Slouching Toward the Millennium

A friend who is deeply, almost religiously, into the Y2K phenomenon has warned me that on Jan. 1 of the year 2000, my computer might disappear.

He is urging me to seek written confirmation from the Dell Corp. that my machine is Y2K compliant. If it isn’t, he says, its dating mechanism will revert to 1900 at 12:01 a.m. of the new millennium.

“So what?” I said. “I don’t care what my computer thinks. Sometimes I forget what year it is.”

“You don’t understand,” my friend said, a note of urgency creeping into his voice. “There were no computers in 1900! Your machine will realize that and cease to exist!”

“You’re saying it will vanish? Poof?”

“Yes!”

That is the latest doomsday scenario I have been made aware of regarding the coming of the year 2000. A bit extreme, you say? True. But the approaching millennium has taken on a significance beyond the possible collapse of Starbucks or the Bank of America due to the so-called Y2K bug.

For instance, a message from one Robert Lavelle, received over the Internet, warns that on Jan. 1 “the survival of the fittest will become the law until the Antichrist takes over the world.”

He didn’t say exactly who the Antichrist might be, but I’m keeping my eye on you.

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As we draw closer to the end of this millennium, the tempo of concern among those certain of calamity increases. A grocer told me he has never sold so much bottled water, beans, rice and pasta in his life. Canned food is also flying off his shelves.

Readers and people I know personally are stocking up for the day when everything will cease to function due to what one e-mailer refers to, in all of the word’s awesome significance, as The Collapse.

As he uses it, the term is analogous to the end of the world, or at least to the world we know. He sees us dressed in rags and maybe even in animal furs (except, of course, for the PETA people, who will be dressed in hemp) and living in houses gone to ruin or, worse, condos without operational spas.

He anticipates war over the remaining food and water and possibly even instances of cannibalism, oh my! Sort of the Donner Party meets the Antichrist.

But forget for the moment, if you can, the lack of food and water and fights to the death over a pork chop. What about scavenging lawyers who will be roaming the wilderness in packs, looking for victims to feed upon?

Well, the House of Representatives has passed a measure that would clamp a 60-day waiting period on Y2K-related lawsuits, cap punitive damages and restrict class action litigation.

In the words of one congressman, the measure would be a precaution against lawyers “preparing to swoop down on the carcass of your dead toaster.”

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Encouraging a deeper concern over the Y2K phenomenon is a report by a computer monitoring company that only about 23% of all industries throughout the world have even begun a year 2000 conversion effort.

Among the least prepared sectors in the United States, says the report, are education, health care and government. But since they haven’t been functioning efficiently for years, their Y2K collapse shouldn’t pose any new problems.

What bothers me the most isn’t the possibility of famine, food wars, water shortages, the Antichrist or even simultaneous failure of all of L.A.’s cell phones. What concerns me is the potential effect of post-

millennium stress syndrome on doomsday’s apostles.

I mean, all of these people who will greet Jan. 1 chanting and holding hands, what will become of them? How will they handle, well, normalcy?

Like the experts at Caltech who salivate at the very mention of an earthquake, the Y2K-ites are betting their sanity on a kind of online apocalypse, and if it doesn’t happen . . . there’s going to be hell to pay.

On Jan. 1, lacking the anticipated calamity, they will break down in tears, leave their jobs, abandon their families and create a whole new genre of homeless wanderers.

The fact that the world didn’t end will cause more trauma than if it had. Say what you will about chaos and cannibalism. The post-millennium stress syndrome will be a lot worse.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at least until Jan. 1, 2000, at al.martinez@latimes.com.