Prepping For The Y2K Bug

Time To Go Completely Off The Grid

By Bianca Llerena

Time to build a log cabin, give away all of my belongings, and go completely off the grid. At least, that’s my first thought once I hear the world might fall apart completely as we reach the year 2000.

For some context if you are not aware, the Y2K bug, also called the “millennium bug,” “the year 2000 problem,” and the “Y2K scare,” was the large-scale and somewhat unfounded fear that computers would not be able to handle the changing of the century. Because a lot of dates in data were stored with just the last 2 digits (like how 1997 is just 97), people feared that the computers would revert to 1900 as the date instead of 2000. Power plants, radiation, nuclear energy: all just a few things that were rumored to be doomed.

In reality, it probably wouldn’t bother me if it happened today. I would have been intrigued with the idea and had the news on as I ate my breakfast. But I like to believe that if I had been an adult in 1999 with little experience with computers and phones, I would have planned for the worst. After all, I love planning.

I would have headed to the library (I sold my computer last week), and found the cheapest plot of land in Montana. I would have withdrawn all of my money (to avoid the banking disaster, of course) and headed to the thrift store to score some more CD’s so I could still enjoy music post-apocalypse.

Thankfully, after New Year’s from 1999 to 2000, nothing happened. The scare went away. I wasn’t even alive yet. But if I had been, I would have been oblivious to this; you could have found me deep in the woods somewhere in Montana living off berries, mushrooms, and Nirvana’s 1991 album “Nevermind.”