The world doesn't need much to get caught in a storm of hysteria and paranoia, but with the turn of the century, our favorite villain was Y2K, the year 2000 bug. Different members of the political sphere, fundamentalists, extremists, and religious groups saw in Y2K a unique opportunity to spread their message: civilization would fall for two simple digits, and you must prepare. That gave rise to all kinds of strange materials, including the Y2K Family Survival Guide from 1998, which somehow involved none other than Leonard Nimoy…
If you visit our Facebook profile, the first thing you'll see is a very special image: Best Buy's official warning to customers to turn off their computers before December 31, 1999. However, the Y2K madness reached much more extreme levels: power plants would explode, planes would fall from the sky, trillions in savings would disappear, there would be no water, no food, no medicine… because some systems cannot pass from 19 to 20 in their date. Turn off your PC for a while and everything will be fine. (?)
"Y2K Compliant" and "Ready for the Year 2000" became irresistible phrases for the market. New computers (in those days) hit the shelves as a definitive solution to the problem, but the hardware wasn't alone: emergency kits, generators, survival guides, weapons, ammunition, and more than 45 million books were also sold, anticipating famine, civil wars, destruction, and suffering. The VHS format was a key piece in spreading that cloud of madness, and that's how we discovered Y2K Family Survival Guide, a one-hour "documentary?" in which Leonard Nimoy is in charge of... well, stirring up an entire country with Y2K.
Spock vs. the Y2K Bug
The video begins with Nimoy himself drawing parallels between humanity's current situation and the legend of Atlantis, reminding the audience of its (supposed) high level of technological development and its sudden disappearance. The documentary (with the help of some "experts") manages to introduce Grace Hopper, the COBOL language, and the need to conserve bits in those years of punch cards and stratospheric costs. Companies and governments saved millions of dollars, but Nimoy drops another bomb: the world was spending about $600 billion to contain Y2K.
In other words, the responsibility lay with the original programmers (Alan Greenspan's words were repeated ad nauseam), mixed with the apathy and negligence of authorities who refused to heed warnings, some of them dating back to the '60s.
Some of the characters cited here talk about Y2K as a hybrid between cancer and chaos theory, causing small problems that will then affect more sensitive systems, to finally knock out the entire infrastructure. The video gives us this:
"In the dead of winter, at the stroke of midnight, January 1, 2000, elevators could stop, heating could disappear, credit cards and ATMs could fail, planes and trains could halt, phones and televisions could go silent, water distribution systems might not deliver water for cooking, drinking, or bathing, streetlights, traffic lights, and building lights everywhere could flicker and go out, hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies might be unable to provide medical assistance, banks and markets around the world could suffer some form of collapse, and nuclear plants could stop generating the electricity we need for all aspects of our daily lives."
Emphasis on "could".
Now, I must admit that the documentary is not 100% FUD, and it dedicates a small part to those agencies and companies that prepared properly to welcome the new century. At the same time, it highlights some interesting problems in the mindset of improvised preppers, and mentions that Y2K could become an opportunity to rediscover the concept of community: "People who get a gun, a year's worth of food, and head to the mountains are going to find a lot of other people in the mountains, armed, and in a very bad mood. The best thing is to stay in your community; it's a community problem. It's not the end of the world."
But the biggest contradiction comes through Nimoy himself, when he admits that in reality "there are no Y2K experts" because "nothing like this has ever happened before" and "no one knows for sure what is going to happen." The second half of the documentary enters full prepper mode: how to collect water (for consumption and hygiene), store it, and if necessary, use filters or boil the liquid to eliminate bacteria.
It also talks about fuel and food, both canned and dehydrated, for humans "and" pets. Even chemical toilets have a special mention, in case the toilet stops working. The recommendations point to a preparation of "one month to six weeks", always emphasizing the community aspect and the creation of local networks. The most delicate part is medications, because many doctors simply refuse to advance prescriptions.
The last section of the documentary reviews all the items a survivor of the new century should have at hand, while the experts rate the impact of Y2K between 2.5 and 3 on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being an absolute disaster).
In the end, civilization did not collapse, and the world did not sink like Atlantis. In fact, today Y2K is one more reason to mock human nature and the hysteria it caused at the time. However, some believe that Y2K became a joke because there were people who took it very seriously during the turn of the century, and even then it was impossible to avoid certain high-profile incidents... but that's another story.
