From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: March 15 column - Y2K book]
Date: 16 Mar 1999 06:07:26 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


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Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 15, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     Finally, a useful book on Y2K
> 
>     In attempting to project the likely impact of the nation's computer
> chips shifting over (or failing to oblige) to the year "00" in slightly
> less than 300 days, caution must be taken not to get caught up in
> millennial prophesy.
> 
>   Our Christian brethren of the more fundamentalist stripe have long been
> decrying an urban American culture which they view as damnably decadent. It
> didn't take much to get them prophesying that widespread financial
> upheavals and resultant urban rioting will quickly sweep away a corrupt
> urban culture which celebrates abortion, pornography, sodomy, and close
> dancing on the sabbath. But yea, the righteous shall feast on MREs, and
> suffer no want.
> 
>   Without commenting on their underlying complaints -- we have indeed
> allowed many a wolf among the flock of our liberties, though I somehow
> doubt a fundamentalist theocracy would be much of an improvement -- this
> stuff verges on wishful thinking. The chances that our children will greet
> New Year's of the year 2020 wandering the land in goatskins, living the
> life of Neolithic hunter-gatherers (but keeping the sabbath holy), does not
> place very high on the list of outcomes worth planning for. No economy as
> robust as ours is likely to succumb in a single day, or a single year.
> 
>   That said, though, it strikes me equally foolish to assume "There won't
> be any Y2K problem." Any store which opened for business in the past few
> years and saw its fancy new electronic cash register system freeze up upon
> being presented with the first bank or credit card with an expiration date
> "00" or "01" has already experienced the "Y2K crisis." The question isn't
> "whether," but "how bad."
> 
>   Will the power grid go down? That means the gas pumps, as well as the
> ATMs. How long can municipal water and sewer departments work on back-up
> generators? What if the trains hauling vegetables and coal for the power
> plants  get held up at switches that no longer work? How squirrelly will
> Russian missile commanders get when their screens go blank, and they can no
> longer tell whether they're under a pre-emptive attack?
> 
>   At least three major Hollywood movies on these themes are due this year.
> The biggest problem may well turn out to be one of public perception. If
> everyone thinks we're going to run out of toilet paper, and we all race
> down to Smith's or Stop & Shop to stock up on toilet paper -- the stores
> run out of toilet paper. At which point, what? Blustering politicians
> demanding new laws to punish "the dastardly hoarding of personal hygiene
> products"?
> 
>   Yeah, that'll work.
> 
>   Up till now, there hasn't been a single good book I could recommend which
> deals with the whole range of steps families may want to take to prepare
> themselves for any of the many emergencies we're likely to face in the next
> 20 years, as Americans confront the old Chinese curse that we should "live
> in interesting times." (You think the stock market will go up forever, that
> we've grown "too smart" to ever again suffer depression,  famine,
> pestilence, and the National Recovery Administration? In that case, can I
> sell you an extra ticket on the "unsinkable" Titanic?)
> 
>   The book in question is a 300-page trade paperback called "Boston on
> Surviving Y2K, And Other Lovely Disasters," by the pseudonymous Boston T.
> Party, and published by Javelin Press, P.O. Box 31-F, Ignacio, Colo.
> 81137-0031.
> 
>   The twin problems with this book are that the author tends to assume
> you're already in a rural location where you can dig a well and raise
> rabbits for food, and that the sky is pretty much the limit on what you can
> afford to spend as you prepare to survive without central-grid power,
> installing diesel generators, storage batteries, and the like.
> 
>   However, that said, no one need do everything the author suggests, of
> course. And no more thorough and well-thought-out little book has recently
> appeared,  surveying options and presenting some first-hand expertise on
> the selection of weapons for self-defense, food and water storage methods,
> home health care, power generation, tools, survival clothing, and even why
> you (start ital)shouldn't(end ital) pay a premium to stock up on "collector
> grade" gold and silver coins.
> 
>   A highly recommended read.
> 
>   The author is quirky about payment, demanding either greenback dollars or
> payee-blank money orders at $22 a copy, plus $3 shipping. But fortunately,
> Mr. T. Party's Y2K tome is also now available from a couple of mail-order
> houses that will accept more standard methods of payment (like checks.)
> Paladin Press (P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306) lists the book at $22,
> billing it as "the mother of all Y2K books." Add $5 for post office
> shipping; $7 for UPS, which is faster. (And call 1-800-392-2400 for a copy
> of their catalog, while you're at it.)
> 
>   The Cheaper Than Dirt! catalog (2520 NE Loop 820, Fort Worth, TX
> 76106-1809) also lists the book, at $21.97, plus $7.97 shipping & handling.
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
> Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
> UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
> 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
> ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at
> 1-800-244-2224. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
> 
> ***
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

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