The question is not "will anything happen at rollover and beyond?" The question is "how severe will it be?" My expectation is that we will likely muddle through....however, without a past experience to compare to and with the thousands of possibilities of failures, it would seem prudent to prepare. There is little doubt that the chain that ties commerce and production and utilities ,et al together will have some weak links in it. To me it seems a very big mistake to take this too lightly.

My biggest worry has always been that we are opening the hood of the vehicle that transports us and trying to fix something that isn't broke. This particular engine has been delicately put together and carefully tuned to run only if all of it's parts continue to be nurtured along. If the engine is suddenly being 'fixed' by countless thousands of techs,it makes me wonder if the engine will sputter along out of time or perhaps quit running altogether.Changing billions of lines of code in thousands of computers WILL have a negative effect.

Of course, we know when the engine will break ,so we must attempt to fix it. So logical prudence,in the face of a LARGE unknown,dictates preparation...this isn't rocket science.

Without access to our computer driven technology we would immediately be placed in the worst possible situation. Make no mistake about it. If it goes down and can't be fixed in a VERY short time civil chaos would explode across the nation. People won't sit idly by with no food or heat etc. Don't expect gov't to do anything except to declare martial law and curfews with orders to shoot violators. They would have no choice.

So, before you dismiss the ones who have the vision to see the possibilites of a coming disaster, you might want to step back and ponder where you will be if the lights go out.

-- citizen (lost@sea.com), December 11, 1999

Answers

No matter what happens, we'll "muddle through it," isn't that what we should all expect?

-- Rasty (Rasty@bulldoggg.xcom), December 11, 1999.

Good points citizen.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 11, 1999.

citizen,

In the dark?

(I'm sorry I just couldn't resist being the class clown this morning. The kids won last night. :-) )

me

-- me (me@me.com), December 11, 1999.

I had a vision of how this works. Despite different organizations trying to keep things going, chaos outside the organization infects the operation--plus discouragement slips in bigtime. Discouragement and low morale alone will bring some organizations down when TSHTF. I'm not trying to be negative, just saw how it works--badly.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 11, 1999.