Public Panic? Don't make me laugh!!

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Action 2000, the U.K government sponsored body, are to circulate a booklet at the beginning of November to every home in Britain. The purpose of this exercise is to "Quell public panic"!!!! Most people I speak to don't even know what it is, and if they do they just think it means their toaster is about to blow up!! It is more likely to cause panic. At least your lot over there are talking about it.

-- liz (thehalletts@bigfoot.com), October 08, 1999

Answers

Sorry,I meant to say over there in the U.S.

-- liz (thehalletts@bigfoot.com), October 08, 1999.

Whats shocks me is the number of people saying its the medias fault for causing all the "panic".

What panic?.

The media just keeps repeating the same "ON TRACK" message and making jokes out of Y2k. I have never heard a single Y2K media message that scared anyone into stocking up or doing a bank run.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), October 08, 1999.


Actually, Liz, very few people here are talking about Y2K, and if they do, the listeners roll their eyes. The government here, in not mentioning Y2K to any great extent, has done a very good job in making preparers look like fools. There are infrequent public meetings with public relations experts talking about why the lights will be on next January, and frequent little brochures in our utility bills telling us to leave our money in the bank. I have met very few people here who have even a slight understanding of what Y2K really is.

-- Ann M. (hismckids@aol.com), October 08, 1999.

It's the old, "wake up and take this sleeping pill" syndrome the hospitals are guilty of. After you hear "don't panic, don't panic" enough times, some of the sheeple are going to stir and wonder why are these folks so worried that I'm gonna panic? When they start to dig beneath the surface for information, and realize it's too late to do anything, they will panic.

The rest will just go "dahhhhhh, OK,"

-- Bill (bill@tinfoil.com), October 08, 1999.


There is no awareness here, Liz. It's a diverse population. I got my hair cut by a woman from Tashkent. She had no idea what I was talking about. Her colleague, probably from Bengaladesh, was aware that you have to store food and maybe take your money from the bank. The very sophisticated East Village types selling coffee beans felt that nothing is going to happen--the programmers will fix it because they have to. That was my day...

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), October 08, 1999.


This is funny. Everything in this forum repeats itself eventually, sometimes with a symmetric spin. There were threads on this forum over one year ago praising the UK gov for being so forthright and upfront about the possible seriousness of yk2, compared to US. More and more I'm seeing "one year ago" repeat threads on this forum, such as the recent one about "the machine stops" and many others. At least this one is a mirror image.

-- Ct Vronsky (vronsky@anna.lit), October 08, 1999.

Actually, if you follow y2knewswire.com, there are many mainstream media groups reporting negative news on Y2K now. CNN is one of them. It wont get to the panic stage until you see it happening on the TV stations though, which it is not, of course. Lots of print news, and very little TV news.

I figure that will be mid November, December. It feels like the calm before the storm to me. Anyone else?

-- Cory Hill (coryh@strategic-services.net), October 08, 1999.


Every single prediction I have had made in the past about when people would start to wake up has been wrong. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if it was 11:00 pm on Dec. 31 and still there was no panic.

-- Jean Shift (jean@aol.com), October 08, 1999.

Folks are never going to get Y2K till Hollywood is a GI

-- Brian (imager@home.com), October 08, 1999.

People might not panic. They might just die in 2000.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), October 08, 1999.


To answer this question with another one: How long before a hurricane do most people start to really prepare? A. 24-72 hours. It will probably be about the same for Y2K...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 08, 1999.

Somebody last year posted an acute observation:

... they'll die in their chairs, facing the TV, waiting for the power to come back on

-- Count Vronsky (vronsky@anna.lit), October 08, 1999.


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