, that we won't lose *all this*), all I have to do is remind myself that the global supply line vulnerability alone is enough to give us a 30's style Depression. With most of the rest of the world behind us, and shipping and oil countries / production in trouble, that seems simply inevitable to me. I'm not exactly suggesting you don't discuss a moderate scenario, but I do think it's relatively pointless.

As much of a doomer as I guess I am (and I see nothing to credibly persuade me from that position in the daily Y2K news), I was still startled to see in your introduction that a 10-level event could require up to a CENTURY to rebuiild from. (I dislike the word, and idea, of rebuilding because I think we'll go off in completely different directions from where we are now -- the future will look nothing like the present, and that it's nearishgted folly and wishful thinking to imagine otherwise.)

Patricia

-- Patricia (psanthuff@mindspring.com), August 12, 1999.


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