Time Is Running Out

Today in Tedium: The latter months of 1999 were like looking into the great unknown, and all thanks to a computer bug the public barely even understood. A logical person could tell you that odds were high you were going to fall asleep as the ball dropped, wake up in the morning, turn on the lights, and still hear the dulcet tones of Moby's pop-electronica experiments rattling on the radio the next morning. But we weren't 100 percent sure, and it wasn't helped by the fact that the Y2K bug became a media craze in the years before we crossed the millennial finish line. Understandably, people freaked out, but they're still freaking out today, even though the Y2K bug got fixed more than 15 years ago. Today's Tedium talks about supply and demand, hoarding, and the big one. — Ernie @ Tedium

(Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr)

How much did people actually hoard before Y2K?

"I'm 99.9 percent sure nothing is going to happen."

Jeff Waters, a Fairfax, Virginia contractor, spoke for the masses when he was interviewed by The Washington Post for a December 31, 1999 story.

He clearly wasn't freaked out to the point where he was bunkering down as he wandered to the Costco near his home, but he did buy a case of bottled water, on the off-chance something did happen.

And while people were buying basic supplies briskly ahead of the millennia, it wasn't to the point where shelves were emptying out and people were fighting over the last can of Campbell's Chunky Soup.

This probably warmed the heart of John Koskinen, the head of President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, who warned that people changing their habits en masse would be nearly as dangerous as a mass computer shutdown.

"We are concerned about people overreacting," he said in September 1999 panel discussion, according to the Chicago Tribune, adding that problems would arise "if 100 million people decide to do anything differently."

Clearly, nothing truly bad happened—which must have been disappointing for ABC News, as it had invested a lot of money in its millennium news coverage—and Koskinen is now the head of the Internal Revenue Service.

But the economic impact of people overreacting was nonetheless a real concern. Too much hoarding, and demand could have outpaced supply on items that are essential for survival—like prescription drugs.

“Patients should know that if everyone gets an extra supply of drugs, then it might start a shortage,” Canadian Pharmacists Association spokeswoman Noelle-Dominique Willems warned in one 1999 article about the potential of prescription drug hoarding.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, recommended a much softer tack when it came to Y2K. The agency had a full section of its website dedicated to informing the public about Y2K, which the Internet Archive has faithfully archived. On it, the agency told people to stock up on supplies, but only the amount that one would need if you were about to be snowed in for a long weekend, separated from your nearest Domino's, with the power potentially flickering off for a little while.

FEMA Deputy Director Mike Walker encouraged people to use their heads when to came to Y2K's risks:

I have a great deal of faith in the American people. I know they will see through the naysayers and fearmongers who are trying to scare us or make a buck. When you look at everything Americans have dealt with throughout our history, Y2K is nothing. Yes, it poses a challenge. But it pales beside the great challenges Americans have previously faced and the great challenges Americans have conquered.

Now, there are always exceptions, and people did do weird stuff ahead of Y2K to try to keep themselves safe. This hardware store in an Amish town did brisk business ahead of the millennial shift because it mostly sold products that didn't require electricity.

Looking back, is it possible that the U.S. government successfully discouraged people from hoarding before Y2K actually took place? You know, beyond that .1 percent, "just in case" case of bottled water?

I think they did, which is impressive, because people tend to hate listening to the government.

The Philosophy of Hoarding for Survival Extends far Beyond Y2K

These days, hoarding is most closely associated with reality shows that highlight the problems some have with getting rid of their stuff—something that, in the years since Hoarders first hit the scene, has been classified as a mental health disorder.

But the kind of hoarding that we're talking about in the context of Y2K is the economic kind—where valuable resources are stored away for a rainy day. This phenomenon is pretty much owned by survivalists these days, the kind of folks who recommend that you have six months of toilet paper just sitting around just in case the world ends and you never see your family again.

The reason why Y2K was a concern on an economic level was because it was a rare instance where people were made aware of something bad about to happen, and given enough time to stock up. Generally people didn't stock up, but they could have. The average person doesn't think in terms of bulk storage, but survivalists do, and they have somewhat fair concerns. As survivalist novelist James Wesley Rawles argues on his website:

The food on your supermarket shelf does not come from local farmers. It often comes from hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This has created an alarming vulnerability to disruption. Simultaneously, global population is still increasing in a near geometrical progression. At some point that must end, most likely with a sudden and sharp drop in population. The lynchpin is the grid. Without functioning power grids, modern industrial societies will collapse within weeks.

This phenomenon has gone in and out of fashion over the decades, with figureheads like onetime Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne and Backwoods Home magazine, but Y2K was perhaps its peak moment, the first time the movement got true mainstream attention, as well as a place for a community to build around it in the internet.

A 1998 Forbes article written by Adam Penenberg nails down the concern that folks like Gerald Walker had prior to the Y2K bug hitting—as well as the entrepreneurs willing to sell to such "preppers."

"To folks like Walker, who have been lighting up online discussion forums dedicated to the Y2K problem, the millennium bug is a prelude to Armageddon. For these believers, many of whom see it as a manifestation of God’s wrath against a sinning world, the end is near," Penenberg wrote. "When the clock strikes 2000, the nation’s electricity will short out, trains won’t run, banks will collapse and hordes of urban dwellers will scavenge for food as supplies dwindle."

Sounds scary. So why didn't the public buy into this let's-horde-everything theory despite the media hype? My guess is this: Even then, with our primitive knowledge of the internet and limited understanding as to how bad the Y2K bug really was, we could still sniff out a crackpot, and there were a lot of those hanging around at the time.