Scenarios for a Y2K new year.

Despite Hollywood's appetite for impending disaster, no one can predict what will happen on or after Jan. 1, 2000, when people around the world have to cope with the consequences of the Y2K computer problem. Any system still using two digits instead of four to represent the year in software or electronic chips could fail, with potentially catastrophic repercussions in some cases (SN: 1/2/99, p. 4). "Y2K is going to teach us interesting things, no matter what actually happens," says Thomas P.M. Barnett of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Barnett and his colleagues have produced a lengthy report systematically detailing a wide range of possible scenarios, from relatively benign to dire, of what Y2K might look and feel like in different parts of the world and different sectors of the economy. The latest draft of their report appears at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/y2k/y2krep.html.

The researchers divide their scenarios into several phases. Along one projected timeline, individuals, businesses, and governments initially stockpile goods in proportion to their fears of interrupted services. That phase gives way to a countdown, when people top off their supplies and choose where they will celebrate or ride out the date change. What happens next--through the onset, unfolding, peak, and exit phases of Y2K problems--depends on whether the New Year's Day software bug proves a dud or a globally stressful event.