SUMMER 1999

Answering Your Y2K Questions

In our last issue of Women’space, readers were invited to send their Questions about Y2K to Denise Østed. Here are her Answers. Some of the questions have been paraphrased so answers could be combined.

What do you, personally, think is going to happen?

I don’t know. I do believe that there will be problems, but I can’t even begin to predict what they’ll be, or on what scale they will appear, or how long they will last. My main concern is the interdependency of all things: if one part of the system fails, it will become a chain reaction. For example, even if your bank is 100% compliant and extremely confident, a couple of days without telecommunication is going to have a major impact on that bank, as will a couple of days without electricity. As another example, even if there is no problem with food production, canning, bottling, etc, a breakdown in the system of tracking and transportation is going to lead to empty shelves in your local grocery store.

My bank/electric utility/pharmacy/phone company has already fixed all its mission-critical systems. Does that mean they’re actually Y2K-compliant?

Possibly, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d be asking how exactly they have defined “mission-critical” and which systems they don’t think are mission-critical. I’d be asking about their suppliers. Hey, it’s great if your pharmacy is Y2K-compliant, but if the drug company which produces your medicine isn’t compliant, it’s time to worry. No business is completely self-sufficient, and we are all dependent on outside suppliers, both commercially and individually.

There are contradictory reports about
whether or not we should be storing food and cash.

You should believe yourself. Some governments and agencies are advising people to store food for three days to a month or so. Other governments and agencies are pleading with people not to start stockpiling or hoarding. I can see both points of view. If nobody stores up food, its going to be a lot harder to make sure everyone gets fed if the distribution system fails. If a significant minority of us all went out to our local grocery store today and bought a month’s worth of food, the shelves would be empty. We’re talking about just-in-time supplying here. Your grocery store doesn’t actually carry that much food, given how many people shop there. It’s just that most people only buy enough food for the next few days, so what the store has is enough. If we all change our buying habits right now and go get a month’s worth of food, the store is in trouble. This is my theory about storing food for Y2K: start now. Buy a few extra things each time you go. If we all do this now, the stores will have to stock up faster, and the supplies will have to come in more often or in bigger quantities. Production gets stepped-up; everyone buys a little more each week, and by the time Y2K hits, we all have extra food and the stores haven’t been cleaned out in the meantime.

Some people are getting their whole food storage supply as fast as possible, which is just fine, but if we all get that idea next December, there just won’t be enough food left for all of us. And that doesn’t depend on whether or not Y2K will pose any significant problems. It depends purely on whether or not enough people get concerned enough to go buy a bunch of food, thus leaving less on the shelves for everyone else. Buy now, is my advice. If nothing else, you’ll have lower grocery bills at the beginning of next year!

I still don’t get it. I don’t have a computer at home; my job doesn’t involve computers; and I don’t particularly care if my VCR works or not.

Wrong. Even if you’ve never been near a computer in your life, you are dependent on technology. Technology delivers your electricity, your water, your gas, your groceries, your salary, your cold hard cash, your telephone, your TV, your aspirin, your soap, your tampons, your heat, your police, your firefighters, your ambulance, your home security system, etc. Some of these things are less important than others. We can all live without TV for a week, but a week of a Winnipeg January would be brutal without heat. We can all live for a week without electricity for our vacuum cleaners, but a week without being able to call 911 could very well be fatal for someone. Technology is completely interwoven into our society and our daily lives.

Why didn’t anyone start working on this sooner?
Didn’t they see it coming?

I think that ten years ago, the people who were predicting this were seen as fear-mongers or kooks. There is a real tendency in Western societies to see technology as an infallible whole. Sure, little bits of it fail all the time: the remote control goes on the blink, the power goes out for a few minutes, a space shuttle explodes. But the idea of wide-scale massive failures is almost unthinkable.

But the biggest issue seems to be the expense. The enormous cost of Y2K projects is staggering. Salaries, equipment, expertise, programming, testing, inventorying - these are all very expensive. Also, any company or department that is working on Y2K compliance must take that time, energy, and money away from other projects which would have eventually provided more income for the organisation. So not only are they spending huge amounts of money on becoming Y2K-compliant, they are also minimising their current opportunities for growth and development. Does that sound like a project any business would enter into willingly? Not to me!

I’ve tried talking to friends and family about Y2K. They laugh it off, and say that if things get bad, they’ll just come and stay with me.

Ah, the old “I’ll just come and stay with you” solution. Sigh. My own personal response to people who say that is “Don’t forget to bring along your own food.” If Y2K hits hard, I would love to be able to help each and every person who comes to my door. But I can’t. I simply not in a position to buy enough food and other supplies for everyone around me. And neither, I’m willing to bet, are most of you.

On the other hand, I have a moral and ethical obligation to myself and to others. So it’s a tough question. You could just tell those friends and family members that you won’t be able to take them in, because you won’t be able to feed them. But when the time comes, will you really be able to turn them away? There have been some long and heated discussions about this in various online forums. The most extreme view I’ve read is that some people will just shoot anyone who comes for their food. The most intelligent view I’ve read is to reply that you will gladly feed these people’s children, but the adults will have to fend for themselves. Children are innocent, and shouldn’t be made to suffer for the denial of their parents.

Let’s face it: we have all heard about Y2K. We’ve all heard about the optimistic views and the pessimistic views. There is simply no more excuse for anyone to say “It won’t happen” or “It can’t happen.” The most accurate statement is “It might happen.” We have to work together to take responsibility for ourselves and each other, and we have to be ready to help each other if Y2K causes serious problems.

Ultimately, if someone is in denial, there is very little you can do about that, besides continuing to supply information. My success with people in denial mode has come through various means, and it really has to be tailored to each particular person. People with children seem to listen better when you point out the responsibility they have to their kids. People who’ve lived through the Great Depression often tend to grasp the whole concept faster than younger people do. A lot of people respond well to the whole concept of interdependence and the Domino Effect. But some people are just too scared to entertain the very idea, and just keep laughing. If they are people you care about, your best bet is probably to prepare for them as well, to the best of your ability. After all, that’s the true interdependence, isn’t it? We need each other, and Y2K might be the event that finally reminds us that society and civilisation is not about technology, but about people and community.