Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A friend of mine bought a .410 Mossberg 500 shotgun in preparation for the unrest that would surely follow Y2K. He loaded it and pumped a round into the chamber. He couldn't figure out how to unlock the action to unload it, so that round stayed there for years, with the action cocked, until he brought it to our friend Mike's place where he was finally able to shoot the gun for the first time.,
A friend of mine bought a .410 Mossberg 500 shotgun in preparation for the unrest that would surely follow Y2K. He loaded it and pumped a round into the chamber. He couldn't figure out how to unlock the action to unload it, so that round stayed there for years, with the action cocked, until he brought it to our friend Mike's place where he was finally able to shoot the gun for the first time.,
That there sure is a purty storie. Damm neer brot a teer to my eyez.
A friend of mine bought a .410 Mossberg 500 shotgun in preparation for the unrest that would surely follow Y2K. He loaded it and pumped a round into the chamber. He couldn't figure out how to unlock the action to unload it, so that round stayed there for years, with the action cocked, until he brought it to our friend Mike's place where he was finally able to shoot the gun for the first time.,
That's nothing.
The prepper/coworker I mentioned in my previous post in this thread added multiple firearms to his already-substantial arsenal, stockpiled food and ammunition, and bought a 50-gallon drum of gasoline. Oh, and iodine pills - he thought popping a few of them would save him when the two nuclear power plants in the vicinity inevitably melted down. He thought the glitch would lead to social collapse and he was going to have to fend off the unprepared masses to protect his horde of supplies.
Frankly, I think he was more than a little disappointed that nothing happened...
The company I worked for at the time did some testing, and then spent $180 million to remediate all the systems that would fail to function correctly. They started 3 years in advance, and no one had to work overtime for the main event. Without the $180 million, no suppliers would be paid, no royalty owners would be paid, some chemical plants would have shut down, etc. There was some over hyping, but there were definitely systems that had to be fixed.
The real problem would have been a 1980 problem. That was the year zero of all the Microsoft Excel and Access date and time numbering systems.
Except that Microsoft Excel and Access didn't exist in 1980.
Regarding Y2K, most organizations went overboard. Some did very little. There were a few organizations that had major issues but they didn't publicize their problems. Organizations like hospitals and public corporations didn't want the public to know they had not prepared. I was aware of a hospital that filled buckets with water all over the building in case the toilets couldn't flush.
1. bought $900 of .22LR in 1999. sold some during the Obama shortage for ~$4000 and bartered some for laptops, etc.
2. got a generator. it has been a "champ" after power failed due to weather (hurricanes, etc.).
3. had some future medical issues taken care of (preventive dentistry, hysterectomy, etc.).
bottom line: Y2K got us motivated to take control of what we could.
We're not out of the woods yet, folks. Think of millions of cans of food and water now rusting through ready to release their contaminated contents into the environment from all those who believed the stories of the collapse of our food supply systems and loaded up on stuff they have not touched since they got it. I'm talking things like botulism, hantavirus and the plague brought about by rodents attacking those supplies in their now failing containers. Doomed! I say we're doomed!
We're not out of the woods yet, folks. Think of millions of cans of food and water now rusting through ready to release their contaminated contents into the environment from all those who believed the stories of the collapse of our food supply systems and loaded up on stuff they have not touched since they got it. I'm talking things like botulism, hantavirus and the plague brought about by rodents attacking those supplies in their now failing containers. Doomed! I say we're doomed!
The prepper mindset lives on. And fact we have an entire forum on it here in CityData...still full of threads saying the world as we know it is about to end. And don't go in there disagreeing with them, they take it seriously.
We have a rental apartment on our property and in late December 1999 I saw our tenants coming home with jugs of water. "For Y2K" they explained, in case the water supply was disrupted. I informed them that the property's water was gravity-fed from a spring up the mountain and they had nothing to worry about!
There was so much misinformation out there, it was almost comical.
My favorite was the dire warning that "even your toaster" has a computer chip, and you were supposed to freak out, knowing that the toaster could start burning the toast because it thought the year was 1900. Like, even if the toaster has a computer chip why would it care what year it is? LOL
I work for a software company, and we had it well under control. In fact only a single, little-used report program had any issue after January 1, 2000 and that was fixed quickly with little or no impact to our users.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
