Apocalypse Then - Remembering the Y2K Hysteria

Pyromaniacs ^ | 1/7/09 | Phil Johnson

[XR7]

xactly ten years ago this week I preached in our church's morning service...It being the first Sunday of 1999, I decided to preach an appropriately forward-looking message on Matthew 6:34 and its context: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

In those days, the evangelical world was at the peak of the Y2K insanity, so I made reference to that issue in my message. At the time, Gary North was operating a heavily-trafficked website that included this:

We've got a problem. It may be the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced. I think it is. At 12 midnight on January 1, 2000 (a Saturday morning), most of the world's mainframe computers will either shut down or begin spewing out bad data. Most of the world's desktop computers will also start spewing out bad data. Tens of millions—possibly hundreds of millions—of pre-programmed computer chips will begin to shut down the systems they automatically control. This will create a nightmare for every area of life, in every region of the industrialized world.

North's Web site had links to more than 3,000 places where you could read similar doom-and-gloom predictions about the Y2K crisis. He grimly told visitors to his Web site that they had better heed these doomsday warnings, or they would certainly regret it.

Today, he admits, "I did not understand the Y2K thing in any sort of detail. I took someone elses [sic] word for it. . . ."

At the time, he was saying:

It took me from early 1992 until late 1996 to come to grips emotionally with the Year 2000 Problem. You had better be a lot faster on the uptake than I was. We're running out of time.

I don't mean that society is running out of time to fix this problem. Society has already run out of time for that. There are not enough programmers to fix it. The technical problems cannot be fixed on a system-wide basis. The Millennium Bug will hit in 2000, no matter what those in authority decide to do now. As a system, the world economy is now beyond the point of no return. So, when I say "we," I mean you and I as individuals. We are running out of time as individuals to evade the falling dominoes . . .. We are facing a breakdown of civilization if the power grid goes down.

(It frankly amused me that a postmillennialist like North, who had frequently derided premillennialists by referring to them as "pessimillennialists" would himself make a career of fear-mongering. But that is just what he has done. So much for the vaunted "optimism" of theonomic postmillennialism.)

In my message that morning a decade ago, I pointed out that the spirit of that kind of panic-mongering was 180 degrees at odds with a whole string of Jesus' commands in Matthew 6:25-33. I mostly just explained the biblical text.

I admit I wasn't prepared for the reaction I got that morning. There was a smallish group of people in the church who were fully into the Y2K hysteria, and they approached me in a phalanx as soon as the service was over. The guy who would have been their spokesman (if his wife hadn't kept interrupting him) was so angry he was red in the face and spitting when he talked. He said he was going to meet with the elders and demand equal time to tell the people of Grace Church they needed to start stockpiling food and preparing for the looming crisis. He likened me to me a holocaust denier.

I stood there and listened to them for ten minutes or so until they began to calm down a bit. I let them talk and did not interrupt, except to ask how they thought Matthew 6:25-34 applied to our society in 1999.

As the spokesdude began to lose some of his steam, he said, "Look: all I know is that if you're wrong, you are guilty of placing the people of our church in mortal jeopardy by not encouraging them to stockpile food and prepare Y2K bunkers. But if I'm wrong, the worst that will happen is that I will have to come back and apologize to you for losing my temper."

"Will you do that?" I asked.

"Of course I would—if it turns out I am wrong," he avowed. "But I am not wrong."

"I will look for you on the first Sunday of the year 2000," I promised.

He moved to a remote part of Idaho that fall because he wanted to be as far as possible from any urban area when all the computers started spewing bad data. One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse. He likewise moved out of state.

Ten years after the fact, not one of that group of Y2K cadets has ever come back and formally acknowledged that they were wrong, much less apologized for the scene they made that morning.

Gary North is now selling doomsday advice for a monthly fee—"approximately the cost of one movie ticket, a large box of popcorn, and a large soft drink per month."

My advice: the popcorn is much healthier for you.

Even if you load it with butter.

Seriously.

[TonyInOhio]

Remember?

I do - I'm a ham radio operator and at the time was Emergency Coordinator for my county. We ran a statewide communications net during the evening of 12/31/99, just in case public radio systems went down.

