http://symbolis.com/~gav/y2k/debunking_Jan12_2000/messages/10683.html

In case you missed this Wash. Post story about 2 well-known diehard doomers

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ back to main page ] [ FAQ ]

---

Buddy on January 10, 2000 at 06:49:50:

This was on the front page of the Post Metro section Saturday, Jan. 8. There was a picture in the print edition, but it's not on-line. You really don't want to see it anyway. -buddy

======

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/08/086l-010800-idx.html

Waiting for Doomsday
Unrepentent Prophets Hoard Y2K Supplies--in Case

By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2000; Page B01

Prophecies of dire hardship are hellacious gambles, he knows now. Grave
embarrassment always lurks close at hand for the would-be soothsayer.
Quite publicly for more than a year, Ray Strackbein and his wife, Sally,
warned of Y2K catastrophes: power outages, dead telephones, barren
supermarket shelves and dry gas tanks.

"COMPUTER VIRUS TO INFECT THE WORLD IN 400
DAYS--ASK ME WHY YOU SHOULD CARE," read the banner that
adorned their Reston den for all of 1999.

A veteran computer programmer, Sally Strackbein even wrote and
published a preparedness handbook, "Y2K Kitchen," with tips on
surviving the apocalypse. The couple sat for TV interviews and became
darlings of the local media, telling anyone who would listen of the salvation
to be found in a cache of canned Spam and a good wood-burning stove
like theirs.

"People need to be ready, no matter the government's absurd assurances,"
Sally said fiercely just one week before 2000 dawned.

And then December 31 became January 1, and the Strackbeins'
computers, which worked just fine along with everything else in their
house, hummed with the sarcastic missives of people wanting to know how
they could have been so . . . dead wrong. After a day or two in which, in
Ray's words, "nothing terrible had happened," he strolled over to his home
computer to read a short, mocking e-mail from a former technology
colleague: "Ray, you can come out now."

Angrier correspondents demanded to know why the couple, members of
the Northern Virginia Year 2000 Community Action Group, had scared
others. "Okay, we didn't think it would go like this," 51-year-old Ray says,
managing a brave laugh.

Like other preparedness disciples, he finds himself cast as Chicken Little,
forced to explain why he thought the sky was falling.

The hint of jibes to come struck Strackbein many hours before thousands
watched the Washington Monument light up New Year's Eve, when he
heard on TV that minutes into its new year, Sydney, Australia, was
chugging along perfectly normal.

Something in his own existence went black at that moment. "It was clear
that what we had thought might happen wasn't going to happen,"
Strackbein, former technical chief of a mobile phone service, says slowly.
"It was a complex feeling that I had: You're grateful that bad things aren't
happening to people, but at the same time, you're questioning your
judgment. . . . The total lack of apparent infrastructure problems in Sydney
indicated that this probably wouldn't be a serious event anywhere. How do
I put this? Sure, we were surprised. . . . But you go on."

Others were not so sanguine. The Strackbeins' preparedness allies were
stunned, like prophets anywhere who'd hinged pieces of their self-worth on
a prediction that sprouted into a raison d'etre.

"We're still hearing from some of the people we worked with," says
53-year-old Sally. "Some are in complete shock. These were people who
had put their whole identities on the line and who are now wondering how
they could have done it. I've experienced a bit of that myself the last few
days, like, 'How could I have misjudged things so badly?' "

In recent days, she hasn't touched her 25 cans of Spam, much of which her
19-year-old son will be taking back to college with him along with some of
her bricks of Velveeta. "But we're still holding on to some of it," she
cautions. "We're not going back to a state of unpreparedness. I'm trying to
tell our friends who are feeling bad . . . that at least we got people to raise
preparedness for this and for the future, for whatever happens. We do
have ice storms out here. And there still are people . . . worried about
unforeseeable catastrophes."

Count Melvin Bowers among them. A Virginia Beach golf course
greenskeeper who retired a year ago to devote himself full time to getting
ready for the biblically forecast apocalypse, Bowers continues preparing
for the cataclysm he still believes is coming.

Fearful of water shortages, braced for urban chaos that might spill into the
swamps around his house trailer, the 55-year-old Bowers continues to
siphon rainwater from his gutters, having already amassed 300 gallons in
50-gallon drums. He daily checks his food supply, which includes the peas
and sweet potatoes he grew last summer and enough freeze-dried food to
last an entire year--should he stick to his one-meal-every-other-day
emergency regimen.

"I'm not letting down my guard. I got the handle on it," he says. "This isn't
over, not by a long shot. A computer glitch here and there, and we're in
trouble. . . . Got those South American countries with their
computer-controlled oil pipelines--one mistake with a computer chip and
it's ka-blooey."

During the final week of 1999, Bowers, who lives alone, had announced
that his plans for New Year's Eve would be no different any other night.
Let the world party like heathens; he would be in bed before 8. "I'll read
some Scripture, say my prayers and listen to a little talk-radio," he said.
"I'm ready, even if no else might be. Somebody's going off the grid. A new
world order may be coming."

