Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE
`They’ll come at night – especially if you’ve got an electric lamp glowing somewhere, a dead giveaway,” warned one member of an online survivalist conference.
I had intended to spend the week doing extensive research for a column about the millennium bug (Y2K) – the software and hardware glitch that will prevent computers from successfully recognising the year 2000.
But the vast majority of the information and speculation I found has little to do with fixing the problem. No, most people appear more concerned with surviving an inevitable crisis of biblical proportions, by any means necessary.
Although fans of the apocalypse have always looked for any excuse to expect the worst, the millennium bug has provoked an unprecedented amount of doomsday scenarioplanning from otherwise rational people.
The millennium bug does pose two distinct technological threats. Many operating systems and programs, from the Cobol code running giant databases to most copies of Quicken in use today, cannot calculate four-digit dates. The year 2000 will appear simply as “00”, leading the program to treat any post-millennial date as a repeat of the 1900s.
And another problem looms: embedded chips.
Unlike software, the microchips running everything from nuclear power plants to offshore oil rigs cannot simply be rewritten. Like the chip inside your video machine or microwave, these devices are not accessible. The commands are physically burned onto the chip.
The only way to update a non-compliant power plant or robot-filled automobile factory floor is to determine which chips will malfunction and then replace each one individually.
In a recent interview with the Reuters news agency, the CIA accepted the fact that there will be numerous failures of such systems around the world.
But instead of focusing on the technological side of the crisis, the CIA is already collecting data on what their “Y2K” chief calls the “social, political and economic tumult” that could result.
That is, the agency is evaluating individual societies to determine how disruptions in electric power, banking, and other essential services might affect them.
The CIA predicts that newly developed nations, like those in Asia and Latin America, will be the hardest hit. While the United States, Britain, and Australia have had enough time to head off the worst disruptions, as well as a fairly stable social fabric, many other nations who only recently adopted computer technology do not now have the money to invest in diagnosing all their systems, nor the political climate to ensure public safety.
But it is mostly Americans, who have always had something of a penchant for bomb shelters and militia compounds, who are busy preparing for the temporary paralysis of the technological infrastructure.
In his new book, Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places, security consultant Joel Skousen outlines instructions for storing food, creating alternative power, as well as building secret hiding places and storage facilities to thwart hostile intruders and hungry neighbours. In South Dakota, Colorado, and Virginia, several firms are offering leases on plots of land within larger year-2000 collectives, all with access to private generators, fresh water, and farmland.
In truth, the Y2K crisis – if there is one – will probably be fuelled more by this sort of panic than lapses in technology. Even if the banking system were to shut down for a week, almost everyone could survive on what they have.
But the fear of such a disruption could easily lead to a rush on the banks and a collapse of the savings and loan system. Likewise, the hoarding of water, gasoline, and other fixed resources would lead to far worse calamity than a day or two of power outages.
The real opportunity here is to resist the temptation to withdraw – not just from banks but from society itself.
In a sense, the CIA has the right idea. This isn’t about computer programming at all, but about the real values infusing what we like to think of as our civil society. With any luck, we’ll come to understand that there’s more to survival than meets the “I”. c Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff can be reached at