Speaking of Y2K, what have we learned?

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by dragonfly, Nov 21, 2011.


  1. dragonfly

    dragonfly Monkey+++

    I saw the craziest things happening....People went into the grocery stores with 6 people all grabbing carts and they alone emptied the shelves of all bottled water...even the distilled ones! I saw people buy 4 generators racking out their credit cards....<Many bought 1 or 2 flashlights and may a dozen batteries...Others? Well they went beserk! Buying all kinds of things.
    Now to be honest, I went just to see what, If anything, I might need or had overlooked...my wife was upset that I'd bought extra TP and some bottled water in the 2.5 gallon sizes....but she learned later on that water doesn't go bad in a few days, and she liked buying it to cook with all the time anyway,....So she learned that she just saved a trip or two to the store and since I paid for eveything, she also learned to keep her mouth shut..Free is good! Never another complaint! She was not real happy about the 4 kerosene lanterns I had bought some time earlier, and now I had to buy kerosene for...BUT, when the power went out 2 times for 4 days in a row, and she had light in the toilet, the kitchen, the bedroom, and the patio...There were NO more complaints!
    Like when I had picked up an old AM/FM radio, missing the antenna, at a local goodwill store for $5. She raised cain! ( It was a $100 radio!) When the storms hit and everything went silent, she loved the fact that a metal clothes hanger made a great antenna, and she could at least hear local weather reports and some music! The same thing when I bought a small 4 inch screen dc tv that ran on the car battery...She was absolutely livid that I had spent $20 on such "junk". Changed her tune when she could see tv and her programs...! (Best $19.99 I ever spent!) I learned to keep peace in the old home front, just by pacifying the wife!
    Me, well I learned that people are very strange and unpredictable, especially when things go sideways on them...Maybe it's fear or panic, but it's weird, and they can be dangerous. Kids, they don't care! it's all FUN and GAMES! But when it comes to the Adults: sheesh!
    It all reminded me of the night when Johnny Carson jokingly said that there was going to be a toilet paper shortage....NOW that was beyond FUNNY! The people in California literally destroyed the stores, to get all the TP they could carry! Poor Johhny,he had to get on the next night and explain: "IT was ONLY a JOKE"! I wonder to this day, just how many people had stocked up enough TP to be set for life?
    Aurthur Godfrey said it best: People are funny!
     
  2. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

    I hope some people learned from Y2K not to believe everything they hear.

    I still remember the ghost towns the Y2K sites became the morning of 1-JAN-00.... :D
     
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  3. oth47

    oth47 Monkey+

    I didn't do a lot of prepping for Y2K,I had faith in the folks working behind the scenes to take care of the problems.After Y2K passed,our local trader paper had a lot of ads for generators,5 gallon buckets of pinto beans and rice,and other things I figured they'd bought just in case.Once the perceived danger passed,complacency seemed to set in.As for me,I started going thru the "what-ifs" and decided that no longer would I have faith in the system,but would become as self sufficient as possible.
     
  4. Gray Wolf

    Gray Wolf Monkey+++

    I bought some more beans and rice, cooking oil, sugar and salt, and added to the canned goods. When questioned by my wife, I told her that it's cheap insurance, and we will be eating the food anyway.
    I learned that there will always be doomsday prophets, with their own agenda, and the agenda is usually nothing more than finding a way to line their own pockets!
     
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  5. TnAndy

    TnAndy Senior Member Founding Member

    I learned there probably isn't gonna be a Y3K.......
     
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  6. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    I was more than happy to watch it all on CNN, while the Midnite Line moved around the world. When it finally got here, we shot off all our New Years Fireworks, shutdown the genset for the night, and went to bed, just like we do every other night. No big deal... and if there is a Y3K, I am SURE that I will not be around to see it.... .....
     
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  7. oth47

    oth47 Monkey+

    As an aside,Y2K was the only time in years that I watched the new year come in,because I won't see another century turn over.
     
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  8. GrandpaDave

    GrandpaDave Monkey++

    I sold a lot of Guns but mostly ammo Starting in Sept, Oct, Nov, of 1999... By Dec shortagaes made it damn hard to restock... funny thing is I didnt get any returns that Jan...

    somthing you might want to keep in mind with this upcoming mayan 12/12 deal...
     
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  9. Wolfgang2000

    Wolfgang2000 Monkey++

    I never thought it would be TEOTWAWKI. Since I lived in hurricane country I kept 2 weeks word on none perishable food any way.

    I was in charge of a computer/communication center for my Dept. at the time. I was watching the government and big business spend 100s of million of dollars on new equipment.

    Government doesn't mind wasting tax payer money, but business's don't survive if they waste money.

    I did believe that there could be a 30 day disruption. That didn't pan out, but NCIC (at least in LA. went dead a midnight and didn't come back on till 0800.
     
  10. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    In my Department in sunny Florida, they started Y2K programming mods in 1996. It was in the final testing and documentation stages when I became a programmer in early 1999. My documentation duties set my further career - I am my teams Documentation Guru. I like doing it, while most hate it.
    That's when I ramped up my then fledgeling preps system. Just in case.
    I did not believe any kind of 'doomsday' crap - but maybe some disruption of services for a short time til it got ironed out. We had NO problems. Because we did the work required early on! A lot of private contractors made out like bandits those few years though.
    Got the 12/2012 thing covered.... guns, ammo, components for life, genny, anew solar rig for the one 12V battery I have, food for a year, water and filtration. Fuel is a weak point, but I do have a three month supply of gas if I ride just the bike. If I don't have to go to and from work, it'll last a lot longer!
     