He awakened on New Year's to a sunny, bountiful day, light snow dusting
the ground. With the lights and refrigerator working in his trailer, and the
world around him lighted with the silvery flickerings of neighbors' TV sets
and whirring appliances, "I was relieved," he said, "but I wasn't too, too,
TOO surprised 'cause nobody said the bad stuff had to come on this one
day. Gotta be ready. Got my guns. I might start hunting again, just in case.
Can't feel safe at least for a year and a half. Protect your stuff, I say.
Especially your food."

The first two days of the new year, he limited himself to a can of peaches
and yogurt.

"I still see this problem coming at us somehow," he says. "I heard there
was a hurricane that just veered off course away from us. . . . If we make it
to 2001, maybe we're safe. I'll keep in touch with Scripture and the
People-in-the-Know. They're all saying, 'Take a look at the whole year,
and don't let the government fool you.' "

Although that message has quieted among mainstream preparedness
advocates, it still resonates with those tending toward conspiratorial
perspectives. Having spent a "nice and peaceful" New Year's at home in
Noxon, Mont., John Trochmann, founder of the Militia of Montana, says
that the current tranquillity might leave the complacent more vulnerable to
horrific Y2K disruptions.

"There is a reason why they have the 'Y' in Y2K," he says. " 'Y' means
'year.' A whole year. We're through only 5 percent of Y2K, which means
95 percent of the possible problems remain. The globalists want you to
believe they've solved it so we'll all shut up, but the glitches could be
waiting, and if they happen, watch out."

All along, Trochmann agrees, people's outlook on Y2K has been a
Rorschach test of sorts: The worried and the indifferent saw what they
wished to see. For some, Y2K merely served as the impetus to do what
they would have done anyway. In Virginia Beach, newly worried of
hurricanes, Melvin Bowers continues gathering his water. Meanwhile, the
Strackbeins are looking at a new angle for Sally's Y2K cookbook--with
its "Beannie Spammie" recipe and Velveeta Reuben sandwiches--which to
date has sold fewer than 40 copies.

"A book reviewer told me I could easily rewrite it as a general
preparedness book," she says happily. "Because you know, there'll be a
use for it someday. Disaster never goes away. A storm's gotta come."

) Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/08/086l-010800-idx.html

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 06, 2000

Answers

http://symbolis.com/~gav/y2k/debunking_Jan12_2000/messages/10686.html\

What a bunch of FREAKING MORONS

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ back to main page ] [ FAQ ]

---

Posted by (209.170.209.85) Doc Paulie on January 10, 2000 at 08:42:58:

In Reply to: In case you missed this Wash. Post story about 2 well-known diehard doomers posted by Buddy on January 10, 2000 at 06:49:50:

Was talking with my significant other just yesterday about a very important indicator ANYONE could have used to understand Y2k would turn out to be the DUD it has. Called the Stock Market.

How is it, armed with the best research equiptment, the brightest minds available, and a literal army of these folks, could those on Wall Street have not SEEN, what a dork COOK in Virginia thought all by her little self she could see? How utterly INSANE does one have to be to BUY THAT?
How could a guy working 40 hours a week on keeping tabs on GM miss this, but a peasant reading TB2000 KNEW? Explain this would someone, please? How irresponsible does one then become to feel the need to broadcast this silliness to the world? The woman still has the crapola sitting on her dumb website, she has backpeddled barely an inch.

The Torchman NAZI even has the balls to say we have a full year ahead of us of Y2k. WHAT? How bout the last 30 you dumb jerk? Even using the CONSULTANTS biased projections, Y2k is way passed half over and we have seen what? ZILCH.

I vote for Congressional Hearings into this Y2k Madness. This time Bennett and co focus on the real issue, not the prep BS, but the seditionist movement that is and was Y2k.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 06, 2000.

Wow. From FREAKING MORONS to NAZIs to SEDITIONISTs all in one page. Good thing it ended when it did. One more paragraph and somebody was in danger of suffering an early death by apoplexy.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), August 06, 2000.

one mistake with a computer chip and it's ka-blooey."

Hoho, that line gave this reformed doomer a good laugh. Ah well, some doomers cannot get a clue and move on, nor it seems can cpr.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), August 06, 2000.

I "moved on" in 1998 when it was evident that enough work was being done to prevent the doom disasters of the Yourdon/North/Hyatt BS school of FICTION.

Now, its clear we know what most of them "are made of" and what their followers/fans/devotees and true believers are.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), August 06, 2000.

I had some business interaction with Sally Strackbein in early 1999 and she came off as a terribly pompous individual regarding her status within the Y2K doomer community. In her case, I suspect the non-event has been very traumatic.

-- Ra (tion@l.1), August 07, 2000.

"In her case, I suspect the non-event has been very traumatic. "

Good. She and every other y2k freak needs to pay for what they tried to do.

I hope her and Stan the Fuckhead both got the shaft right up their stupid assholes!

-- Mr. Blue (fuck@ll.the.freaks), August 07, 2000.

How does one measure a "ka-blooey"?

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), August 07, 2000.

Very carefully.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), August 07, 2000.