Remember the Y2K scare?
We’re not sure Michael Hyatt wants you to. Hyatt authored a fairly typical
dystopian survivalist guide for the event back in the nineties: The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the
Coming Chaos. The book was a characteristic exercise in fear-mongering and
dubious arguments from authority (his own: Hyatt’s qualifications in anything
related to information technology – the putative source of the Armageddon –
seems to have been pretty rudimentary). It described three possible outcomes of
the fact that some old computers could conceivably struggle to update their
calendar functions without negligible flaws at the date rollover since they
recorded years in a two-digit format: brownout (major inconvenience), blackout
(life-threatening economic failure), and meltdown (complete societal collapse).
Of course Hyatt took the last two scenarios to be the most likely ones – the
scenario “no significant consequences” wasn’t even considered. There is a
review here.
Hyatt’s target group was evidently rightwing survivalist types, to whom he offered advice like stocking up on guns and non-perishable
foods, something the target audience would have done a long time ago anyways.
After the date rollover came and went Hyatt has turned to writing books on how
to protect yourself from terrorism.
Diagnosis: Ok, there’s a fairly significant chance that
Hyatt himself doesn’t believe a word of the bullshit he is engaged in, but who
knows? At least those who listen to him are loons, and some of them are
probably not entirely harmless either.
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