Dear Friends,

Jan 1, 2000 will be the first event for which 6 billion people get to celebrate, fight, pray, etc. Would I be wrong to say that it is the first event ever in the history of human kind before the second coming of Christ ofcourse, where all cultures, no matter what religion, gender, waring party will be watching. It will be the first event ever where exhorbitant amounts of people, more than the norm, will flock to downtown urban centers all over the world to celebrate. This in itself will be the biggest threat to civility and the greatest opportunity for any terrorist group to show its abilities. Forget Y2K, this is the real Y2K issue.

Any thoughts.

-- Joe Mathematics (needadate@millennium.com), November 18, 1999

Answers

I agree that there will be a lot of terrorist activity near rollover, but consider (try, please) the regional, factional and ethnic butchery that goes on every other day of the year in our troubled world. If most of the 6 billion do take just a tiny pause to reflect, it'll probably balance out nicely.

Sure, on a personal level, I'm not happy that it might be my or my loved ones that suffer, rather than a faceless refugee in Eastern Europe. But there's not much that I can do about it, so it's really not going to keep me awake.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), November 18, 1999.

Joe,

Hello. Yes, terrorism is a grave concern, and might very well be played out under the guise of a "Y2K glitch". It's hard to tell what will happen though. My guess is that the terrorists would go for a highly visable but "softly" protected target. There could be quite a few of those, considering the number of New Years Eve parties there will be.

When do you think there will be the most terrorist activity: pre- millenium or post-millenium? I'm thinking post-millenium, myself.

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), November 18, 1999.

I believe that a number of events may occur leading up to the big day. Just look at what's gong on with this Egypt air crash mess. Who's telling the truth. You think the FBI is busy now, wait to see what happens over the next few months. There are so many unstable people in this world. Way beyond what we can believe.

Joe

-- Joe (needadate@millennium.com), November 18, 1999.