On 23 Feb 99, at 17:09, G. C. Raynes wrote:

>   After hearing many different views on Y2K,  I would like to hear the
> opinions of the very knowledgeable people on this list.
>   Is it going to be the disaster some people claim? I know some people who
> are stocking six months worth of food and water.

  On the one hand, I find I get a little annoyed with supposed example
problems that CAN'T happen, and with people who turn "some systems may
have a problem" into "ALL systems will CRASH".  So my first gut
reaction is to suggest that it probably won't be as bad as you may have
heard.

  On the other hand, I think there are two key areas of risk that are
almost impossible to assess or plan for, but which I think readers
ought to be aware of:

1. Panic
  Some of our socio-economic infrastructure -- banking, to pick a prime
example -- depends to an extent on ongoing popular *faith* in the
system.  If that faith is badly shaken, and there are runs on the
banks, the economy could be badly set back, at a time when extra effort
to repair other damage may increase the demand for working capital.
  Paradoxically, this is a "Prisoner's Gambit" situation, in which such
a crisis would worst hurt those who retain their faith.  Ouch.

2. Scope
  All of our experience with restoring services after failure has been
with either single-service failures (electic power, for instance) or
regional multi-system failures (after natural disasters).
  The Y2K problem poses the risk of multi-system failures across wide --
 perhaps global -- areas.  We may discover that restoration of a
specific service to a specific region depends upon the availability of
other services there, and/or similar service in adjoining regions.  In
the worst case, the job of "putting Humpty together again" may be
almost as complex as it was to build things in the first place --
certainly more complicated than any repair job we've had experience
with.


  As to relevance to this list, the above comments apply mostly to
specialized systems that don't run on PCs.  Not all PC software is
properly careful about dates, but not very much of it is in a position
to cause major problems on Jan 1, 2000.


David G

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