From: C. H. Re: A bug's life Date: 9 March 1999 SIR- My family has farmed the same thirty acres of land for six generations, having little recourse to the gizmos and baubles of technological progress. Recently we have been wired in to the Internet, which keeps us amused at the laughable peccadilloes of urban online folk.

However, we recently found out through the Net that civilisation as we know it is in its twilight, apparently because a bunch of spotty upstarts in the '60s couldn't imagine themselves or their children still being alive in forty years' time. Quite frankly, we were rather nonplussed.

Then we learn from your 'A ghost in the machine' Y2K forum that experts recommend turning all one's assets into gold, tinned food and underground bunkers in which to secrete both oneself and the aforementioned commodities. For a family living 'hand-to-mouth' on our dairy farm in the aftermath of the BSE fiasco, this advice rings rather hollow. We have no assets with which to prepare ourselves for this potential global socio-economic meltdown. I should imagine that we are not alone in this.

Having discussed the matter with my wife, who assures me that our herd of Guernseys is millennium-compliant, I have decided to get drunk on New Year's Eve and hope for the best.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), March 09, 1999

Answers

The Masai would survive happily on this farm with little concern about outside systems and they would defend it ferociously.

-- Watchful (seethesea@msn.com), March 09, 1999.