Y2K Armageddon: Where's the beef?

THE CLOCK STRUCK MIDNIGHT, AND A MUSHROOM CLOUD

rose over Times Square. Riots broke out in the streets, every computer in every office building across the East Coast exploded, and the stereo at the New Year's party I was attending ground to a halt in the middle of its eerily appropriate rendition of "It's the End of the World as We Know it." Outside, people began to fight each other over the last supplies of bottled Evian and kids blew each other up with homemade bombs made out of Dove soap. Then, out of the pathetic vestiges of human civilization rose a new group of heroes, who worked together to build makeshift shelters for the nuclear winter to follow, and learned how to shoot pigeons with bows and arrows and make cockroach stew. Humanity survived thanks to its bravery and resilience, and the world was renewed in a purer and simpler form. The End. Epilogue One: None of this actually happened.

Epilogue Two: Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kind of wish it had.

When the clock struck midnight 24 times across the world, with 24 chances for disaster and heroism, and nothing, I mean nothing happened, I was a little disappointed. Sure, I didn't actually want anyone to die and I didn't want anything too destructive to happen, but the fact that Sat., Jan. 1, 2000, felt just like any other Saturday in January was anticlimactic at the very least. When I woke up on New Year's Day, the sun still shone, the subways still ran, the partygoers were still hungover, and my e-mail even worked. But this is good, right? Civilization triumphed. And we were all able to return to school in 10 days and continue with our lives as if nothing had changed. So why was I so disappointed?

A clue may come from the same media sources that hyped up Y2K to begin with. It wasn't a coincidence that the last decade of the twentieth century saw more doomsday movies than the Cold War era. Volcanoes, earthquakes, asteroids, aliens—you name it, they all destroyed Earth at least once or twice in the 1990s. Blame it on fin de siècle anxiety, or the American obsession with violence, or Hollywood's efforts to brainwash the public with big explosions, but what it comes down to is that disasters, at least on the screen, are appealing. They are romantic. They have the same paradoxically appealing elements as our doomsday predictions for Y2K: something beyond our control happens, grounding the normal workings of our fast-paced civilization to a halt, forcing us to improvise with bursts of heroics and to work together with the most unlikely of partners.

Never mind that real-life disasters, such as the recent floods in Venezuela, cause suffering that far outweigh their fictional romanticism. Movies and television teach us that disasters make heroes out of ordinary people while offering all of us an excuse to change our lives and to do something new. An ordinary secretary saves a baby from the volcano. A drunken veteran flies the plane that blows up the alien mothership. Even in a simple snowstorm, a truck driver saves a child from freezing to death. In the context of a disaster, big or small, anything can happen. Anyone can be anything. The normal social fabric is shaken up. And the enemy is no longer your neighbor—it has transformed into an alien or an asteroid. In the context of a disaster, humanity works together in harmony rather than against itself to defeat a common, outside enemy. According to the movies, Y2K would not have been Hell on Earth. It would have been a Utopia.

On Mon., Jan. 3, 2000, most of the world went back to work. People turned on their computers, and were glad (or disappointed?) to see that they still worked. The stock market was still trading, the phones were still ringing, and work was still piling up on millions of desks around the world. At night, those workers came home to kids who were still hungry, cable TV that was still showing reruns, and bills still waiting to be paid. They were not heroes; they were still ordinary people, stuck in ordinary lives.

On Mon., Jan. 10, 10,000 students returned to Yale. Classes were still held. Problem sets were still given. The dining halls still served fried shrimp and baked potatoes. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. The world was just as it was, and, worst of all, we were exactly who we were. We'll have to wait another 1,000 years for as convenient an excuse to shake things up. The world missed its golden opportunity to turn everything upside down. And, thanks to global warming, it wasn't even snowing.

No wonder we were disappointed.

Back to Opinion...