Advent of Computing - Episode 20.5 - Cooking in Y2K

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

In this mini episode we will look at the Y2K bug, and some of the recipes it spawned. That's right, we are talking about Y2K cookbooks! You can find all more Y2K compliant food here: https://web.archive.org/web/19991012032855/http://y2kkitchen.com/ Like the show? Then why not head over and support me on Patreon. Perks include early access to future episodes, and stickers: https://www.patreon.com/adventofcomputing Important dates in this episode: 1999: Y2K Kitchen Hits Shelves

We just passed a very important date. January 1st, 2020, or the very tail end of December 31st, 2019, depending on how you choose to look at things, was the 20th anniversary of the Y2K bug. But, despite its name, the fears of the danger of computers entering this new millennium go back at least as far as the 80s. And as the new millennium approached, the theory took on a life of its own. From posts on bulletin boards to TV commercials to even books, Y2K started to spread well before the year would ever come. Some saw the impending end of days, claiming that the Y2K bug would detonate every atomic warhead in the world all at once. Others cast the millennium as the end of the world's economies, as computer-dependent banking came to a screeching

halt. For some, it was a grand conspiracy, made by the powers that be to regain control over the global populace. But for a select few, this was the day they were waiting for. It was looking like the best time to publish a new cookbook. Welcome back to Advent of Computing. I'm your host, Sean Haas, and this is another bite-sized episode, Cooking in Y2K. Today, we'll be taking a short look into what the Y2K bug was, and how, for a brief moment, it seeped into every corner of society. And then to wrap up, we'll be taking a look at some of the recipes that came out to combat the Millennium Bug. Events like the scare surrounding Y2K are particularly interesting to me,

because it's not often that the general public gets very emotionally invested in computers. It's one of the closest things to a computer ghost story that we really have. And while other events exist in the history of computers that fit the same bill, I can't think of any that are quite as pervasive as Y2K was. So, let's look at the year 2000, 20 years later. First off, what exactly was the Y2K bug, or rather, what was the theory behind it? The crux of the issue comes down to how dates are stored by computers. For us humans, it's easy enough to represent the year as four digits, like 1995 for instance. But that's not always the best way for computers to store that year. In some cases, especially for earlier systems, the year

will be stored as just the last two digits. So 1995 will be stored as 9-5, with the 1-9 part assumed by its programming. There are a few reasons for this, but it usually just came down to a matter of cost. Historically, computer memory has been very, very expensive. Just as a ballpark figure, in 1975, a 1KB RAM expansion for the Altair 8800 cost over $800 once you adjusted for inflation. cost over $800 once you adjusted for inflation. This meant that, with few exceptions, programmers were forced to learn to deal with the limited amounts of memory they had. Over the years, a lot of methods, tricks, and downright hacks were developed to squeeze just a little more space out of code. Keeping code small and efficient became a certain cultural practice

amongst programmers. And while in some cases that led to amazing feats of programming, it also had some major downsides. One of those was the Y2K bug. It took less precious memory to store the year as two digits instead of four, so that became a common tool in a programmer's tool belt. That's all well and good up until 1999, but once you roll over into 2000, you have some issues. This problem started being discussed pretty early on before the turn of the millennium. To quote from one of the earlier mentions of the bug, I have a friend that raised an interesting question that I immediately tried to prove wrong. He is a programmer

and has this notion that when we reach the year 2000, computers will not accept the new date. Will the computers assume that it is 1900 or will it even cause a problem? I violently opposed this because it seemed so meaningless. Computers have entered into existence during this century and has software, specifically accounting software, been prepared for this turnover. If this really comes to pass and my friend is correct, what will happen? Is it anything to be concerned about? I haven't given it much thought, but this programmer has. I thought he was joking, but he has even lost sleep over this. When I say friend, I am not referring to myself, if it seems that way. End quote.

