Well let's see, since rollover we've had:

1. Refinery problems at an unheard of rate. 2. Numerous petro pipline explosions and breaks. 3. Oil spills and chemical spills like never before. 4. Fuel and Diesel shortages without precedent during peacetime. 5. Billing and shipping problems at major concerns. 6. Trains running slowly if at all. 7. Tuck transportation problems due to increasing fuel costs. 8. Municipal and other gooberment agencies data retreval problems 9. Reduction of oil imports due to shipping problems. 10. Nigeria and Venezeula declaring Force Majeure. 11. Saudi oil port problems. 13. Planes falling out of the sky - suspected software glitch. 14. Chemical plant explosions. 15. Manual nuclear scrams. 16. Major sewage spills. 17. major water plant problems.

Sure am glad none of the above are Y2k related. If I thought they were, I might panic.

-- elskon (elskon@ bigfoot.com), February 06, 2000

Answers

Good summary. The scary part is that things are clearly getting much much worse.

-- (OscarD@trentor.net), February 06, 2000.

May I add train derailments to your list,sir?

-- notsonutz (Notsonutz@as.asyou), February 06, 2000.

I think we should coin a new term for all of this. Before rollover, it was Y2K. Ever since, it has been more like ABY2K - Anything *But* Y2K.

I wonder how long it will be and how many "out of the ordinary" failures have to occur before the sheeple begin to connect the dots.

-- Steve Baxter (chicoqh@home.com), February 06, 2000.

There's an awesome list of Airplane Problems/Events at:

http://www.egroups.com/group/humptydumptyy2k/1057.html?

-- list (list@list.list), February 06, 2000.

Don't hold your breath on the sheeple, Steve. As long as the welfare check arrives on time, the TV works, and booze can be bought with food stamps, they will remain blissfull unaware.

-- elskon (elskon@bigfoot.com), February 06, 2000.

elskon,

Being a sheeple, I take offense at your last comments. :)

Sheeple

-- (Sheeple@Greener.Pastures), February 06, 2000.

Y2k, an obvious non-event. :)

-- haha (haha@haha.com), February 06, 2000.

Sorry Sheeple. Forgot to add: "Present company excepted."

-- elskon (elskon@bigfoot.com), February 06, 2000.

Where can you buy booze with food stamps? Here in Minnesota you have to sell the stamps to get cash.

-- John (LITTMANNJ@AOL.COM), February 06, 2000.

John . . . and with the cash you can then buy the booze.

Ain't barter grand. :-)

-- elskon (elskon@bigfoot.com), February 06, 2000.

That was Jack.......he spewed out that line for ages.....then slowly faded back into the woodwork shortly after rollover.

Of course, I have some respect for the man.......at least he has more honor to admit he was mistaken in his own way that many of those in denial that continure to rant on about Y2K even though the game ended over a month ago.

It's over folks.....finis....finito......finalized.....done like dinner, is no more, deader than a doorknob, pushing up the daisies, this is an ex-parrot............

And the doomers cry "It's not dead, it's only sleeping".

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), February 06, 2000.

Nope. Won't be dead until the pollies can admit that its dead by never returning to this forum. They know as well as anyone that the jury is still out.

-- (@ .), February 06, 2000.

This must be Debonkers' Sunday afternoon squatting on foreign territory.

-- alreadygiven (WeEfKa@the.keyboard), February 06, 2000.

One thing is for sure folks, whether you believe it is Y2K related or not, you along with the rest of us will pay the high prices at the gas pumps and the grocery check out. That is hard reality that you can break the bank with.

-- Notforlong (Fsur@aol.com), February 06, 2000.

alreadygiven:

Don't be too hard on the trolls! After all, they think "squatters rights" means free toilet paper.

-- Steve Baxter (chicoqh@home.com), February 06, 2000.

elskon,

Do you have any data to support the theory that these mishaps are happening at a greater rate than in 1999, or 1998, or 1997?

I ask because I haven't seen any, either in my own observations or posted on this forum by others. What I have seen is the conclusion that "well, it just seems like there are more mishaps," and from what I can tell, that conclusion is based only on the cross posting of news feeds from other sites.

I maintain that if the cross posting had been happening like this in 1999 or 1998 you would have seen the same rate.

Contrast what you see now with the stock market downturn of fall 1998, or the asian economic crisis of a few years ago, which was attributed to causing actual bancruptcies in the U.S., and you'll see those situations were more real and more dire than anything we're dealing with right now.

There are always, always, always things like this happening around the world, always have been, always will be. It's the collection of mishaps being linked into this forum that has changed - no-one was really doing that last year.

If you (or anyone) does have a control sample of daily mishaps from previous years to compare to, please share that info, or if you can provide links to any hard data about the rates of current failures compared to previous years, please share also.

The "it just seems like" argument weakens your position to the point where it begs to be discounted.

NOT trying to be trollish here, I hope my query is polite enough to deserve a thoughtful response.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@people.com), February 06, 2000.

It sounds like you're being trollish to me.

-- (hal@gostek.org), February 06, 2000.

"Well let's see, since rollover we've had: ........"

...... was originally posted at Kitco (credit where it is due)

-- alan (foo@bar.com), February 06, 2000.

Bemused:

Nothing like a good bit of evidence and reason to bring out the truth :)

BTW didn't Koskinen and .gov put out a report just before y2k saying "these things happen" with some statistics? I think that would be a good place to start since I'm sure they wanted to show just how much fails in general so they could get their post y2k spin machine primed.

Anybody have a copy of that release they can share here?

