y2k anniversary

Y2K ANNIVERSARY

Commander Zero had an article on the Twentieth Year Anniversary Of Y2K, which I hadn't even thought of at all. I was just focused on the end of 2019, amazed and awed that we actually made it to the next year without a major crash. Of course, I say that every time I thought we surely simply HAD to collapse this time. Which is really what this article is about. How easy it is for me to continually panic, nothing happens, and I wait a decade before panicking again. Do I ever learn? NAH! What, are you smoking dope?

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Remember, I'm a rather high strung individual, and have been most of my life. I live inside my head too much. Not that this is a bad thing, as it aids my creativity and “art” ( not that my writing is artistic, just that it is part of that career field ). I don't look at myself as a writer half crazed by the voices screaming to be released upon the page. I look at the rest of you and feel sorry you don't share that affliction. It's just passion, nothing to see a doctor about. And how else could I rant nonstop?

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I'm going to get a bit more carried away than your average Joe, as a result of the above. I don't take that to mean I'm wrong and need to learn any lesson, but rather that everyone else should be MORE emotional and passionate. You could call it fear, I suppose, although if I was afraid of the future, constantly, you would think I'd have already eaten a bullet. Fear is just shorthand. I'm only afraid I haven't prepared enough. Which also seems silly, as I know I'll die soon as Spicy Times roll. Even I am unsure why I'm just prepping to supply a random stranger who shoots me first.

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I look at Y2K a bit differently than most. To me, it was the time of awakening from my dumb ass slumber. Up to that time, I was a prepper, not a survivalist. I don't believe we had that term yet, just as “survivalist” went through a few false starts being titled. I believe “retreater” was the father of “survivalist”. I think the simplest descriptive would be that a prepper believes in the cavalry coming, of being saved, while the survivalist knows he is on his own forevermore.

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I was following the advice of My Boy Kurt Saxon. He thought a return to 19^th century technology would save civilization. All the doomers prior to that followed the standard Cold War faith in the “recovery” being when the nuclear fallout was down to safe levels. That was more of a survivalist belief, because you cannot recover from global thermonuclear war. Nuclear Winter was real, back then ( we could debate its accuracy-I think it was a legitimate worry ). Yet, there was more of a “prepper” thought process that recovery was guaranteed.

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We would just recover with a much smaller population base, and a more “alternate/appropriate” technology. This is of course wrong, but I didn't realize it at the time. Then, of course, there was that bastard Dave Duffy. I'm being harsh. He did good things and walked his talk. Unfortunately, the man was an incurable optimist ( not that I'm reminded of any of my readers, cough, cough ) and that really polluted the movement that only had the equally optimistic ( but ONLY if you had super ninja Yuppie Scum gear ) American Survival Guide as a counter.

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Hell, ASG was a walking advertisement for blindly optimistic. Their view was the properly equipped would naturally, without effort, be one eyed kings in the valley's of the blind. They never dared discuss what would happen when all the Industrial Age/Oil Age supplies dried up. And Rawles, well, he was POST-Y2K, but he is of the “recovery” paradigm anyway. Nothing new to see there, move along. Sure, he painted a more fundamentalist shade on the old wisdom, but it was still the same bird with different feathers. Everyone, without fail, preached good old 'Murican Ingenuity recovery. The BS and hubris was eyeball deep.

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Now, I want to sing the praises of Gary North. I was a fan of the man a dozen years prior to Y2K, even subscribing to his mailed economic newsletter for a time when I was flush. He wasn't a One Answer Man like a lot of gold bugs. He had a rounded education. For the time, his subscription price was insane, and yet I never felt I was being ripped off. How can I recommend him higher than that, being the tight wad I am? Most folks call him a fear monger for his work prior to Y2K, but I don't see it as that.

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He performed a public service, at no charge, at a cost to himself, by linking you to the world of the Y2K writers, at a time when the Internet was new and this was no easy feat. Talk about getting crapped on for a good deed. I waded through all this, hours a day, for a very long time. I devoted more time to it than I eventual would Peak Oil ( I think. Looking back, at least it seems like it ). And I eventually learned that civilization is much more fragile than I or the “prepper” writers would lead you to believe.

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If it had just been one author I read claiming this, I would have of course dismissed it. But this was NOT the default setting of all the articles. The focus was on WHY everything was so fragile. I don't remember a sense of post-crash doom as much as it was a fixable problem. See, before, whatever was going to happen, nuclear war or King Klinton dictatorship, it was just assumed you only needed to prepare for a down period, and then all would be well. Y2K never talked of recovery, only prevention. It didn't take long before I was filling in the blanks myself, understanding if the system went, that was it, goodnight Irene.

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If the Y2K writers had tried to “lead me to water”, as in told me we were all going to die, I would have ignored them, being distrustful of everyone by then. But by letting me figure it out myself, I became convinced ( keep in mind, these are twenty year old memories. And you know how faulty those can be. I'm PRETTY sure this is how my thought process went, as I'm deconstructing how this was the change in my world view ). This was when I realized calamities on these scales were not going to see a recovery.

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You understand why this is significant, I hope. If there is a recovery, you needn't worry overly much about the coming disaster. Peak Oil? Not a problem! We'll Frack Forever. Communist dictatorship? Meh, Trump will take care of it. But if you view the system as fragile and recovery impossible, you do not so easily dismiss the danger of running low on oil or having Blue Bellies hijack the elections. So, while I'm easily frightened about each new impending disaster ( Y2K, Housing Bubble, Everything Bubble ), it isn't because of that specific event. It is because of the underlying fragility of our systems. The upcoming disasters are just what is going to be the straw on the camels back.

( .Y. )

( today's related Amazon link click HERE )

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note: I want to thank "Wait, But Why" ( HERE ) for quoting from this poem I had no idea existed.  "The gentle downward slope gets steeper and imperceptibly becomes an abyss" by Thomas Transtromer.  Sounds a bit like my "waterfall collapse", right?  
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note: yes, I understand Wikipedia is "Moscow On The Pacific".  But an off-line Wiki seems rather a practical thing to have.  And, no, I wouldn't do it exactly as this article spells out ( it seems you might be able to break it up on to USB sticks rather than have one expensive tablet, but I'm just spitballing ).  The how-to is HERE 
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note: a hearty thank you to H.C. for the generous PayPal donation.
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