I have seen 72 hours coming from gov. officials too much lately. Could it be, that there is a plan to shut everything down during the rollover period? Nothing rolls over live? hmmmmmmmmmmm

-- Scotty (BLehman202@aol.com), February 27, 1999

Answers

Could they do that???

Could they shut everything down and then bring back a little at a time correcting the problems as they go. Way too simplistic I think. They might be able to save enough though to provide some sort of structure to work with to rebuild.

-- Wishful (thinking@ignorancelevel.com), February 27, 1999.

I've been wondering about that 72 hrs. myself. Why 72hrs.? Could it be they want everyone to be able to take care of themselves until the National Guard and/or FEMA can respond and get the shelters set up? Eye on Y2K

-- Eye on Y2K (bugscaresme@mellinium.com), February 27, 1999.

Eye on Y2K,

I think that's the way they're looking at it. The American Red Cross suggests a week I think, but I think if you read their Y2K prep suggestions it is because they feel this should be enough to tide you along until you got to a shelter if need be. I have also read that they are planning on having shelters set up and ready throughout the US.

I also read something somewhere about a poll that FEMA supposedly undertook that showed that people couldn't handle being told to prepare for more than two weeks. I also read that they were going to raise their preparation level in the Spring after people had got used to the idea of needing some sort of preparation. This is total heresay and I don't know how reliable it is. It certainly seems strange considering the stance that FEMA are currently taking of stressing nothing to worry about and prepare for 72 hours.

-- Watcher (on&@itall.com), February 27, 1999.

>"...showed that people couldn't handle being told to prepare for more than two weeks..."

Most of the people I used to talk to couldn't handle being told to prepare for two days.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 27, 1999.

Just speculating here...

Until late last year, the Gartner Group seemed to forecast Y2K as a "6 or 7" on the arbitrary 10-scale of "how bad it might be". Then, in November of 1998, they backpedaled almost overnight, dropping their prognostication to a "1.5 or a 2". Coincident with their change in mindset was a contract with the American Bankers Association that was awarded to the Gartner Group .. purportedly for the purposes of the Gartner organization convincing the public that banks were a safe place to leave your money during a possible Y2K-related debacle.

Gartner then announced what they deemed was their "worst-case" scenario for power outages and disruption... the magic 72-hour figure. About the same time, the 72-hour figure seemed to become commonplace in other "worst-case" predictions.

Where I live, both state and other government units are using the 72-hour figure in public discussions. It fits a possible agenda for a variety of reasons:

* It's "believeable" by the public.

* Many emergency facilities routinely maintain a maximum 72-hours reserve of generator fuel and other supplies.

... and my #1 reason why I personally believe they are running with a "72-hour" scenario from Gartner ...

* If Gartner is correct .. (not likely in my opinion) then the government will have saved the skins of its citizens. If Gartner is wrong .. the people who relied on their figures will have yet another scapegoat to whom they can point a finger and say "well .. we were just using their figures .. THEY are the experts"...

Another data point... and my 3 days .. errr ... $0.02 worth.

Dan

-- Dan (DanTCC@Yahoo.com), February 27, 1999.

Scotty,

as of right now, the utilities that are around here (DC Metro area) plan to be at full staffing straight through the rollover (no breaks, no vacations, no nada.) They will not be shutting down...they will be islanding, as will any utilities elsewhere that believe that they have a chance of making it through in decent condition. Lots of stuff is going to go through the rollover live - including all of the DC municipal systems which have not been remediated...which is why I, for one, am gonna be long gone from here (and in some place very rural) when it happens.

meanwhile because of the islanding, and because of the fact that there are a number of utility companies that aren't gonna even come close...we can expect a lot more than 72 hours of down time...

methinks the reason that '72' hours has been chosen is because it's a weekend, and their futile hope is that everyone will figure that everything will be fixed by Monday evening, January 3rd.

Right now the power mongers are still scrambling, trying to figure out how to stay in power if the iron triangle starts showing big gaps, while simultaneously the international balance of power is given a good swift kick sideways...which is what's likely to occur. The real answer is that billy jeff and the 'we want to control everybody' crowd simply do not have the resources to continue to exert meaningful authority in most places under those circumstances - but they still haven't figured that out.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), February 27, 1999.

>I also read something somewhere about a poll that FEMA > supposedly undertook that showed that people couldn't >handle being told to prepare for more than two weeks.

I've spoken with people over the Internet who have participated in disaster planning for Hurricanes. 72 hours is max they can get people to prepare for. One either says "72 hours" or it is hopeless, and few prepare for that 72 hours.

The city of San Jose, CA ran into a crises urging preparations, which is the poor cannot afford it. If one announces, "You're dead if you're not 3 months prepared," one would have violent riots from the people vowing they cannot do that. The truth cannot be told.

The Red Cross by the way may have a few shelters open for a short time, but it is not prepared or designed to handle ALL of America. It's designed to handle a few people being evacuated in an isolated area. There is NOT going to be Red Cross shelters one can go skipping off to. It's NOT going to be mass population welfare, and the volunteers may not live themselves. NOR will there be soup kitchens.

-- No Matter (nomatter@whatever.com), February 28, 1999.

Scotty,

Your shut it down question is a good observation. One recomendation for best practices that I've seen it exactly that. If organization can do it, declare a maintenance holiday and shut everything down for 'maintenance'. Assists in some major problem areas. 1) if power goes funny, your equipment is protected (and you don't have to see if you continous power supply really works as claimed under the conditions encountered; if it didn't, you don't have to scramble to fix or replace the hardware.) 2) You manually reset dates during power up which covers equipment that will have correct dates only if powered off during rollover. 3) You can monitor your network as it comes up and hopefully isolate problems areas as become evident rather that saying, s*** the whole network just crashed at 12:00:01.

Just my thoughts.

jh

-- john hebert (jt_hebert@hotmail.com), March 01, 1999.