The Millennium Bug

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The Millennium Bug

North: The biggest problem that I see in the millennium bug itself is the threat to the banking system. The secondary threat, which is also very, very serious, but difficult to predict, is the effect on telecommunications, especially the phone lines. If the phones go down and the banks go down, western civilization as we know it will not be recognizable, because we will move from the year 2000 to the year 1900, economically speaking, exactly the same as the computers will move from 2000 to 1900 and the information they are spewing out.

The great irony of the year 2000 problem, technically, is that the computer can't recognize the year 2000, and so reads it as 1900. If this brings down large systems, it will in fact revert society to about 1900 because we are so totally dependent on telecommunications and the banking system.

Preparing for the Millennium Bug

That is the worst case scenario. It may not be that bad, but I think anybody that says it can't be that bad is suffering from denial, a denial which is not backed up by the facts. So, what do people have to have in a crisis situation? I've told people to think, "What would I need if this were 1900." Or, "What would I need if I was in some primitive society in an African village, or South American primitive village out in the jungle. What would I as a middle class person need to keep me going."

The things that keep coming up are these: Water, that's crucial. Food is crucial and shelter. These are your basic 3 items. And the fourth would really be nice, which would be some degree of social peace and safety in my immediate area. If you don't have water, food or shelter you are in desperate trouble. Most people will have shelter. So then the question is: What about water, and what about food?

Portela: Also Gary, what about heat?

North: Certainly on January 1st of the year 2000, if you are in the Northeast, Northwest, or someplace out in that area, you are going to need power. Let me briefly mention the problem here. This is a secondary problem, but we got to be alert to it. And this is the railway system: one of the chief transportation mediums in this country. The railroads are controlled completely by mainframe computers. The location of any given freight car which can be switched from train to train and company to company has got to be traced. What is even more obvious, you've got to make sure trains don't crash into each other. The fellow who sat out there at the switching dock with the lantern -- the guy we read about as children or maybe have seen in old movies -- that guy has long since retired because he was replaced by a mainframe computer which does the switching.

Think about the three things those trains transport. One is coal, the other is grain, and the third is chemicals. So the chemical industry, the coal industry, and the grain industry are all totally dependent on the train system of this country. And especially in the case of coal, you've got the coal fired electrical generating plants all through the Northeast. If they can't get coal to those plants the power systems go down. And if the power systems go down, presumably the water systems go down. This is unthinkable, but somebody better think about it. So, yes, you're right. At least in January of the year 2000 you are going to have a heating problem in large sections of the United States.

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