Douglass Carmichael's latest newsletter has some very interesting "news" in it. (See the last part of the the excerpt quoted below.) I know that Howard Rubin had made some comments (captured in a New York Times article? around 1/2 or 3/2000) regarding the very small percentage of the world's infrastructure that was up and operating over the rollover. The "news" in question that Doug Carmichael refers to below might what Howard Rubin was quoted as saying.

Here is the quote from Doug Carmichael's newsletter:

"....Rate fears. No one had rate fears when the last three hikes were imposed. No one had market fears during the war in Kosovo or the Impeachment or the selling of Military secrets to China. It's not rate fears; it's the "big boys" finally pulling out of the markets....The institutional buyers are selling, both yesterday and today. Perhaps Y2K is not such a non-event after all. What if it was not as bad as we all thought it would be AND the power barons and governments of the world were capable (with help from their stepchildren: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX , etc.) of making all the sheeple believe virtually no glitches occurred and there was no danger. What would be the immediate result? Well, Monday, a lot of people who had been salivating over the market gains (while their money was on the Y2K-sidelines) ....would now be diving back into the market. And, folks that were hoarding cash would take it right back to the glitch-free bank. And, as an added bonus, all the prudent, Y2K knowledgeable people who had worked so hard on the issue, would be discredited and embarrassed by the main media and by their "Polly" peers. Now consider this: The reason this country is so "Polly-filled" and relieved is because three things stayed on during the rollover: Lights, Heat and Water. But, the reason they stayed on is NOT because everything worked out hunky dory. They stayed on because the agencies of our government and the big business' made this arrangement....Business' would shut down all their power sucking factories and computers. Therefore, the power plants could be told to cut back output to the 30% to 50% range (and they did). That way, when we lost the three Nukes that were taken off line; no one even noticed. The neighboring utilities had plenty of capacity to pick up the slack. It was a brilliant idea and we should commend them for instituting it. The only problem is, they have not been honest in their reporting of how it all went down; so now the sheeple and the Polly's think Y2K was a non-event; and that's dangerous. If, this same scenario had played out during the summer, at peak power-use, we would have had some severe blackouts and Y2K would suddenly of become a reality. (source for this lost, it was one of the week's y2k lists)."

[End of quote from Doug Carmichael's newsletter Past issues can be found at: http://tmn.com/Y2k Sorry, I don't know if that is where this current issue can be found.]

Does anyone remember seeing the source that Doug Carmichael was referring to? (Or for that matter, does anyone have a URL for the New York Times article that had the quote from Howard Rubin.)

I have the following comment regarding what Doug Carmichael has said here: If this is an accurate depiction of what happened, and if the "lights were turned down low" all over the globe, was this done deliberately, and if so, will anyone admit it now? To what extent was this "alleged" cutback orchestrated. Or was everyone all over the globe just following common sense taking things off line to reduce the potential for problems and reverting to manual where possible? Why didn't they say if this is what happened?

If a 1/9/2000 thread on the looping problem with embeddeds is right, then more problems with embeddeds could becoming looming in the near future. According to the originator of that thread (URL below), some portion of the embeddeds may just be looping and trying to rollover but failing. (See Poll-Morphic Doomer's entries on the 1/9/2000 thread at http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002HFE)

There is growing evidence of embedded failures already. It appears that SCADA failures could be responsible for causing serious valve problems in a number of currently available incident reports. See http://www.chemsafety.gov/circ/ and also see the new Grassroots Information Coordination Center (GICC) http://www.coalition2000.org/GICC.htm. Click on "Go to the GICC Forum". (The latter has over 600 reports of problems of all kinds. Documentation is included.)

(The Federal government's Information Communication Center reportedly has a large data base. But the press and the public have yet to get access to that data base to see what's in it.)

Back to my questions: If only 10% of the infrastructure was operating at the rollover, and if Gartner's expectation that 10% of the problems could be expected to be visible during the first week, then doesn't that mean that we have seen only 1% of what Gartner was projecting since only 10% of the infrastructure was up?

Also, how many people would risk their futures by coming forward and telling what they know about the problems in their plant, factory, installation, company, organization, agency, or nation? There will always be some souls who will step forward with the courage of their convictions. I understand that the Grassroot Information Coordination Center will follow up on anonymous tips. Maybe there is hope there that the full extent of the damages can be known by some courageous souls coming forward or providing anonymous tips.

Why is that important? Some people, maybe a majority at this point, will need to become convinced that there are and will be damages. They need to become convinced before deciding to begin all over again, pronto, to get people to act. The damage toll mounts. The media is also going to have to be convinced that the hazards and future threats of the same are here now. Just spend a little time at the GICC website and you may well become a believer.

There will be those who choose to wait until the February 29 and take part in a second round of Russian Roulette while watching to see what happens when the embeddeds fight with each other over what the date is.

I don't want to play Russian Roulette again. How about you?

Anyway, interesting comments by Doug Carmichael. If anyone can identify a URL for the thread that he is referring to, that would be great. Plus, if anyone has a URL for the Howard Rubin quote that would also be helpful too.

