Private citzens stock up, wary of being labeled New Age zanies

Martin Kuz

Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999 | 9:15 a.m.

Bill Loucks' idea of being a handyman is to use his fingers to call the plumber. For the self-described city boy, when the kitchen sink needs fixing, it's time to dial.

Or, at least, that's the way Loucks has tackled household mishaps most of his adult life. But in recent months "do-it-yourself" has come to mean more to him than writing out a check to the repairman. He's learning how to pump his own water, grow a garden, dehydrate fruits and vegetables and other Grizzly Adams-type skills that will make him a testament to self-sufficiency.

Loucks, 43, might sound like yet another baby boomer ensnared in a midlife crisis -- the jaded urban denizen who, weary of the stucco jungle, looks to return to nature, that sort of New Age deal. Not quite.

"I'm at the total opposite end of where I want to be doing this stuff. I don't know how to do any of this stuff," Loucks said, letting out a chuckle. "But I want to be prepared for this thing."

"This thing" is the impending computer glitch called the Millennium Bug, perhaps better known by its geek-speak synonym, the Y2K (for Year 2000) Bug. It refers to a technological earthquake that could cause computer networks worldwide -- not to mention the sky -- to come crashing down when the clock strikes midnight Dec. 31.

That's the ugliest scenario, anyway. Just as easily, prophecies of Y2K chaos -- pervasive computer malfunctions that cripple power grids, water systems and life as we know it -- may prove no more accurate than predictions a century ago that the second coming of Jesus Christ would occur Jan. 1, 1900. Either way, Loucks and his fiancee, Stacy Doyle, like other Las Vegas residents, want to be ready -- even if they're not exactly sure for what.

Last week the couple moved into a house they built an hour outside of Las Vegas. Tired of the city, they were already 80 percent intent on escaping, but their slowly swelling Y2K concerns nudged them the last little bit.

The house will allow Loucks, Doyle and her 5-year-old daughter to carry on comfortably should the world short-circuit next January. The couple put in their own well and septic tank, a large propane tank and a wood-burning stove. They're stockpiling at least six months' worth of flour, wheat, beans, rice and assorted canned and dehydrated foods, along with an abundance of warm clothing and medical supplies.

Loucks knows how it must appear to strangers -- wigged-out couple runs to the hills to flee the techno apocalypse. That isn't the case. Loucks has a wry sense of humor about Y2K and figures that if nothing happens, he and Doyle will have a whole lot of extra food to donate to the homeless. Still, they believe it only makes sense to embrace self-reliance on the off-chance this neon oasis plunges into darkness a year from now.

"We're normal, everyday people," Loucks, a floor supervisor at a local casino, said. "We're not fanatical types or anything like that. We just want to be prepared ... so we won't have to pray for a box of food to fall off a truck in front of our house."

The Y2K problem involves a programming snafu never envisioned in the early days of computers. To save precious computer memory space, programs were written to identify only the last two digits of the year. As a result, computers could translate the year 2000, or "00," as 1900. Incapable of recognizing the right date, computers may seize up or shut down altogether when they roll over Jan. 1.

Since computers help run a sizable portion of the planet -- power and phone companies, banks, airports, the list goes on -- the potential for calamity remains incalculable. What's easier to gauge is the speculation.

The outlook ranges from apocalyptic to apathetic. Some folks, a good many of them computer techies and economics experts, foresee absolute bedlam, as if the entire country had stepped onto the set of the Jerry Springer show. The majority of Americans shrug off Y2K, anticipating that its impact on day-to-day affairs will be the equivalent of a bad snowstorm.

Officials for big business and public utilities, acknowledging the prospective Millennium Bug fallout, have scrambled to make their computer systems Y2K compliant. Yet the media still tend to portray any person who is girding for disaster as a heavily-armed, buzz-cut separatist, someone who's only a Ryder truck away from becoming another Timothy McVeigh. News reports typically brand those taking precautions as millennium survivalists -- a polite way of saying they're total loons.

