carried on with their lives, not completely unaware of what was coming, but uncertain as to its exact nature and what it meant. People who understood Y2K tried to explain it to those who didnât, and you either got it or you didnât. It didnât matter. It was coming, ready or not.
Those who did get it took it seriously. A New Yorker didnât need a degree in computer science to understand that a technological breakdown that started with a power blackout had severe social consequences. Previous blackouts had come as a surprise and prompted spontaneous looting. This time people were forewarned. Steel doors, window grates and security guards commanded premium prices. When guards became too expensive, small business owners bought shotguns and planned to sit in their stores themselves. In every borough, neighborhoods created community patrols and made plans for mutual protection on New Yearâs Eve. The police didnât object. On New Yearâs Eve, the department would be stressed to maximum capability even without Y2K. In the most squalid ghettos of the South Bronx, the Colombian district of Queens, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem in Manhattan, community leaders spread the word: Donât burn down your own house.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
With one week to go, the Midnight Club had assembled a software package of 112 applications on Juddâs mainframe that effectively duplicated Con Edisonâs system for supplying power to Manhattan. To ensure communications theyâd built a state-of-the-art telephone switching station and accessed an island-wide network of wire and microwave links, every inch inspected and brought up to snuff by Carolyn. To run the subway, theyâd constructed a complete train control center for seven subway lines that traversed the island and parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. They had confidence in all their work except the sewage system. The system was simply too old, too complex, and had too many embedded chips in places Ronnie couldnât get into.
They didnât sleep much the last week. As the big day approached, they still didnât have the crucial passwords from ConEd. Doc called Deep Volt every day, but to no avail. The spy was able to supply Y2K upgrades the company had developed, but no override passwords.
On December 30 no one left the third floor of the building on Nassau Street, an old red brick structure with black iron railings and fire escapes, a piece of old New York that lay just outside the palisade wall that had given Wall Street its name. The wall had been build by the Dutch to keep the British out of New Amsterdam, but this time nothing could defend against the hostile aliens except a tiny band of outlaws. The countdown began. The war between the millennium bug and its Y2K antidotes was about to start in earnest.
4
The last day of the 20th Century dawned cold and clear in New York, a metropolis whose most horrific brush with calamity had been the cholera epidemic of 1832. History had been kind to the city. While the 20th Century had visited war and revolution on many great cities, nary a bomb had fallen on the Big Apple. The century was to end with New York pristine and unscathed, a virgin in the ways of cataclysm. If a city can be anthropomorphised into a sentient being, New York believed itself invulnerable to attack.
There were, of course, authorities charged with imagining an attack and preparing contingency plans for civil defense. During the Cold War, the dominating scenario was a nuclear strike, and the city had a comprehensive plan printed in voluminous quantities to be dragged out and distributed should a volley of Russian missiles be detected en route. In 1999, the location of the printed nuclear plan was stored on a computer that was not Y2K compliant. Likewise, plans were intact for all sorts of civil disturbances from labor strikes to ethnic conflict, and these plans made some sense because of
Those who did get it took it seriously. A New Yorker didnât need a degree in computer science to understand that a technological breakdown that started with a power blackout had severe social consequences. Previous blackouts had come as a surprise and prompted spontaneous looting. This time people were forewarned. Steel doors, window grates and security guards commanded premium prices. When guards became too expensive, small business owners bought shotguns and planned to sit in their stores themselves. In every borough, neighborhoods created community patrols and made plans for mutual protection on New Yearâs Eve. The police didnât object. On New Yearâs Eve, the department would be stressed to maximum capability even without Y2K. In the most squalid ghettos of the South Bronx, the Colombian district of Queens, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem in Manhattan, community leaders spread the word: Donât burn down your own house.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
With one week to go, the Midnight Club had assembled a software package of 112 applications on Juddâs mainframe that effectively duplicated Con Edisonâs system for supplying power to Manhattan. To ensure communications theyâd built a state-of-the-art telephone switching station and accessed an island-wide network of wire and microwave links, every inch inspected and brought up to snuff by Carolyn. To run the subway, theyâd constructed a complete train control center for seven subway lines that traversed the island and parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. They had confidence in all their work except the sewage system. The system was simply too old, too complex, and had too many embedded chips in places Ronnie couldnât get into.
They didnât sleep much the last week. As the big day approached, they still didnât have the crucial passwords from ConEd. Doc called Deep Volt every day, but to no avail. The spy was able to supply Y2K upgrades the company had developed, but no override passwords.
On December 30 no one left the third floor of the building on Nassau Street, an old red brick structure with black iron railings and fire escapes, a piece of old New York that lay just outside the palisade wall that had given Wall Street its name. The wall had been build by the Dutch to keep the British out of New Amsterdam, but this time nothing could defend against the hostile aliens except a tiny band of outlaws. The countdown began. The war between the millennium bug and its Y2K antidotes was about to start in earnest.
4
The last day of the 20th Century dawned cold and clear in New York, a metropolis whose most horrific brush with calamity had been the cholera epidemic of 1832. History had been kind to the city. While the 20th Century had visited war and revolution on many great cities, nary a bomb had fallen on the Big Apple. The century was to end with New York pristine and unscathed, a virgin in the ways of cataclysm. If a city can be anthropomorphised into a sentient being, New York believed itself invulnerable to attack.
There were, of course, authorities charged with imagining an attack and preparing contingency plans for civil defense. During the Cold War, the dominating scenario was a nuclear strike, and the city had a comprehensive plan printed in voluminous quantities to be dragged out and distributed should a volley of Russian missiles be detected en route. In 1999, the location of the printed nuclear plan was stored on a computer that was not Y2K compliant. Likewise, plans were intact for all sorts of civil disturbances from labor strikes to ethnic conflict, and these plans made some sense because of
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