After TEOTWAWKI, does it really matter if you die of: immediate starvation (Pollies), prolonged starvation (those preparing for a few weeks), protecting your food and loved ones from the starving hoards (those that GI but live anywhere near a large city), protecting your right to remain free (those that are prepared and bugging out but targeted by the new government), or being starved and worked to death in a government camp (those that give up rather than fight). We had better start getting our shit together NOW, because just because the infrastructure goes down doesn't mean the government will cease to exist. SOMEONE will rule this country!!! Whether it be the NWO or a very crafty general or...........US!!!! I would like to propose a new site dedicated to how we get this country back after TSHTF. We need a common cause that the most loyal,moral and dedicated Americans support with their lives if necessary. Just surviving is not enough. Fighting for an honorable cause is the nobilist death I can imagine.

-- steve (steve@NWMo.com), July 30, 1999

Answers

We had better start getting our shit together NOW, because just because the infrastructure goes down doesn't mean the government will cease to exist. I disagree, but it depends on your definition of infrastructure. For me, the government is part of the infrastructure, so if infrastructure goes, so does government.

I don't think there will be any organized group of people trying to rule for quite a long time after Y2K hits. There will simply be too much chaos and too much killing. Eventually, I would think that people will "burn out" from all the killing and at that point some sort of organization will form. Still, you have a lot more to fear from the chaos, than you do from what comes afterwards. If I die, I plan to die fighting, that's for sure.

I don't understand why everyone's making a big joke out of your post. Maybe they think Y2K is just a big joke. Yeah, don't worry, everything will be okay. Go back to sleep, Pollys.

-- (its@coming.soon), July 31, 1999.

Alas, the shattered dreams of doomers...

Vindicated Regards,
Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), June 08, 2000

Answers

Too funny! I'm so glad I was a sleeping polly.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), June 08, 2000.

I have restructured my infra.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), June 08, 2000.

-- Net Shrink (psycho@analyze.com), June 08, 2000.

It's utterly fascinating how the dim bulbs at TB2K could imagine themselves anthropologists, social psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists as well as savvy computer geeks, embedded systems engineers, economists, and urban planners.

They (and this includes the Most Reverend Edward You're-done-for) can't point to a single instance in which

- Programmers, bank clerks, government bureaucrats or any other professional groups walk off the job en masse because it merely looks like they might not get paid. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. It has been demonstrated time and again that people will stay in a job long after the paychecks stop coming. Think Russia, for instance.

- A society degenerate into warring tribes during a crisis. Quite the opposite, the more tightly organized it is, the more likely it is to maintain the social order during chaos. Individuals and societies follow their habitual behaviors. Think of any natural catastrophe: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, war. Only societies that have had social disorder as a norm revert to that behavior during a crisis. Even in Berlin during the last days of the siege, the population would commute amid the rubble and bombs to their jobs in banks and bakeries.

I think MIT has a rather impressive faculty and program in these areas. Maybe Ed was taking economics and could't squeeze social psych into his schedule. Otherwise he surely would have noticed this gaping hole in his logic.

Perhaps the most intriguing question is not why they thought computers and embedded systems were a threat, but why they thought social chaos would ensue. They had FAR MORE evidence that the computers would go berserk than that society would.

I would argue that they DID have a BS filter. They just had a different definition of BS than the rest of us. They set their filters to eliminate reality.

-- N.Arro (N.Arro@Home.Now), June 08, 2000.

I would argue that they DID have a BS filter. They just had a different definition of BS than the rest of us. They set their filters to eliminate reality.

LOL, N.Arro, a most excellent theorem. Indeed, most doomers did eliminate reality. I would suggest that a more accurate term for the filter doomers used would be the "Reality Phasor." While some doomers had their Reality Phasor's on stun, a few more infamous ones such as Paula Gordon had their Reality Phasor's on "Kill."

Please note that the Reality Phasor device was not in use by y2k "opportunist" who were often confused as mere doomers. Folks such as Jim Lord, Michael Hyatt, and many others used a plain old farm impliment, the well known "Bullshit Spreader," of course they set the device at the third clevis pin hole, the "maximum" spread setting.

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), June 08, 2000.

Perhaps the most intriguing question is not why they thought computers and embedded systems were a threat, but why they thought social chaos would ensue. They had FAR MORE evidence that the computers would go berserk than that society would.

N.Arro,

Without being aware of it, you just distilled the essence of the Y2K "polly/doomer" debate.

What was potentially more damaging and more likely to happen: Y2K the computer problem, or Y2K panic?

-- (Summing@it.up), June 09, 2000.

Ah, yes. The quotably quoted steve (steve@NWMo.com)...another one-shot-poster nobody knew. The polly trolls did as much to propagate FUD on TB2000 as any of the doomiest doomers. Don't let the facts stop you AR.

-- (I'm a@little.teapot), June 09, 2000.