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), February 06, 2000.

hal, posting a valid question politely is not "trolling," even if it's a tough question.

I.S., I haven't seen that document, but that will be a good one to check out. If anyone else knows a link, please post, otherwise I'll go a-searchin'. If it doesn't have any good applicable pre-rollover failure stats, however, it may not be any more valid than the main presumption of this thread.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 06, 2000.

Well, DO YOU recall all this many refineries crapping out and the price of refined petroleum products going through the roof in 1997, 1998 or 1999?

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 06, 2000.

I tried to find it but can't. I did see this WRT to trains from today however:

Europe's History of Train Wrecks (for those keeping tally)

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), February 06, 2000.

WW,

From my recollection, the petroleum industry glitch rate is about the same as in recent years. It appears that from your recollection, it's much higher. What I'm asking for is any data supporting the position that it's higher, because if we don't have that, we're just comparing our recollections.

I also suggest that you may be paying much closer attention to the failures than you ever were before, which would make them seem more common. This forum, with the prevalence of disaster stories, provides an environment where this possible misconception can grow - especially if no questioning voices are heard.

Carl Jenkins, the main provider of these stories, admitted in another thread that:

Sadly, there is no comprehensive database to compare current incident rate with.

This is exactly my point.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 06, 2000.

Check the archives under Gen Awareness, I think, or perhaps government, and you should find the articles in question.

And, Bemused, this forum had many postings over the past 2 years in ref failures. Almost every time the folk tried to quash them with questions in terms of what does this have to do with the subject at hand, etc.

chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), February 06, 2000.

Chuck,

And, Bemused, this forum had many postings over the past 2 years in ref failures....

Doesn't this suggest that there were many refinery mishaps prior to Y2K, and then wouldn't it follow that the current ones are possibly not Y2K related? Maybe I miss your point, but did you change positions here? Glad you're coming around! :^)

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 06, 2000.

Y2K Pro......

Pining for the fjords, what kind of talk is that!

Ah, I see, it's a Norwegian Blue.........

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), February 06, 2000.

Well let's see, BEFORE rollover we never had:

1. Refinery problems at any rate. 2. Numerous petro pipeline explosions and breaks. 3. Oil spills and chemical spills like what is happening now. 4. Fuel and Diesel shortages during peacetime. 5. Billing and shipping problems at major concerns. 6. Trains running slowly if at all. 7. Truck transportation problems due to increasing fuel costs. 8. Municipal and other gooberment(???) agencies data retreval problems 9. Reduction of oil imports due to shipping problems. 10. Any country declaring Force Majeure. 11. Saudi oil port problems. 13. Planes falling out of the sky - suspected software glitch. 14. Chemical plant explosions. 15. Manual nuclear scrams. 16. Major sewage spills. 17. major water plant problems.

Sure am glad none of the above ever happened before. If I thought they had, I might panic.

-- Mr. Sane (hhh@home.com), February 07, 2000.

Let's see, weren't there some figures recently that indicated that refineries were operating at 86% of capacity vs. 97% one year ago?

And didn't Krempansy (sp?) do some research that indicated 8-10 Nuke plant mishaps would be expected for the month of January? The count ended up around 17, I believe?

And didn't someone else pull FAA reports on incidents for last january, and find a similar number? But upon closer indpection, it was found that this years incidents reported here were MUCH more severe in nature. Alittle digging would then demonstrate a higher rate this year.

And doesn't common sense indicate that 59 water main breaks in one week is inordinately high? Or two major cities in two different climate areas (Cleveland and Tampa) within a week of each other having major downtown disruption because of mega main breaks - that doesn't seem out of the ordinary?

And how many train incidents causing death do you normally hear about?

And how many"worst ecological disasters" do you hear about in a typical month? (Brazil, Kentucky, and others)

Has anyone EVER heard about fuel contamination problems before now? And if you had, were they anywhere near the level seen now?

Not to mention oil prices as an indicator - especially in the absense of political upheaval.

No, people, these are not normal times! We have avoided the simultaneous failures which could have caused TEOTWAWKI, butare not out of the recessionary/world depression woods yet!

Stay tuned, or as Drudge says:

Developing........

-- Duke1983 (Duke1983@aol.com), February 07, 2000.

I guess we can add Chicago to that list of cities with Major water main breaks:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg.tcl?msg_id=002Vex

-- Duke1983 (Duke1983@aol.com), February 07, 2000.

Craig,

Seriously, I disagree with you, but if you're going to properly argue this you've got to be more thorough and accurate in your reasearch, as follows:

E's not pinin'! E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet its maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now history! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Ok, I feel better now. Back to theology...

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), February 07, 2000.

Oh, yeah -- the quote (that I forgot to put in quotes) was from Monty Python's "Parrot Sketch".

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), February 07, 2000.

59 water main breaks? Is that all? Last week in the Washington, DC metro area there were 40 water main breaks reported in just one day!

-- h2o (no@ddress.today), February 07, 2000.

Ok, ok, I swear this is the last time I'll comment on the Parrot Sketch...in this thread, anyway... :)

For those of you unfamiliar with that sketch, some background:

Michael Palin is the proprietor of a pet shop who's sold John Cleese a dead parrot. Cleese realizes it and tries to return it. An argument ensues where Palin keeps trying to tell Cleese in different, off-the-wall ways how he's somehow mistaken -- e.g., "It's probably just pining for the fjords." Cleese manages to maintain his cool, then finally blows up with the resulting tirade I've quoted.

(Python fans: I'm a little hazy on the details, here, but I think I'm close enough -- yes?)

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), February 07, 2000.