Fox is a staffer on Rep. Horn's y2k committee. These top ten most feared y2k disasters represent what they believe citizens fear the most:

Recently, Harrison W. Fox, Staff Member, House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology presented a list of the top 10 most feared Y2K disasters. The list includes:

1.oil and gas shortages 2.defense weapon failures 3.air traffic control system breakdowns 4.utility grid blackouts and brownouts 5.manufacturing and production shutdowns 6.supply base and service interruptions 7.water and sewer system breakdowns 8.public health and safety-device failures 9.embedded chip failures 10.citizen panic

My list: 1-Utility grid blackouts and brownouts. 2-DOD 3-Water and sewer system breakdown 4-Oil and gas shortages. 5-Embedded chip failures. 6-public health and safety-device failures. 7-air traffic control 8-supply base and service inerruptions 9-citizen panic 10-manufacturing and production shutdowns...

The big question is where are the banks? And where is the government? And where is transportation? And where are the telcos? And where are the other nations? With them included I would rank the top ten fears I have as:

1-utilities 2-DOD 3-water and sewer 4-telcos 5-public health and safety device failures 6-fuel shortages 7-embedded chip failures 8-government 9-banks 10-other nations

What say ye?

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), March 27, 1999

Answers

BTW, this list is from Chuck Lanza'a column on Westergaard.com

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), March 27, 1999.

Going round these past months in a state of controlled unformulated panic but you know us Brits,stiff upper lip and all that.Last week I got throughly fed up feeling scared so sat down at 2 am and made out a list of things that scared the pants off me & another list of what we as a family unit could do to cope. My personal greatest fears it turned out were lack of coffee (but hopefully not any longer thanks to the Old Git) and cigarettes.I've been talking about quitting for some years now so maybe now is the time.Other than those,I feel we can give any situation a reasonable shot ..apart from illness/accident.

An indefinite lack of earning power is really the top of my list.For that to happen means that we shall have to be in an economic meltdown Stored goods are only going to last so long as are the manufactured items such a lightbulbs,medicine & plastic goods.However,I am hoping that our preps will buy us time to stay cool & plan a way ahead.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), March 27, 1999.

Electricity goes down

Transportation goes down

Food Chain bolloxed

Health Care and Pharmaceuticals snafued

Bad water and sewage

Famine

Plague

Environmental Disasters

Civil Disorder

War

in that general order

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 27, 1999.

Link to Article, http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/GL/CL/gl9912.htm

The article states,

"These ten items clearly identify the fears our citizens have. Therefore they must be addressed in our plans.

Evidently the public doesn't have too many fears about the banking system. Actually, I think these are the items that an emergency managment type could deal with......lack of cash isn't.

-- De (delewis@inetone.net), March 27, 1999.

Chris,

I'm sorry....I lost my head.......how could I have forgotten coffee and cigarettes? That made me laugh until I realized you could be serious.

What really jumps out at me is how interconnected everything is.

-- BB (peace2u@bellatlantic.net), March 27, 1999.

BB. Absolutely serious.Tell you what,I had to laugh myself when I identified those two as major reasons for panic.I'm a 20 cup a day girl and it is going to be hard quitting the smoking!

Giving up for health reasons ? Nah

Just Y2K preps,GOD DAMM

(Repeated Howls off-stage).

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), March 27, 1999.

The "list" format is one-dimensional, with the problems artificially separated. Mitchell's "dominoes" sequence of events is closer, but we're actually dealing with a complex non-liniar system of feedback loops. I have not heard much about the application of whole systems theory (cybernetics) to this problem. My greatest fear (apart from the usual human reactions) is that we won't apply systems theory in the remedial phase. That is, that we won't redesign this grand, interlocking system of systems as such. We have the potential to use this failure to not only design better, more resiliant systems, but to collectively grasp the master key to understanding all whole systems - our bodies, our families, our natural (ecology) and artificial (infrastructure) environments. Or we could lapse into barbarism.

It doesn't take any math to understand the basic principles and understand whole systems theory; and it's like learning about fractals - once you learn, you see them everywhere. And like fractals, it's more than a practical consideration; there's some deep personal enrichment involved gaining that broader perspective. So much so that if this accretion of systems collapses and we do all gain an understanding of ourselves and our environments as complex systems, it will have been worth it.

Dogen

-- Dogen (dog@pardes.com), March 27, 1999.

Dogen --- Agree 100%. That's why I'm actually a Y2K pollyanna even if TEOTWAWKI happens. Sadly, scarcely anyone is able to get those two ideas in the same frame at the same time. It's not that I expect happy results (I'm a realist), but we're going to have an enormous and perhaps unique opp'y if we stay awake.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 27, 1999.

er, folks, with regard to systems level thinking, there's an old army saying to the effect that:

"when you're up to your a-- in alligators it's hard to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp!"

In other words, experience says that there will be no cybernetic awareness carried over in the event of TEOTWAWKI, since such a perspective is one of the first things to be lost in a survival situation.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), March 28, 1999.