Cautious pessimism

In Las Vegas, a city that receives very little snow but has plenty of flakes, the temptation is even greater to draw the caricature of the lone Y2K nutcase overcome by mouth-foaming anxiety. But a more useful -- and appropriate -- description of those preparing for the millennium is that they're cautiously pessimistic. They have adopted the kind of better-safe-than-sorry ethos prevalent among residents in coastal towns when there's talk of a hurricane blowing in.

Dr. Stuart Cocks learned of the Millennium Bug only a few months ago when a patient innocently inquired whether his office computer was Y2K compliant. "I don't mean to sound stupid, but what's Y2K?" Cocks replied.

The Boulder City chiropractor soon found out, mining information from the Internet, books and videos. What Cocks discovered over time convinced him to send a letter to each of his nine children, ages 20 to 38, saying he wanted to kick around thoughts on the Y2K phenomenon during the holidays.

After the family got together last month, amid good-natured ribbing and laughter, they decided to gear up for the Millennium Bug ... just in case. They divided into preparedness committees -- covering topics such as education, food and the like -- to determine how best to withstand massive regional or national upheaval. Family members will reconvene in February to update one another on home-schooling, dehydrated food preparation and other practical skills.

Cocks regards such safeguards as common sense, nothing more profound or mysterious than that. If the worst comes to pass, he has a son-in-law who is building a 5,000-square-foot house near Bullhead City, Ariz., that will feature its own generator, enabling the home to have power in the event of a blackout. The family would gather there if Y2K hysteria erupts -- not that Cocks, 60, is losing sleep, hair or anything else worrying about the possibility.

"I have nine kids, I have 15 grandchildren. I feel I couldn't forgive myself if something serious happened and I had done nothing," he said.

"(But) I haven't bitten my fingernails, I haven't felt significant amounts of anxiety. I've just said, 'Hey, what can we do?' It's just a matter of being prepared."

Able to joke now

Amanda Walker admits that, early on, her Y2K fears had her filing her fingernails with her teeth. That apprehension has long since ebbed, and now the 25-year-old mother of two jokes with her husband about hoarding enough condoms to last them well into the 21st century.

A self-avowed naturalist, Walker has stocked up on everything from candles and Sterno to dehydrated fruits and vegetables. She has fixed several Meals Ready to Eat -- MREs, in surplus-store parlance -- and emergency kits for her family. The packs consist of enough food, water and medical supplies for a person to survive 72 hours.

Preparing for the Y2K glitch has helped Walker home in on what she can control in life instead of obsessing about the uncertainty of the post-millennium era. Even so, she's amused by the stereotype of those bracing for Y2K as saucer-eyed Luddites counting down the days to The End.

"It's not like, 'Oh, it's time to prepare the packs!' " Walker said, laughing.

"It's not a cult or something."

Nonetheless, it generally takes the tripping of an intellectual or emotional wire for a person to graduate from thinking about Y2K to squirreling away cans of Chunky Soup. In that respect, the reasons for preparing are as diverse as the people.

Loucks and Doyle, for example, listened closely to comments made the past several months by public utilities officials about efforts to upgrade their companies' computers. They were about as impressed by what they heard as the House was with President Clinton's grand jury testimony.

"If you knock out the power to this town for even a week, the social problems are going to be huge," Loucks said.

"I don't want to be in a city where people are hungry and all the food is out of the grocery stores. I don't want to have to deal with it."

For Walker, the television program "700 Club" jolted her last summer with a discussion on the Millennium Bug. She reacted by founding the Las Vegas Y2K Solutions Group, which meets twice monthly, and by setting up a hotline to field people's questions. Favoring phrases such as "empowerment" and "personal paradigm shift," Walker hopes to "reach out to others and let them know there are others like them."

Cocks' Y2K preparation is, in essence, an extension of his faith, but not in the extreme, fire-and-brimstone sense that litters the Internet, where various biblically-themed websites devoted to the millennium ramble on about how hell hath no fury like a hard drive scorned.

Rather, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Cocks already seeks to follow the church's principle of always maintaining a year's supply of food and other essentials for one's family. As such, he said, enduring 2000 and beyond is not much different from persevering through plain old 1999.

