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Jan. 12, 1999 - Art Bell

02:54:21

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Stuart Rodman - Y2k Power Grid Problems

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	The Bahá'í Desert is great! From the American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning, as the case may
	be.
	Wherever you are, from the Pacific and Hawaiian Islands in the West, Eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin
	Islands, Tally Ho in St. Thomas, down to South America, up to the
	North Pole, Worldwide on the Internet, thankyoubroadcast.com, this, this is Coast to Coast AM.
	Whatever that is, and on any given night, it might be something different.
	Tonight, we are going to talk a little bit about Y2K, with Stuart H. Rodman, and how it relates, you know, what might happen with a power grid.
	There's a lot of There's a lot of interesting discussion going on about the power grid.
	There are some assurances.
	Somewhat shallow, hollow assurances about the power grid that are being issued by... I'm not exactly sure who.
	But we'll see what Mr. Rodman thinks about the power grid.
	Now, I depend on the power, as you know, to broadcast.
	Actually, a whole lot more than that.
	I depend on so much to broadcast.
	Satellites, telecommunications power, radio stations having all of that too.
	Why 2K is going to be interesting for broadcasters, and me in particular.
	Otherwise, the lead item tonight.
	Last night it was a basketball player.
	Jordan, retiring, is the lead story tonight.
	It's Maguire's 70th home run ball.
	That sold for $3,000,000 at auction.
	$3,000,000 for a baseball.
	Yes, Maguire's 70th home run ball, I guess.
	But a baseball, nevertheless.
	Like any other baseball, I suppose it's signed by him, I think.
	Now, you know, I wonder who this, who the money goes to.
	This is five to six times the record of any other sports artifact ever selling for.
	23 times the world record for any baseball ever sold.
	Three million dollars for one baseball.
	Okay.
	Guy will probably put it up on the mantle and some maid will come in and wipe it off, you know.
	Somebody sent me this earlier.
	Actually, it's from Cooter in Montgomery, Alabama.
	Entitled, Wisdom Teeth, and it has to do with money.
	One day, a man walks into a dentist's office and asks how much it will cost to extract wisdom teeth.
	Says the dentist, $80.
	By the way, that's a very good bargain.
	But the man says, that's a ridiculous amount.
	Isn't there a cheaper way?
	Well, the dentist says, if you don't use anesthetic, I can knock it down to $60.
	Man says, well, that's still too expensive for me.
	So the dentist says, OK.
	If I, look, if I save on anesthesia and simply rip the teeth out with a pair of pliers, well, we can get it down to $10, maybe $20.
	The man moans and says, no, still too much.
	Hmm.
	Dentist says, scratching his head, well, If I let one of my students do it for the experience, I suppose I could charge you just $10.
	Marvelous, the man says.
	Hooks my wife for next Tuesday.
	Larry Flint and the White House.
	Not usually two names that you would choose, a name and a thing that you would associate with each other, Larry Flint and the White House.
	You know what?
	I would like to interview Larry Flynn, I think.
	Wouldn't he make a good interview?
	You want to be interviewed, Larry?
	This is the exact program where Larry would do a really good interview, because I let people say what they want to say.
	I interviewed his competitor, so why not Larry?
	Republicans suggested Tuesday that the White House may be involved in Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flint's efforts to brand Republican Bob Barr as a hypocrite for his past personal conduct.
	Flint released a January 8th affidavit from Barr's former wife in which she says she believes he was having an affair in the mid-80s with a woman who is now his present wife.
	If that's the best he can do, the White House ought to get another agent, said John Linder, a Republican from Georgia.
	So, the personal destruction in politics continues.
	They really do go after each other, and this really gets... It's been down and dirty now for a long time, hasn't it?
	You know, when they get digging into each other's sex lives, you know they've hit bottom.
	During the impeachment trial in the Senate, the President has decided he will travel.
	Uh, he'll, uh, he'll be gone to, uh, all sorts of places.
	A very busy travel schedule during the trial.
	You know, that way he won't be available for a reaction on a daily basis.
	I haven't talked about it because I haven't wanted to.
	I've been afraid that it would encourage copycats, but thank God.
	Somebody you see here in Nevada has been shooting wild horses.
	And that somebody is now... If this is the person arrested in jail for it.
	Police arrested a Reno construction worker on Tuesday.
	And planned to charge two Marines in California.
	In the slaughter of 34 wild horses shot to death in Nevada with high-powered rifles.
	You know, so if they did that, I hope they roast.
	I mean, we have wild horses here in Nevada, and they have a tough enough time as it is.
	You know, they look for water.
	If it's a bad year for water, we can lose quite a few that way, and we like our wild horses and burros and such here in Nevada.
	And what kind of human being would go and slowly just sort of conduct a genocide of them with high-powered rifles as a hobby?
	That's really, really, really bad.
