I remember the Y2K hoax
As one who managed Y2K projects in the utility industry, let me be the first to tell you it was no hoax. If we had not marshaled the industry and spent huge amounts of money fixing the problem 1995 to 1999, you WOULD have been in the dark for a long time. It was very real. The reason you didn’t experience anything is hundreds of thousands of professionals in every industry worked diligently to fix the systems prior to the big day. BTW, thank you for paying for that big project — its cost was buried in every good and service you bought.
Now, can you get back on topic, UB355? The topic is CW II, not Y2K.
Thanks for posting, vannrox. Good and thoughtful article. Regarding his “steps that will lead to actual civil war,” #6 (”People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology”) really resonated with me. My wife and I are absolutely disgusted with California and bought a house in Northern Idaho for many reasons. His #6 was a factor in our decision.
Wasnt a hoax. The reason nothing happened was that the problem was addressed before hand. I was one of those addressing the problem.
What do you mean “hoax”
I have been in this bunker for 19 years.
Can I come out now???
As a career Info Tech person - Y@K forced us to fix all of our systems and give them a good over haul tune up that I feel the zenith of computer reliability was 1998-1999.
Things have been down hill ever since. Rapid Application Development methodologies result in systems that were not tested to consider all possible outcomes, hence they fail and people (user group) have grown to expect that machines die, re-boot, won’t down load, won’t let you enter correct data.
Cheap hardware has given us more storage and faster machines, but resulted in bloated software that runs slower than 20 years ago.
Y2K was not a hoax, but the possible negative outcomes of the design flaw of a 2 year date were significantly over blown and hyped by hardware, software & services vendors. The problem was always going to basically be that your 3-year report was not going to sort right. Or grabbing 3 years of data was going to struggle for a few years till the 1990s aged out and they have now, so we could go back to 2 year dates if we felt like it.
Y2K got me pretty good. When I went to reset the calendar in the computer, I mistakenly typed in 1900 instead of 2000. Within a few days I started getting spam from the Committee to Re-Elect Calvin Coolidge, porn shots of President Harding boinking his secret girlfriends, and investment advice from David Sarnoff.
I’d fix it, but the investment advice has been fantastic. I’m making money hand over fist, although I’m leveraged up to my eyeballs.