"I honestly believe that this isn't going to be the doomsday that some people are saying it's going to be," he said.

"I'm just being prepared for whatever it might be."

Estimating how many Las Vegas residents will make preparations for Y2K is as impossible as guessing what will go down a year hence. All Howard Abrams knows is that what the flu bug has done for area drug stores, the Millennium Bug has done for business at Desert Outfitters, the surplus shop he manages.

A small, photocopied sign urges visitors to Desert Outfitters to buy Y2K provisions today to "avoid last-minute delays. Delivery times are increasing." Six-week orders now take twice that long to fill, Abrams said, as surplus and natural-food stores nationwide struggle to answer the Y2K-inspired demand for dehydrated and freeze-dried foods, among other supplies.

Visiting 'Y2K Corner'

Abrams often steers millennium-minded customers to the store's Y2K Corner. The display serves as a starter kit for living off the land. It includes a nine-hour candle lantern ($14.95) and a solar-powered, hand-cranked radio ($19.95).

Other items that Abrams points out to the Y2K-conscious patron: a tinfoil-like sleeping bag that folds into the palm of a hand ($5.95); a 72-hour personal emergency survival kit, complete with food rations, aspirin and a light stick ($18.95); a water filter ($49.95); and a 14-inch Dutch oven ($68.95).

The burgeoning interest in Y2K preparations has surprised Abrams and store owner Rick Kasky. People walk in every day with questions -- and frequently walk out with their arms full. One recent customer, a college professor, purchased $300 worth of equipment in a single afternoon. But no matter a person's relationship with the outdoors -- whether one tends to feel at one with Mother Nature or with ESPN -- Abrams preaches the same philosophy about the approaching millennium.

"You can get through this thing with a smile on your face. With the right attitude and preparation, you can get through this without freaking out," he said.

Business has been similarly brisk at Hahn's World of Surplus, where owner Larry Hahn said MREs disappear faster than he can stock them. Millennium angst has provided the store with its biggest boost since last year's anthrax scare and the Persian Gulf War in 1991, with one noticeable difference: Y2K customers, wary of appearing paranoid, will avoid mentioning why they're in the store.

"They're quiet. They play it real close to the vest. They don't talk much. They don't want to look stupid," Hahn said.

Century 21 broker Ed Arterbury also has witnessed that sheepishness. "These are not wackos. These are just normal people. They're well-read, they're serious. They don't want to be laughed at," he said.

Arterbury lives and works in Jackson, Calif., about an hour southeast of Sacramento. Just as few people envisioned the Y2K glitch a quarter-century ago, no one could have imagined how real-estate brokers would capitalize on it.

Last year Arterbury received a number of calls from prospective buyers, spooked by millennium rhetoric, quietly searching for homes in secluded areas. So he created Y2K Properties, a service that markets houses in Amador and Calaveras counties, a remote locale nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills and a popular getaway spot for San Francisco Bay Area residents.

Houses start at $75,000 and feature wells, wood stoves, garden areas and "all the other essentials of a Y2K property," according to Arterbury's website (y2k-properties.com). Since erecting the site in October, he has sold five homes to buyers nervous about Millennium Bug aftereffects.

While similar real-estate ventures have popped up in Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina, the desert's harsh conditions and scarce water supply make Southern Nevada an unlikely place for people to ride out the millennium by their lonesome.

Still, Loucks said getting away from it all offers its share of perks even if Y2K turns out to be little more than a goofy acronym. He and Doyle already have talked with their new neighbors about having backyard barbecues and family picnics, the kind of bonhomie that is all too rare in the fragmented, walled-off environs of Las Vegas. (Out of respect to them, Loucks declined to give the location of his home.)

In short, peace and quiet has its privileges, notwithstanding a one-hour commute to and from work, Loucks said. And, of course, if the glitch should indeed hit the fan, he's ready for whatever Y2K may wreak -- ready to watch from a distance.

"I think the possibility of (widespread panic) is very real," Loucks said.

"People don't need a reason to act crazy and stupid now. Give them one, and who knows?"

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