My hamshack needed tidying, so I was cleaning and moving gear while monitoring the net. All was well until I reached to move a heavy piece of gear, whereupon I felt a twinge of pain in my lower back. The pain went away as Midnight passed, and off to bed I went.

When I awoke, I knew something wasn't right in the lumber region. It was a pinched nerve, and it kept me flat on the floor all day, watching bowl game after bowl game, like a mummy hooked on football. :)

Thus passed Y2K.

[IYAS9YAS]

Younger programmers today, and those yet to be born, will have another Y2K-like opportunity in another 30 years or so.

Please explain for those of us who are not programmers.

[JRandomFreeper]

No one told him a gun and hunting license was required to take critters...

Since when? I've borrowed some of the King's Squirrels here without permission or firearm. And they are Good Eats(tm).

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

The 1970, Jan 1st clock rolls over another bit. Geeks count seconds since Jan 1st, 1970. Yeah... I know... weird... but we're geeks. You expect us to count weekends?

So... anyway, the largest number of seconds that you can display is going to over-run the buffer. Chaos will ensue.

I can fix that problem for you if I can just marry your daughter for a short while until your beer fridge is empty. Seems fair.

/johnny

[Lexinom]

Many computers keep dates stored in seconds since January 1, 1970. The size of the number is typically four bytes, or 32 bits. A bit is a digit of either 0 or 1. (the last bit is the sign bit, unless using unsigned math which cannot be assumed.)

2³¹ seconds (%01111111 11111111 11111111 11111111) from January 1, 1970 is what date?

[stylin19a]

:) yep...we windowed to that year in some apps.

[Lexinom]

Heh :-D

[Augustinian monk]

“One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse”

Yeah, thats the ticket.

[XR7]

“One of the hard-core Y2K aficionados in the group actually left his wife when it came to light that she did not share his fear of the coming apocalypse”

Yeah, thats the ticket.

That's the thing that caught my eye too.
Crazy.
Actually know of a similar situation.

[buccaneer81]

That’s funny. A guy I knew moved out to the Iowa countryside, convinced he could live off deer, pheasants and nuts and berries after Y2K. No one told him a gun and hunting license was required to take critters...

What was he going to do? Wrestle the deer?

[backhoe]

Oh Noes! It's

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Ditto turkeys w/ my .22 Marlin. I shoot the CB cap and they never hear it coming.

[dilvish]

When I got in Y2K discussions with people I used to make them look at the expiration date on my drivers license. AZ had recently switched to DL that expired when you turned 65 which for me and most Arizonans was a date that started with 20. Then I’d say: if ADOT can handle it, which you can see they already have, what makes you think nobody can or has?

Nobody ever had an answer to that. None of them ever admitted they were full of crap after 1/1/00 passed without incident either.

[conservativeharleyguy]

Yeah, for Y2K my neighbors bought closets full of food, and saved hundreds of gallons of water, and generators, and drums of fuel, and blankets, and huge piles of firewood.

I just bought lots of bullets and a mean dog.

There is no wrong reason to buy ammo.

[Dixiekraut]

Yeahhhhh...

Forget Y2K..let’s focus on GLOBAL WARMING!

It’s “series”...could be “hughe”!

:-)

[JRandomFreeper]

What was he going to do? Wrestle the deer?

You'd be amazed at what a pointy stick with a little wrapped twine can do when placed across a game trail.

Just saying...

/johnny

[IYAS9YAS]

I can fix that problem for you if I can just marry your daughter for a short while until your beer fridge is empty. Seems fair.

You'll have to wait 16 and a half years for the marriage. I wouldn't bother, as the beer fridge is defended by Razor wire, 220 volts, and a 64 digit encryption code that fires pepper spray for a wrong entry.

As an afterthought, putting the pepper spray thingy in was a mistake as remembering 64 digits gets difficult after several beers.

[Borges]

By my estimate that’s about 136 years. So subtract the 39 that have passed since 1970 and we have about 97 years to go.

[JRandomFreeper]

So can I have some cardboard and shoe polish to make a "Will code for beer" sign?

/johnny