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  11. larryinalabama

    larryinalabama Monkey++


    Well if yall figure out women let me know the secret.
     
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  12. VisuTrac

    VisuTrac Ваша мать носит военные ботинки Site Supporter+++

    When Y2K worries hit our customers I had a great time of documenting the hell out of our systems, filling in their stupid RFIs, I probably wasted 2 entire years of my life doing paperwork.

    You know what my first test was on every piece of software, computer and such?

    Change the date and see what happens.

    NADA.

    Other than we had some interesting dates on some reports. Not a damn thing happened.

    That was a boon for a lot of consultants billing lots of hours.

    I had a few clients that were super worried. I'd walk in and say, Ok I can run extensive tests to your systems, we can contact vendors and get their compliance statements and spend lots of money OR set the date to jan 2nd, 2000 and see what happens.

    Yep, nothing happened. Go Figure.

    Now I wish i would have charged them and bought PM's with the ill gotten gains. I could have been a contender for Enron.
     
  13. larryinalabama

    larryinalabama Monkey++

    I think 9-11 got more people preppping that y2k

    dont know the next fancy term coming up
     
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  14. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    The worst effect I read of later was a few 2000 model cars getting eroneously titled as 1900 models - instant antiques! Hehehe.....
     
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  15. hedger

    hedger Monkey+

    Y2K got me started on prepping.

    Once I started, I wondered why I had not done so earlier.

    Choosing to prepare for a variety of emergency/crisis situations took me definitively out of reliance solely on government not screwing things up. As we all know natural events such as hurricanes, other storms, and natural disasters simply have no regard for whether a government entity is doing the "right stuff" or not.

    Those who have chosen to not prepare (which is, sadly, what my mindset--by default was) are either current or future victims.

    While Y2K was a non-event for many, it opened the door for me to realize the utter folly of my prior non-prepping ways. "Dawning realization" for me, you might say.

    In many small ways, my family has benefitted from prepping. For example, we have an abundance of canned goods. That means fewer trips to the grocery store. During crummy weather, that is a nice side benefit--even though it is relatively trivial.
     
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  16. Falcon15

    Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

    2012. That is it. No fancy terms, just a year, 2012. Am I ready for 2012? Uh yeah. What, I have to change out my calendars?

    No worries, got it covered.
     
  17. gunbunny

    gunbunny Never Trust A Bunny

    To celebrate for Y2K, I decided to take my then girlfriend (now my wife) for an airplane ride to watch all the fireworks shows in the area- at the same time.

    I wasn't too worried about anything on the aircraft; it was a 1956 Piper Tri-Pacer with no digital avionics whatsoever. We didn't even use the electrical system at the time because the generator was going bad and didn't recharge the battery properly.

    Parking break and hand propping the 150hp Lycoming was the standard practice for about a year- until the next annual was due. The Tri-Pacer seemed to want to go flying that evening. Even though it was rather cold, the motor started after only propping it once with the mags hot.

    I did take the precaution of some widespread power outage by lining the local grass runway with Cyalume glowsticks and taking my trusty 1st gen NV monocular. I wasn't too worried about those things, or I wouldn't have been flying that evening. If the lights went out, we could make it back to the field easily, since I had been flying the area for the last 10 years and knew it well.

    We were treated to a heck of a show that night. There were three large displays from a local city and two from the surrounding townships. Of course, there was a miryad of citizen Joe's shooting their own fireworks off, too. From the vantage point of 2500 feet AGL, we were surrounded by fireworks in every direction below us.

    The landing was uneventful, but the memories of that flight will last.

    Did I learn something? I guess I did, or I wouldn't have used the Cyalume sticks or had the NV monocular in my flightbag. Now that my duties to honor and protect mine have increased fourfold since that time, yes, I started thinking about what was ahead and what I could do about it.
     
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  18. beast

    beast backwoodsman

    maybe you should add some of those flre on parachutes to your planes cargo
    if youre up and lights go out you can pop n drop those to light your way down
     
  19. Pax Mentis

    Pax Mentis Philosopher King |RIP 11-4-2017

    I really don't think I learned anything from it.

    It was at about the same time we retired and moved to what had been out "BOL" and almost 20 years after we started building our location...but it had nothing to do with the move.

    I have always tried to be ready for WHATEVER might come along, so it was just another time of looking around and being reassured that we were as ready as we could manage.
     
  20. weegrannymush

    weegrannymush Monkey+

    I was not into Prepping back at Y2K, although I had always done some home canning etc. And I do believe that, although Y2K became a non-event, it was only made that way because of the millions of dollars put into the problem by the panic-stricken banks and businesses.

    But I have to say that having my food, and other supplies, storage is just about the best and smartest thing I ever did....every time I finish a jar or package of something and I can just go to my shelves and grab up another one, oh, I feel so smug! It's like having my own convenience store at the end of my kitchen. Yes, I have had to lay out a lot of money up front but as food prices rise, I get the benefit from that. Food storage is quite a nice hedge against inflation, which is a nice bonus in addition to maybe having one's life saved because we prepped! I am not "into" guns and that side of Prepping and if mobs come up from the city to take my stuff, then I will be a goner for sure. However, I WILL be able to survive the smaller stuff, like storms, flooding etc. and in the meantime, am enjoying the other benefits of having my stores in place.

    Some of your posts are so amusing....I do enjoy them!
     
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