Forward, Thanks to Tom Atlee:
NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, November 1, 1998
Copyright 1998 Washington Post Writers Group
YEAR 2000 COMPUTER EMERGENCY:
DEADLY SERIOUS TEST OF AMERICA
By Neal R. Peirce
Head for a cabin in the hills with your Winchester, a stock of
dehydrated food, bottled water and your own gasoline-powered generator?
Or work with your neighbors to set up an emergency shelter, perhaps in
a local school or church, where folks could retreat for warmth, light
and food in case grievous emergencies develop?
That's the stark choice that the millennium bug -- the prospect of
computers and embedded memory chips unable to recognize a four-digit
year, going haywire on Jan. 1, 2000 -- may present to Americans. From
the people who know computer systems -- programmers, engineers,
government and business experts -- there's now a rising crescendo of
warnings about potentially grave Year 2000 ("Y2K") problems. At best we
can expect isolated equipment failures -- traffic lights malfunctioning
or short-term local power blackouts, for example. But wholesale
breakdowns could well occur: Longer electrical, gas and water supply
cutoffs. Phone systems inoperative. Fuel and heating oil shortages.
Failed rail and trucking networks, making it impossible for
supermarkets to restock their shelves.
The impact at the grassroots, in our everyday lives, could be profound.
In the words of Michael Hyatt, author of The Millennium Bug, "In
previous generations, emergency preparedness was a way of life. No one
was seduced by the myth of continuity'; everyone assumed that life
would be periodically interrupted by crises. But many of
us--particularly those of us who are baby boomers--have never really
had to face a widespread social crisis. War, famine and pestilence are
outside our realm of first-hand experience." When he was a boy in rural
Nebraska, Hyatt recalls, people had a storm shelter and a pantry for
protection against tornadoes and severe blizzards. And neighbor was
always ready to help neighbor. Yet now news reports indicate a growing
body of Y2K survivalists, people laying in supplies of fuel and canned
food and generators, planning a retreat into their homes -- or cabins
in the woods. It's an alarming trend, suggests my colleague Curtis
Johnson, chair of the Metropolitan Council in Minneapolis-St. Paul: "If
this event drives us into deeper behavior of individualism, if our
mentality is that every house is its own Y2K fortress and my neighbor
be damned, it will be as serious a calamity as any technological
failure."
The heartening news is that from the grassroots up, hundreds of local
groups are already organizing to raise Y2K awareness and explore how
whole communities can collaborate to weather even a period of severe
crisis. The Denver-based Cassandra Project, one of dozens of Y2K
Internet sites, is a national clearinghouse focused on community
preparedness rather than individual survivalism. Its web site
(www.millennia-bcs.com) has had over 1 million "hits."
"The Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?" is the title of
three futurists' view of perils and possibilities
(www.angelfire.com/California/rhomer/social.html). Residents of all
ages and experience, they write, need to undertake community audits of
potential problems and contingencies to deal with each potential loss
of service, from utilities to food supplies, public safety to health
care. Indeed, this potential calamity could have the dividend of
bringing people together in neighborhoods where few residents today
even know each other. But we need to get specific fast about an
emergency shelter for every community -- and it ought to be schools,
suggests Douglass Carmichael, a lead Y2K consultant. The federal and
state governments, he says, should quickly appropriate funds and press
to make sure schools can provide water, food, cooking and a warm space
through winter 2000. One reason: schools -- as with hurricanes or
floods -- are a familiar emergency location in American culture.
Carmichael proposes rapid steps to authorize National Guard, even
regular armed forces help to get the schools ready. The President,
Carmichael argues, has to take the lead, telling the nation there's
potential for serious trouble, no one knows how serious, but we need to
be prepared for the worst.
Only with presidential leadership, Carmichael asserts, will Americans
take Y2K seriously enough soon enough to avert "massive hoarding" as an
increasingly panicy middle class, each family buying for itself, drives
up generator, food and fuel prices, triggering shortages and even
opening prospects of class warfare.
One's brought up short by such ideas: Can all this be serious? Check
the frivolous entertainment clogging tv channels, look at the media's
political coverage obsessed with posturing and the potential of
presidential impeachment, and you'd think you lived on a different
planet. But the people trying to focus us on Y2K perils are not nuts or
fringe types: they're serious technical, business, government leaders.
We ignore at our peril their alert of potential civic disruption and
disorder. Clear national leadership and vigorous grassroots initiatives
are not strangers to America. In World War II, both functioned
superbly. The challenge now, in an incredibly short time frame, is to
gain our attention -- and commitment.
Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * Oakland, CA
http://www.co-intelligence.org * http://www.co-intelligence.org/Y2K.html