Thanks!

-- Lite Dawning (Lite Dawning@Russian Roulette.bang), January 09, 2000

Answers

Here's part of what Doug Carmichael referred to (though he said power plants could be told to cut back output to the 30% to 50% range, rather than the 80% figure indicated below):

Western U.S. power plants to cut output on Dec 31

LOS ANGELES, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Major power plants across the western United States will operate at reduced rates on New Year's Eve in a move that will allow electric companies to increase power output in case of any Y2K problems ...

The reason for the limit, which takes effect around 9 p.m. PST (midnight EST) on Friday, is to allow more power plants to operate, thereby reducing the impact should a unit trip off line during the transition.

``We're limiting the amount of generation out of some of the larger base load plants,' said Bill Comish, Y2K coordinator for the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC), a regional electric reliability council for 14 U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and a small part of Mexico.

Comish said that all power plants able to generate more than 300 megawatts have been asked to cut their output to a maximum of 80 percent of capacity ...

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991229/xp.html

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), January 09, 2000.

Well, I thought most everyone knew of the big 'power down.' Heavy-duty manufacturing, those guys with the 440-V motors everywhere in their complex machine tools, have their own problems. I'm talking about GM, Ford, Catapiller, Cummins, etc. They just shut down and some haven't resumed production yet. I'm sure their local utility company told them to shut it down and they said, "Yes, Sir." Afterall, they had to do some isolated testing of their own to see if their equipment worked, especially highly automated robotics. This type of arrangement between the utilities and heavy duty manufacturing has been around a long time. When the utility says, we're having a problem and need for you to use less power during peak-load hours, then the manufacturers cooperate fully. Sometimes they move people to the third shift to complete production during off-peak hours.

Then the petroleum companies announced that they would shutdown pipelines and refineries. Then the chemical refineries followed suit.

Subsequently, the petroleum companies have announced the permanent shutdown of some refineries. (Too expensive to fix.) So, there is no question that peak load requirements fell way off at the end off '99 and are not yet back to peak usage. So some utilities have had an opportunity to do some maintenance/repair and attempt to correct some Y2k problems, if they can get the parts.

It's going to be another two or three weeks before heavy duty manufacturing determines exactly where they are at, if then. The ones who are sourcing raw castings (engine blocks, etc.) from Brazil refineries may have even more problems. But this downtime allows the foreign suppliers to try to get their act together, too. I don't think any of this was a secret.

-- Y2kObserver (Y2kObserver@nowhere.com), January 09, 2000.

Some observations and comments:

1. Yes some plants went down, ours did but normally does during long Holiday weekends. Major University's were out for vacation, this is also normal (you should see the monthly electric bill for a major big ten size University lotsa and lotsa zero's). Some office buildings shutdown some major loads for the rollover. These buildings in the Central Ohio area are back with some cold days and nights last week. Summer is peak for South there is more of a balance in the North with higher peaks around 2pm during hot humid summer days and a couple of peaks during cold winter days, lots of coffee and showers.

We have since resumed normally usage with no problems yet. Shaving extra loads look to be prudent planning on the part of Utilities, I can't really argue with what works. Would I rather see full loads and minor problems making me dark and cold?

I am not sure I believe the complete media story, they are certainly in bed with Herr Bill who wants to keep the market high for his legacy. If there are problems .gov may try to gloss over until at least spring this leaves less load for Utilities and maintenance outages anyway. Also less of strain with light AC and less problem if there were no heat.

We are back to business as usual with all of our loads including those 440 Volt 3 phase motors. If things change I will certainly be happy to let you all know asap.

As always IMHO, happy new year, not selling my preps just yet.

-- Squid (ItsDark@down.here), January 10, 2000.

Thanks Cheryl and Y2K Observer. Your contributions are realy helpful.

-- Lite Dawning (Lite Dawning@RussianRoulette.bang), January 10, 2000.

Does anyone else have additional information concerning the extent to which the world was "powered down"?

-- wondering (wondering@too.cum), January 17, 2000.

I work at Australian .gov, We are a Statewide department. No industrial equipment. We shut EVERYTHING down (statewide) & disconnected from supply. Re-connected after rollover. Not sure of other .gov departments but pretty sure that this was done everywhere.

-- XOR (drwizzard@usa.net), January 17, 2000.

XOR:

Very interesting comments!

After the rollover weekend passed, did you then bring everything up slowly so that you would be able to detect problems and fix them when they appeared?

Did you find many problems?

Thanks!

-- wondering (wondering@still.cum), January 17, 2000.

wondering , We did bring everything up slowly. Started with "head office", bring up w.a.n switching and servers, and then all the "regional offices" bringing up wan and lan switching then servers etc. Each site (office) was allocated a start and end time to bring up equipment. We didn't see and problems develop , but there has been a marked increase in problems after rolover , that while i can't attribute them to y2k , i can't attribute them to anything else , either.

-- XOR (drwizzard@usa.net), January 17, 2000.