1 January, 2000 and ... Teotwawki?

TEOTWAWKI is an acronym now commonly used on the Internet. Itstands for the end of the world as we know it and refers to thepossible consequences of a problem most of us know as the millenniumbug.

Cyberspace is infested with apocalyptic predictions and bizarreconspiracy theories. Few of them deserve even a moment of seriousconsideration. The suspicion is growing that perhaps Teotwawki does.

The revelation that the head of the Government's millennium bugtaskforce believes citizens should stockpile food as a precautionagainst a potential emergency is not an isolated example. It is notlong since our own Secretary of State, Donald Dewar, urged thepreservation of territorial army strength as a safeguard againstmillennium- bug inpired civil disorder.Ministers are obviously worried. In the usually very sensibleworld of finance there are reports of banking executives warningtheir clients to sell their property and hoard cash. Leave is beingcancelled among nurses. The emergency services are on standby.Panic is never desirable but the accumulating evidence does raisethe alarming possibility that Government is reluctant to discuss thetrue gravity of the threat.If there is a genuine possibility that the nation will awake on 1January, 2000 to discover that parts of our social infrastructurehave simply ceased to function then an emergency action plan needstobe published and promulgated now.A huge amount of work is going on to reprogramme computer chipswhich do not recognise the year 2000. If those co-ordinating it havereached the conclusion that vital tasks cannot be completed in timethey should share their conclusions with the public.If pressed, most of us could cope with temporary malfunctions inbank computers or the sudden breakdown of video machines. Criticalfailure in nuclear power stations and hospitals would be moreserious. Since the consensus among experts appears to be that wewill not know how grave the threat ot Teotwawki really is untilafterit happens it is perhaps time to plan for the worst-case scenario.Nobody will object if reality is less dramatic.