Apocaholics Anonymous: Join to Fight Disaster Addiction

[Andre]

Fight the fear of the future, the disaster addiction, and join

http://www.godward.org/commentary/Out of the Box/Apocaholics Anonymous.htm

Hi, I’m Gary and I’m a recovering Apocaholic. I am currently Apocalypse free for nearly 18 years. I left the church of the Religious Apocalypse in 1976, over 30 years ago, and I resigned from the secular church of the Financial Apocalypse in 1989. Yes, I still feel the urge to proclaim the end of all things, from time to time, but I white-knuckle my way to a history book for a little perspective, and then I breathe easier. If you wish to join AA, the only requirement is that you give up the adrenaline rush of media-fed fantasies...cont'd

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Funny thing about Y2K: One or some of the fixes used to correct some military computers caused part of our defenses to go blind, leaving us completely vulnerable to a nuclear missile attack. IIRC, the systems were offline for about 7 hours.

The real lesson with Y2K is that we can anticipate problems and act accordingly to either prevent disasters, or at least to minimize the damage. Had we done nothing to prepare it surely would have been at least a financial disaster.

Another example is the cold war. It took the best efforts of many brilliant men and women to prevent an inadvertant escalation of events that could have easily led to nuclear war.

We can only address the problems that we are willing to confront. Hiding and living in denial never solved any problem.

Despair and denial are the real enemies; the rest is just a problem to be solved.

 

[Anttech]

Funny thing about Y2K: One or some of the fixes used to correct some military computers caused part of our defenses to go blind, leaving us completely vulnerable to a nuclear missile attack. IIRC, the systems were offline for about 7 hours.

They arent built in a redundant way?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

They arent built in a redundant way?

Redundant systems may have had the same problem...? I only know that this was made public a few years ago, and for a time, to some extent we were blind to attack. I keep thinking that this applied to the West Coast of the US.

But who needs redundant systems anyway? That's just fear mongering.

 

[Anttech]

Redundant systems may have had the same problem

Yeah, so you patch one, leaving the other as is. The when the all clear is given on the recently patched system, patch the other. Thus you never have a black hole in your service

Doesnt the Military use a decent Change Management System? hehe

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This appears to be the same incident, but the report that I heard indicated that this was only made public later, so I'm not 100% sure about this.

The most significant Y2K-related glitch came from the Pentagon, where the Defense Department reported early Saturday that one of its satellite-based guidance systems failed to properly adjust to the date change.

Officials said the satellite was down for several hours shortly after the rollover of Greenwich Mean Time, or 7 p.m. EST Friday.

Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said the problem was "significant" and involved a ground station that processes information from some spy satellites.

"For a period of several hours we were not able to process information from that system," Hamre said.

A backup system was put in its place. The system is functioning properly although a little bit slower than normal, according to the Pentagon.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/01/01/y2k.wrap/

So may be that the delay was the time needed to bring back-up systems online.

...oh, I bet that it was the seriousness of the situation that was made public later.

 

[Andre]

Here is somebody who must be encouraged strongly to sign up for membership. It may not be too late.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2609305.ece

Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions'

 

[mheslep]

The real lesson with Y2K is that we can

... overreact and waste colossal sums, thereby diverting resources from ongoing problems.

 

[Office_Shredder]

In Connecticut, the DMVs couldn't register new cars, because the computer system insisted all models after 1900 weren't built yet.

(Go figure out WHY they would have the computer check the model's year against the current year )

But the point is, an error like that can grind the economy to a halt!

 

[mheslep]

In Connecticut, the DMVs couldn't register new cars, because the computer system insisted all models after 1900 weren't built yet.

(Go figure out WHY they would have the computer check the model's year against the current year )

But the point is, an error like that can grind the economy to a halt!

Id say the point is errors like that did and do occur from time to time and the economy did not, gasp, grind to a halt. People deal.