That was posted to Usenet, an early internet forum, by a user named Spencer L. Bolas all the way back in 1985. Now, there were a few earlier mentions the year before, but I think that post gives a really good flavor to the bug, so to speak. It wasn't entirely clear what would happen once the program tried to handle the year 2000. Since the two-digit year was used in so many programs written by so many different people, the outcome may vary wildly from program to program. Since the two-digit year was used in so many programs written by so many different people, the outcome may vary wildly from program to program. 1999 wasn't as interconnected as the world is today,

but computers had already become integral to a lot of the world. Banking was of prime concern, but so was the functioning of government. The world's stockpile of nuclear arms were all computerized by this point, so that was another worry. Factories and the electrical grid had also started to be tied into computer systems, so the Y2K bug had a shot to take down power to the entire world, and thus grind production and the livelihood of the entire economy to a halt. Ultimately, the world wouldn't end in 2000, or at least I'm pretty sure it didn't if it did no one told me. The year would come and go, and most of the worst bugs turned out to just be some math errors. Some dates were displayed as 1900, but nothing exploded. In the lead-up to the

millennium, there was a flurry of preparedness for a possible disaster, one that would never actually come. The most constructive effort was the most direct one. Many companies put out software updates to remove two-year dates or otherwise address the bug in their code. As with any disaster, there was some profiteering. Some more industrious individuals started publishing books on the coming apocalypse. This ranged from doomsday prep guides to conspiracy theory texts, to even books with such charming titles as Y2K equals 666. Out of all the publicity around Y2K, I think my favorite has to be the strange survival cookbooks that were published in this era. There were about a handful on the market leading up to 2000. Of those, the most accessible today is Y2K Kitchen, The Book by Sally Strachbein.

Kitchen, the book, by Sally Strachbein. It was published in 1999 to go along with an already existing website. And as of 2020, that website, y2kkitchen.com, is still up with some changes to the content, but the core is still there. Most of the site's content is actually dedicated to discussing Y2K itself, all presented with the slant of disaster preparedness. To quote from the page, Y2K Test, If you think your Y2K preparations are complete and you haven't tested your plan, you are in trouble. You read the notice from the XYZ company saying, We are 98% complete with Y2K remediation of critical systems and 28% complete in testing.

Doesn't make you feel very comfortable, does it? Well, your own home plan needs to be tested every bit as much as XYZ companies, end quote. And that plan, oddly enough, includes a whole lot of disaster preparedness food. So what are these testable recipes that will get you through the Y2K crisis? Most of it is essentially camping food. You get things like ramen casserole and turkey and dressing, but all prepared using non-perishable foods that don't need to be refrigerated. These recipes are presented

next to pages like The Seven Faces of Y2K or one charming page ominously named Truth. There's something charming to the campiness of it all. Anyway, reading about the food is one thing, but what is the stuff actually like? To get into the spirit of the season, I decided to cook up a batch of Y2K Chowder, a recipe submitted by site user 20th Century Homemaker. The chowder itself consists of two cans of cream of chicken soup, one can cream of mushroom soup, one canned mixed vegetables, one can whole kernel corn with juice, one can white potatoes with juice, one can carrots with juice, one and a half cups dry pasta or noodles, a can of powdered milk solids, and one can water. I started a fire in my grill, grabbed a pot, and threw everything in. Then I

left it to stew. The verdict? All things considered, it's not that bad. It could definitely do with some pepper or salt or any kind of spice to make it a little more palatable. Everything in the pot, however, is non-perishable, so it would have survived in the event that Y2K had actually wrought havoc. If you make it yourself, I'd definitely recommend adding some spices and probably some more vegetables. It's very potato and pasta forward once everything cooks down. But since the world didn't end in 2000, I don't think I'll be subsisting off this chowder if given the choice.

That's all for today. The turn of the millennium didn't destroy computers or the world as we know it, but it did produce some interesting and strangely paranoid writings. Sometimes the best stories from computing's past don't really feature computers at all, and the millennium bug is a great example of this genre. If you want to cook up your own Y2K-compliant food or just read about 1999's Doomsday Predictions, you can find all the recipes I mentioned, plus many more, over at Y2KKitchen.com. It's a pretty good time capsule to stumble across online. The site itself seems to have changed somewhat since the 90s, so I'll post an archived link from the Wayback Machine in the description so you can get the full experience. I'd love to

hear about your own adventures cooking this type of fare, so if you manage to make anything, then hit me up. And thanks for listening to Advent of Computing. I'll be back next week with a normal, full-length episode, but until then, if you like the show, then please take a minute to share it with a friend. You can also rate and review me on Apple Podcasts. If you have any comments or suggestions for a future episode, go ahead and shoot me a tweet. I'm at AdventOfComp on Twitter. And hey, let's all have a great new year.