I'm writing this in my room at 12:50 pm, Thursday. There's a drink on the computer next to me; I've just finished lunch (McDs from the one up the road. Foul-tasting and tedious food, but quick and cheap.)

I'm wearing a t-shirt, shorts and runners - down in Sydney it's summer, and it's quite hot. Through my skylight, I see it's getting overcast. Sunny this morning, when I went for my jog.

I'm annoyed. My bank account is in the low three figures, and my girlfriend is in Los Angeles until January 20. LA ranks after Moscow and New York as the third-least place I want to spend y2k in. She'll be at her grandfather's house in Beverley Hills, which is about the first place that looters would go if things went wrong. I'm not pleased with that, and neither is she (although more because she hates her grandfather and hates LA, than because of y2k.)

Fifteen days. Half a month. Less than half a month, to be pedantic. A year ago..

A year ago I'd expected society to be in chaos by now. Bank runs, panic in the streets, canned tuna selling for $15 a tin, the US government cranking out green paper as though it were newsprint. And I'd expected to have a fortune in gold. None of that has eventuated- the y2k business has made enough to pay for my own (minimal) preparations, but hasn't made me a millionaire. Oh, well- time for that later.

No, things are comparatively normal. I wonder if they'll be that way in two weeks. Or in four weeks, mid January? What about in two months, mid February? I suppose we'll see.

Under my bed, I've got sixty litres of water, in bottles. There's sixty kilos of rice (three 20-kilo bags) in my wardrobe, underneath a 24-roll pack of toilet paper. I'm going to go to a gas station and fill a 15-litre can with petrol; I don't own a car, but you never know.

There's two books, the SAS Survival Guide and the SAS Urban Survival Guide, in my shelf. They're big hardbacks by a 20-year veteran named John "Lofty" Wiseman. I got mine together for $35. It's worth it- if you don't own these books, go to any good bookstore and buy `em. They contain all sorts of useful information about distillation, trapping, knots, preparation, manufacture of things.

Behind me is a chest of drawers. Three of the drawers have t-shirts, socks, underwear, that kind of thing in them. One of the others has office supplies and paper. Disks, a couple of printer cartridges, that sort of thing. The two others contain a few rolls of foil; some spare lightglobes, some rubber gloves, torch batteries, candles. I have a hundred candles, which I bought for a total of $10 at a discount store the other day. Also ten cigarette lighters, although God knows why I'd need that many. A kilo of sugar, a kilo of salt, and $30 in 20c coins (I like the feeling of money in my hands, and they could be useful for a bunch of things). There's also a decent compass, a torch -two torches, actually; a main one and a backup- and a dozen tubes of deodorant. Some toothpaste and a spare brush.

In my wardrobe, there's a backpack. It contains a spare pair of shoes, $50 in cash, a towel, a torch with a complete set of batteries, and a first-aid kit. There's also a 1.5 litre bottle of water and a 500g packet of rice. If things get really ugly and I have to split, that bag is ready to go.

So what use do I think will come of all this?

None, I hope. I can't really conceive any circumstances in which I'll be forced to bug out. Everything seems fine. I'll be carrying that bag with me on New Year's Eve, when I'll be out partying (but not drinking- I'm going to keep alert and stay on soft drinks), because I think there's potential danger *anywhere* there are 1.2 million people in a small space (as is expected to be, around the Sydney Harbour foreshores.) If there's a riot or something, or if I have to skedaddle, I'll be ready.

The other stuff.. well, I'm going to keep it on hand until September, when I leave this country. But to be honest, I don't really expect to use it. There's theoretically enough there to keep me alive for two or three months, providing I can distil water safely (given that I have access to Sydney Harbour, and a good GI friend lives in a house 100m from the water, that's probably not an issue; I've got what I need to distil it), but I don't think there'll be a total utility collapse. I'm expecting a 2 or 3. Minor disruptions.

Oil.. I don't know about. I don't drive, so $10/litre petrol wouldn't directly affect me anyway. But I suppose there's not much one can do against a general worldwide depression- if I can't find some way to get rich off it, I'll be in college. But outside of oil, everything seems to be on course to be fine. My preparations are a "just in case" thing. I suppose I should probably buy cat food too, although one of my cats has developed a taste for carrot.

Anyway.. fifteen days and counting.

When I get home on NYD (and I'll be posting here more often in the next few weeks, despite my long absence), it'll probably be about 6 am my time. Which is about 11 am on NYE your time. I'll post a detailed report of what happened, if anything did. If I didn't, I'll post anyway.

Leo

-- Leo (lchampion@dingoblue.net.au), December 15, 1999

Answers

Is it true, as I've heard, that the ratio of women to men in Australia is something like 12 to 1?

-- CD (not@here.com), December 15, 1999.

I'll take a dozen please.

-- for real (for@real.com), December 15, 1999.

> None of that has eventuated

A number of governments leaped in, adding variables into the picture, so it was prevented (delayed) Don't misunderstand why that prediction did not come true. Remember, Australia, Canada, the USA, and the UK did tell their people *PREPARE* and "We'll then be going into a spin as we can't have everyone doing this!" We all saw in early 1999 the heavy boot of spin then come down stopping more people from joining in as the systems were jammed, unbelieveably jammed, just by the few who had been preparing. Remember gold had to be rationed, generators were being rationed, survival food was backed up for endless months ecetera? It was like a big steel door slammed shut behind ourselves. We who had prepared found ourselves in a surreal Twilight Zone rather like a ghost populace. In addition to stopping the jam up, the spins to prevent supply and demand shortages and hyperinflation, was also the fact that the business community monkeied unexpectedly. They found they could milk their systems along with rigging, not preventing the fate of collapse but delaying that coming collapse. All that breakage has now swung to the roll over and beyond. We were supposed to have been through the worst, it would have been staggered, and instead now it is a tital wave of the displaced ahead of us. That means what is ahead will be worse than what was originally predicted.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), December 15, 1999.

LEO, DUDE!! Nice to se ya! Sorry that the biz didn't pan out.

But ya need ta add some Multi-vitamins and some Vitamin-C to yer preps or we'll be callin ya a scurvy lad.

On a more serious note, thanks for updating us. Watch for a rumored new forum where there will be set timezone threads so the folks here can check out the progression. Your contributions from the upside down side of the globe will be appreciated.

CHuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), December 16, 1999.

Are there really a lot of swamps in Australia, like in those Dundee movies? Do the women there like to mudwrestle in them (when alligators are not around, of course)??

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), December 16, 1999.

It's good to hear that at lest one person down under has his bug out bag packed.

-Greybear

-- Got Enough Stuff?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), December 16, 1999.

ComEd (Chicago's elect util) surveyed 30,000 embeds and found a vulnerability rate of 5% (1500).

Showstoppers? Who knows. You may wanna check your util and see if their findings resemble ComEd's.

You take care, big guy, and maybe Mike Taylor can make room for your girl.......................

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), December 16, 1999.

Leo! Good to hear from you again!

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), December 16, 1999.