the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

BEWARE THE PROFITING PROPHET 201
could create a Web page devoted to apocalyptic Y2K rumors, and by the
late 1990s, it seemed as if they all had. Gary North, who proclaimed Y2K
to be “the greatest problem that has ever faced western civilization,” created
www.garynorth.com, one of the most popular online portals for
doomsday information. (North also marketed two-year subscriptions to
a related financial newsletter for $225 apiece.) Another site, www.
Y2KWatch.com, touted a preparedness plan that included advice on safe
investments, discussed the possible benefits of propane fuel and gun ownership,
and counseled the nervous to embrace fundamentalist Christian
beliefs if they hadn’t already.
Survivalist Pizza and Advice from Spock
At the top of the apocalyptic food chain were the firms and con sultants
hired by worried companies to fix their software. By 1998, programmers
capable of debugging old software could command fees as high
as $100 an hour—more than twice what they were usually paid. Software
and hardware manufacturers slapped “Y2K Compliant” labels on their
new products—even though, as one industry source explained to CNN,
previous versions had often been Y2K compliant as well, so that customers
were buying upgrades they didn’t need.
Hollywood, not surprisingly, also tried to make a buck from impending
doom. There were at least two exploitation movies with the same
title, Y2K—one a low-bud get cinematic thriller starring Louis Gossett Jr.
in which the military discovers that a long-lost nuclear missile is about to
go off due to the Y2K bug, and the other an NBC made-for-television
movie staring Ken Olin, formerly the brooding yuppie dad on the 1980s
series thirtysomething, as a computer genius out to save the world from a
massive breakdown. (As an Internet Movie Database reviewer caustically
summed up the latter fi lm: “Not only does Y2K affect every single electronic
component in the world, but it also affects everyone’s brain!”)
Almost invariably, Y2K prognosticators had a book or video for
sale, and sometimes both. One example was Y2K expert Michael S. Hyatt,