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.

[IYAS9YAS]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Ramius]

It was Y2K that made me finally quit lurking, sign up on FR and make my first post.

The alarmism and just flat plain nuttiness of the Y2K posts during 1999 had driven me nearly to madness. And new year’s eve, 1999 I finally could take it no more. I signed up and posted something... spouting off about how Y2K was all a bunch of hype and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to happen.

Mainly, I think I was merely making sure to be on record *before* 1/1/2000 so that my I-told-ya-so’s would have some shred of credibility. :-)

Granted, it wasn’t *all* hype. There were a great many systems that would have had problems, and that they didn’t is the result of some good work by lots of programmers. But the over-the-top EOTWAWKI blathering was too much.

[XR7]

Y2K was X-42’s (Clinton’s) “bailout” plan for dummies. Some estimate that the Y2K hysteria resulted in trillions of dollars, that would have been otherwise unspent, being spent by the government, businesses, and individuals on Y2K “upgrades” and the associated effect the infusion of all that new spending had on the economy - not to mention the propulsion of Microsoft stock into heights of astronomical values previously unknown. When G.W. Bush took office, everything would have imploded - but then the Golden Goose was discovered: FannieMae and FreddieMac.

[Ouderkirk]

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.

Me in reverse. My now ex-wife believed it all, hook line and sinker. She bought two years worth of MRE's. Stockpiled beans, rice, water, and all that. By the time it was all over, the MRE's, beans and rice were infested with insects and mice.

[dilvish]

We should remember that there was a legitimate bug and had it not been fixed would have caused major problems. A lot of the upgrade money spent was legitimate. Some wasn’t. And of course that golden goose did explode, I’m in tech, remember the dot-com meltdown, a lot of that was Y2K unwind as a lot of companies had bought the system of the future and didn’t need anymore. Sales for many companies suffered dramatically largely because Y2K inflated them.

[IYAS9YAS]

Well, if’n I did it right, January 19, 2038 at 3:21 AM. Think I got all the leap years and the recent leap second in there.

[SamAdams76]

Come to think of it, what ever happened to Jethro Tull? Not the rock band but Freeper who was posting doomsday threads here all through 1998 and 1999. After January 1, 2000, he literally fell off the face of the earth.

[dilvish]

It’s 2038. That’s when the date runs out of ticks. Of course it’s not that hard a fix, they just have to move zero, and it’ll primarily be at the OS level.

[Lexinom]

Bingo!!!

2038bug.com

[COBOL2Java]

Y2K was very profitable for COBOL programmers like me! [Damon Wayans impression] Mo money, mo money!

[Old Professer]

Probably got stuck on one of the chewing gum wads down there.

[IYAS9YAS]

Dang. Right numbers wrong final addition. I added the 7 remaining seconds as minutes. Should have been 01/19/2038 at 3:14:07 AM. I put 3:21 AM.

[wagglebee]

This is why the gloom and doomers are so fond of “global warming,” it isn’t hindered by a pesky expiration date.

[Borges]

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:jethrotull/index?brevity=full;tab=comments

Banned

[Lexinom]

Still dang good. You got to within an hour!

[Publius6961]

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

There.

Updated it. No charge.

[Lee N. Field]

Up next: 2012.

January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT. Watch for it.

[SamAdams76]

I’m not surprised. He was such a charming guy!

[Vroomfondel]

I remember when some fellow called up Art Bell (who had been going on and on about all the food he had bought) and asked him if he had thought to buy cigarettes.

He hadn't.

[XR7]

LOL!
He should’ve bought smokes first.
You can buy a lot of food with cigarettes!