Marlboro cigarettes were on sale in the local Kroger store this week end. The sale ended Sunday night, I think. I was in the store to buy a couple of cartons before the price increase. People were in the store shoving, grabbing and filling their carts like these were the last cigarettes on earth. My thought was, wait until Y2K comes along and hits these people in the face. It is going to be terrible. If people fight over cigarettes they will kill in the stores over bread. Get prepared people. The panic is coming.

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), November 30, 1998

Answers

I started smoking in 1943. The only reason was to be like the other guys in my HS class. When I quit smoking in 1956 I was on 3 packs a day. The first week was really a bummer. Luckily I was in Las Vegas and every corner seemed to have a Mexican restaurant. The hotter the seasoning the better. 7 days after I quit I got sicker than I've ever been before or since. You name it, I did it, or felt it. For one day -- then it was over. Didn't crave 'em anymore, didn't even like the smell of cigarette smoke. But it was a year or so before I quit automatically reaching up to my shirt pocket for the pack.

So I figure it was a real physiological addiction, in my case anyway. It was probably easier because I wanted to quit. For people who don't want to, going cold turkey could be rough. But when there's nothing on the shelf, there's nothing to fight over. Might make folks grumpy, though.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), November 30, 1998.

Boy - have I got to lay in more coffee....

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 30, 1998.

Linda, I thought the same thing about the "Furby" panic! There were people actually trampled! One lady I saw on the news had torn ligaments in her ankle (in a Target store.) My favorite one was a lady who got shoved in a corner (Kay-Bee Toys) and finally called the police on her cell phone to help get her out! If people will do this to get a toy for their kids, what will they do to get them food?

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), November 30, 1998.

There's an immense demand for Furbies. Why the #$@$ don't they just make more?

-- Leo (leo_champion@hotmail.com), November 30, 1998.

I thought that "Head for Marlboro Country" would be good advice for y2k.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), November 30, 1998.

Leo: Because nobody in his right mind tries to predict sales based on a fad. The Furby toy involves some pretty sophisticated electronics that can't be produced by snapping your fingers - even the bodies are not made by snapping your fingers and telling the people on the sewing machines to 'work smarter not harder'. They get the same price per each no matter what the demand - as long as they meet the orders they have. The people doing the retail ordering did it nearly half a year ago (I think most Christmas retail orders are actually placed by June 30) and the wholesale orders went in earlier. Its not a matter of whether or not they could have produced 10 times as many Furbys - its just that they can't produce 10 times as many in six weeks and get them delivered.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), November 30, 1998.

Paul, furbies are not unlike replacement micro-processors in this respect

-- hump (12345@54321.com), November 30, 1998.

You can call it herd mentality, you can call them sheeples... It never ceases to amaze me how many people will go to extraordinary lengths to purchase the utterly useless crap that Madison Avenues tells us we need. I'm not sure what a "Furby" is, but I'm pretty sure that they are a sign of the apocalypse. (I guess you can tell that I don't have children...) I would feel a whole lot better if people were making a run on canned goods now, instead of later. I just hope, for their sake, that the Furby is edible. Perhaps Smith and Wesson will come out with a pistol that fires amour piercing Furby rounds.

-- Kilgore Trout (ktrout@fakeurl.com), November 30, 1998.

I have smoked for thirty years and have accepted the fact that cigarettes are going to cause me to die a slow, horrible, agonizing death. I have tried to quit only one time, and after 24 hours I was ready to kill someone. I felt so bad, so licked, I decided to never try to quit again.I was also an alcoholic for 15 years, and the whole time I was drinking, I often thought to myself, I can quit drinking, but I cant quit smoking. I havent had a drink in 8 years now, and have never attended an a.a meeting.

-- ed (edrider007@aol.com), November 30, 1998.

Congratulation ed. Good luck, sir.

Furbies? The flock is alive and well and living in a shopping mall near you. Funny, the symptoms just described are exactly what Y2K sounds like.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 30, 1998.

Took me a year to truly give up smoking after trying everything, cold turkey was the only method.

BTW where is Marlboro County, NB US and French cigs are better for you than the Brit variety something to do with the way the bacca leaves are cured.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), November 30, 1998.

wow...I feel so fortunate.

I don't smoke, I average about two beers a year and I don't play with Furbies... although I do have a sweet cat named Boo Boo (born on Holloween). Anyone have any good suggestions on a vice that might interest me?

Signed, Boring In So Cal (aka Mike) ==================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), November 30, 1998.

Michael,

How about a cafe latte? Get hooked on caffine and the withdrawl headaches are enough to make you want to take up drinking! Starbucks is a good place to start.

Diane, stocking up on Starbucks tradegoods

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 30, 1998.

I've thought about cigarettes as a trade item. In Bosnia, people would trade their last possessions for this deadly vice over food. By the way the nicotine in a single cigarette is enough to kill if given intravenously. And it makes a great insecticide!!

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), November 30, 1998.

actually RD you may be on to something there have been several instances of cashless (POW camps in WW II) and nearly cashless -as in no hard currency - (Korea during and following the Korean war) societies where cigarrettes became an accepted medium of exchange - in point of fact they became fiat currency under those circumstances. wonder if that sort of thing might happen again...

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), November 30, 1998.

Try Zyban. It worked for me by taking the murderous rage off the withdrawls. My life is much better now. Fewer colds, chest infections etc., etc. etc. It's expensive, but it does work. Watching one's kids grow up is an important thing.

Jeff

-- Jeffrey G. Bane (brooksbane@msn.com), November 30, 1998.

Mike, I have a friend who likes setting off fireworks and inhaling the smoke. Don't know what he gets out of the fumes, but it's far more entertaining to watch than some guy with a cigarette. Maybe you should consider taking that up?

RD: Aren't cigarettes the basic means of currency in prison now? But I definitely *would* stockpile cigarettes, as many as you can, as barter items for y2k.. they will be in high demand.

I heard of one guy in Berlin, 1945, a German colonel who'd been in WW1 and 2 and was now living in occupied rubble. He traded his medals -a Knight's Cross (which I think is equal to a CMOH), an Iron Cross 1st Class and a Pour Le Merite (don't know why a German medal has a French name, but it's apparently a very high one) to a British soldier for, take a guess, ten cigarettes.

Ten cigarettes.

-- Leo (leo_champion@hotmail.com), December 01, 1998.

Pour le Merit = "The Blue Max"

Yep, French title, German Award for bravery - very restricted issue, unlike the (plain) Iron Cross. Higher order "crosses" were different.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 01, 1998.