Bunker fever

NASDAQ meltdown? Impending recession? Power crisis in California? They're all a part of the Y2K fallout. And those of us who don't see it are just Pollyannas, too ignorant or happy-go-lucky to consider the mounting evidence.

Jan Nickerson of Wayland, Mass., would give us a four on the Y2K damage scale, meaning she thinks that it will ultimately be responsible for "economic slowdown; rise in unemployment; isolated social incidents." She's no wild-eyed survivalist who spent New Year's Eve making her own lye soap in preparation for the meltdown. Nickerson's a technology businesswoman who runs her own consulting firm, Prosperity Collaborative. But before the year 2000 rollover she became so concerned about the Y2K bug that she stopped all her consulting activities to create a card game called Y2K Connections, in an effort educate people about the issue. "I wanted to create a game that would do for sustainability of humanity on the planet what Monopoly did for capitalism," she says. Her goal was for the game to help people shift their thinking about Y2K from "'That's not a problem' to 'That's not my problem' to 'It really could impact me.'"

The fact that this problem didn't quite impact us doesn't diminish Nickerson's enthusiasm for the project. "I took a beating financially, but in terms of the impact that the game had with those who played it, it was extremely rewarding," she says. For Nickerson, the game's messages about the fragility of the infrastructure still hold up.

Our Y2K fears were fueled by a conviction that there are fundamental flaws in the world around us -- in our political structure, government, media, infrastructure or general sanity. So it's not that big a leap to think that the problems will ultimately manifest themselves in catastrophe. Y2K was the perfect receptacle for this generalized fear. That it never actually brought us to our knees didn't shake people's faith that some kind of crisis remains imminent.

Beal told me, "We're facing Y2Ks every day: climate change, disease, technological innovation, social organization, meteors, resource transfer -- any number of things could tip the balance and shock our complex system into a sequence of adjustments that we might find unpleasant, if not downright hostile." What could be more rational than fear, except mounting a reasoned response in preparation?

Although Nickerson stresses that she never advised anyone on what would happen as a result of Y2K -- only what might happen -- she says that she herself was "stunned, absolutely stunned" when the rollover occurred without major and obvious problems. But since the night of Jan. 1, 2000 (she watched the celebrations on TV from a cabin a few hours from her home), she has come to think of the Y2K bug differently: not like an "ice storm, but like a flood."

"An ice storm comes and goes," she explains. "The current thinking is that Y2K is more like a flood, but the waters are still seeping out. It's not over; we're still seeing some ripple effects."

For the true Y2K faithful, this is the cornerstone of their logic. Y2K didn't turn out to be what many people thought it would be, but that doesn't mean that it didn't have serious effects. The threat has simply changed forms, becoming a seeping, creeping threat that's causing problems all around us right now. Nickerson cites the increase in pipeline explosions in 2000 and electricity supply issues as possible forms of Y2K fallout. "If people thought that there might be an ice storm, and a flood happened instead, they're apt to say that there was no ice storm, and to miss that water is trickling out and getting deeper."

So why don't we notice that we're standing in ankle-deep water? It has been covered up.

The hardcore Y2K doomers -- the ones who fled to caves -- were like biblical prophets predicting a calamitous future. But the Y2K faithful, the people still paranoid about Y2K, are seers from a different paradigm. Like the philosopher of Plato's Cave, who realizes that we're all living among shadows that the rest of us can't recognize, they see the truth. It's an insight that sets them apart from the corruption, decline and ignorance of the society around them. They are a knowing elite, an enlightened few.

"People are fearful of talking about the number of [post-Y2K] breakdowns," Nickerson says, "[when] it could cost them their job security or their stock market's value or litigation."

If you had a genuine Y2K problem at your company, for example, and you were in charge of resolving it, wouldn't it be in your interest to try to hush it up and cover your ass? It's conspiracy-theory logic that makes sense. After all, paranoia is not about raving lunacy but raving rationality. Yet in the circular logic of Y2K paranoia, the logical corollary to the notion of a coverup is deemed irrelevant: Didn't a lot of people -- from Y2K pundits to well-intentioned communitarian activists -- have much to gain by sounding the warning alarms about Y2K?

Next Page: Next: Alien incursion

• View blog reactions