April 1999     

Last Dance Congratulations, Erich Pedestrian Safety NALSA SABER Graduation Pledge Seven-Year Reflection Small Claims and Cinnamon Rolls Church of the Earth Y2K Nuclear Threat Tribal Members Speak INS Are Thought Police In re Robin E. LOVE, Debtor Selected Crime Beat Reports Living Large: Downtown Haiku Variations The Light William Stafford perspective Spring Wave Poetry Notes

There’s no two ways about it: today, computers control nearly every aspect of life in the so-called "civilized" world. From ATM machines to automatic coffee makers to automobiles, the number of computer-enhanced consumer products has increased exponentially from the late 1970s, when computer technology became economically feasible for mass marketing.

Undoubtedly, the advantages of the Information Age have been manifold. Waking up without the smell of freshly brewed coffee permeating the crisp, morning air is like showing up to the opera balcony without your binoculars—it just ain’t the same. At the same time, however, it is frightening to imagine what might happen if all, or even a significant portion, of these computers were to simultaneously fail. Civilization as we know it could very well be the ultimate cost. Thanks to the lack of foresight by 1970s computer programmers, we may soon find out.

When computers were first being marketed in the 1970s, programmers believed that "planned obsolescence," long the hallmark of the American industrial complex, would dictate their replacement within 10 or 20 years at most. Nobody, they imagined, would actually be using the same computers at the turn of the millennium. Therefore, at the time, it was customary to program the date fields to only two significant digits—for example, "1978" became encoded as merely "78."

So what happens when the millennium rolls around? These computers, by nature of their inadequate date handling, fail to distinguish between 1900 and 2000, an oversight which could cause the collapse of many of the world’s most essential computer systems. This problem has been aptly named the "Year 2000 Crisis," or, for short, "Y2K."

Perhaps it wouldn’t wreak irreparable havoc if you woke up on January 1, 2000, and didn’t have a cup of hot coffee waiting for you. You’d just have to brew your coffee the old-fashioned way, and you’d find some way to cope with the ensuing mental anguish. Perhaps you’d sue the manufacturer of your coffee machine and feel vindicated with a big money settlement.

However, what if the cost were actually the availability of gasoline, or electricity, or running water? Suddenly, it’s sounding a whole lot worse, and it goes downhill from there. What if the real cost of Y2K were a nuclear holocaust? Life as we know it might just be replaced by a planet ravaged by nuclear winter.

This possibility, by far the most frightening, was the topic of Dr. Helen Caldicott’s 1999 keynote address to the Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon, in March. Dr. Caldicott, the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, has devoted her life to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction.

Dr. Caldicott emphasized that soon-to-be obsolete computers control not only the more domestic products of the Information Age, but also nuclear power plants and armaments, a fact with potentially staggering consequences.

Albert Einstein once remarked that "[T]he splitting of the atom changed everything—all reality—save man’s mode of thinking." Man’s mode of thinking has been and continues to be a blatant disregard for the long-term consequences of his actions; instead, he thinks only of short-term economic or military advantage. Industrial and military powers, remaining true to Einstein’s ominous prediction, have for decades produced mass quantities of extremely hazardous nuclear byproducts.

For example, plutonium-239, a common by-product of nuclear fission, was described by Dr. Caldicott as "the most dangerous substance known to man." In early tests on beagles, Glen Seabourg determined that the smallest measurable dose, .000000009 grams, caused cancer in all of the test subjects. Add to this the fact that plutonium has a half-life of 24,300 years, and one can see a potential problem of epic proportions arising.

Dr. Caldicott noted that 95% of existing nuclear waste was created by the world’s 433 active nuclear power plants. Inside each reactor, there exists on average 500 pounds of plutonium, or roughly the long-lived radiation equivalent of 1000 Hiroshima-sized explosions. By contrast, one pound of plutonium, adequately distributed across the planet, is enough to kill the entire world population. These plants are prevented from over-heating by water cooling systems that pump out water from nearby lakes, rivers, or oceans at the rate of 1 million gallons per minute and return moderately radioactive water to the environment. However, Dr. Caldicott asserted that this may all change when Y2K comes around. Since the cooling systems are largely digitized, any failure caused by Y2K could have catastrophic results, with meltdowns ensuing within a matter of mere hours.

Nuclear weapons, remaining at the highest state of alertness even after the close of the Cold War, will present another potential problem at the turn of the millennium. Dr. Caldicott noted that the policy of the United States remains "First Strike Winnable Nuclear War." In other words, the United States would "win" a nuclear war by launching all of its weapons before Russia could respond, wiping out all of Russia’s nuclear weapons while they are still on the ground. Thus, a high state of alertness is necessary to "win" a nuclear war.

This policy ignores the potential devastation to the world environment (including the potential for nuclear winter) and the certain loss of millions—perhaps billions—of lives. As Dr. Caldicott remarked, this policy was derived by people who "desperately need therapy and need to be hospitalized."

To this day, the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States remain under the control of ancient computer systems, many of which may fall prey to Y2K collapse. Thus, Bob Bennett reported to the Senate subcommittee that the possibility that Y2K will result in the accidental firing of nuclear missiles remains. To their credit, the Pentagon has largely addressed the Y2K problem within their systems; however, Russia lacks money to fix the problems, and their missiles are pointed right at us.

Dr. Caldicott concluded that "the only certainty about Y2K is: we don’t know." We don’t know whether the water will work; we don’t know whether the electricity will work; we don’t even know whether a nuclear winter will end all life on the planet. To fix the Y2K problem, over 20 million individual computer chips must be isolated and replaced, a problem that is only compounded by the fact that many of the chip manufacturers have subsequently gone out of business, and suitable replacements are often hard, if not impossible, to locate. Unfortunately, we don’t even know where the majority of these chips are, further complicating the possibility for universal Y2K compliance. Today, not enough programmers exist on the planet to correct every Y2K problem before the turn of the millennium. Despite this, corporations have made the most progress; no one wants to lose money from the Y2K crisis. Lives are another matter entirely.

In response to the threat of nuclear meltdowns or accidental firings of nuclear weapons, Dr. Caldicott recommended a decommissioning of the nuclear threats. She argued that the nuclear power plants could be shut down in June, allowing enough time for the nuclear power plants to cool down before the Y2K crisis strikes. Otherwise, she asserted that at least some of the nuclear power plants will melt down.

Likewise, the threat of accidental nuclear war could be prevented by: 1) removing the heightened alertness of the nuclear missiles of the world; and 2) removing the warheads from the missiles, a process that the Pentagon refers to as "demating." Combined, these policies would prevent the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Only short-sighted politicians obstruct implementation of these solutions. "There are solutions," Dr. Caldicott concluded, "but we just have to get moving."