	Well, I'm still getting people who are calling me about this thing that exploded nearly over Anchorage it re-entered from who knows where and it was who knows what and it exploded over Anchorage causing or concurrent with a 2.2 magnitude earthquake who knows which my guess is that since it occurred then that that magnitude 2 point whatever was from the explosion now interestingly folks the explosion occurred
	50 miles up, they say.
	50 miles up.
	And it was something about the size they think of a basketball.
	Now, that's a basketball.
	What if it had been the size of a Volkswagen?
	In other words, Is there a linear scale to the size of the explosion based on the size of the item?
	I believe there is.
	I got a new picture up on the, uh, website.
	It's simply called Arts Hole.
	In fact, somebody sent me the following by email who saw it.
	Just to let you know, Art, when I saw on your page that there was a picture of Arts Hole, I fell out of my chair laughing and ended up spraining my left ankle.
	Maybe you should tell Keith to change the title before somebody out there seriously hurts themselves.
	No hard feelings though.
	Oh, by the way, I got a great Art Bell Show complaint form and I think we're gonna put that up on the website too.
	It's just absolutely, it's ideal for my program and So if you have a complaint, you'll be able to go up to the website and get the standard complaint form.
	Soon.
	Maybe even tonight.
	Right, Keith?
	We'll see.
	Anyway, listen.
	There is now a website for an upcoming NBC movie.
	Confirmation, I'll try and get a link on that if I can.
	Whitley Strieber, of course.
	His book confirmation, now an NBC movie.
	You're going to see me in that movie.
	Some place or another, I have no idea where.
	You can also see me on Millennium.
	That's going to be on the 22nd.
	Friday night, Fox.
	8 o'clock.
	If you're not around, set a VCR or something.
	If you wish to.
	I had fun.
	I played me.
	I never realized it would be so hard to play me.
	Figure you've got to play yourself.
	Hey, no problem.
	I can do that.
	Standing on my head.
	Well, not really.
	And I won't go over all the agonizing details again, but even playing yourself requires a lot of practice when you do it for TV.
	TV is really different than radio.
	Really, really different.
	There is, at least at this location, there's me.
	That's it.
	And my wonderful wife who helps out.
	I have somebody in Oregon who runs a board and runs the top and bottom of our commercials.
	But otherwise, you know, there's just me.
	But when there's television, oh, there's so many people involved and they're so professional.
	You know, you've got like 20 and 30 people revolving all around you, and there's this intense, frenetic activity, and then they say, action!
	And there's intense silence, and it's like all the pressure is on you.
	Blow the line, and you cause 20 to 30 people to mentally go... And, you know, and so there's a great deal of pressure on you to do the right thing.
	A whole lot of pressure.
	Then there's the director who probably goes into the back room and bats his head up against the wall several times a day.
	I don't know.
	I think TV people probably die young because of all the pressure.
	Or maybe it toughens them to the task.
	I don't know.
	Anyway, Millennium on the 22nd.
	We will return in just one moment.
	I have a special message from men about male potency.
	Anybody out there know what a Furby is?
	That's right, a Furby.
	I guess these are toys that repeat things.
	You tell them, well, this is an Associated Press story.
	First of all, so you know I'm telling you the truth.
	Came in today.
	First, they foiled thousands of wary parents desperately scouring store shelves to buy their kids a holiday toy.
	It was a Furby, you know.
	And now they are considered a possible threat to national security.
	The National Security Agency, or NSA, has banned the popular pets from its Fort Meade premises in Maryland.
	In an internal message to workers, NSA issued a warning A toy, which is embedded with a computer chip that allows it to utter 200 words, 100 in English and 100 in Furbish.
	100 in Furbish?
	Ah, yes.
	Actually, according to the Post, Washington Post, Because of the Furbies' ability to repeat some of what it does here, NSA officials are obviously worried that people would take their Furbies home and the Furbies would begin talking classified.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	What will they think of doing next, God?
	It's Kathy from Woodbridge, New Jersey.
	Hello, Kathy.
	Speaking to you on WABC in New York.
	I gotta tell you something.
	What?
	I had a little fun with the electric company today.
	After hearing on ZDTV, that's a TV that promotes different websites during the day, they sort of want to get you introduced to computer.
	Oh.
	Okay?
	So one week they do WWW, another week they do America Online, and interesting things came on today.
	This is what the girl said.
	In brief, she said that, fear not, electric companies say, But their grids will not go down because of computer problems, because the grids are on old analog systems.
	All right, so I call up P-F-E-G, and I said to them exactly what she said.
	Yes?
	And she says, oh, she's absolutely right.
	You see, the only thing we have gone into computer is the way we let you pay your bills and the way we send your bills out.
	Uh-huh, the billing.
	I said, oh, good!
	That means when the computers misread, $2,000 for $1,900.
	I will be getting bills like they did in $1,900.
	In other words, my $200 electric bill will read $5.
	Oh, no, no, no, no.
	It won't do that.
	No, we hope not.
	Well, I'll tell you one thing.
	I'll tell you one thing.
	If that does happen, Kathy, your electricity, trust me, is going off.
	You better believe it.
	Art, what What's your favorite word of 1998?
	You mean that was coined in 98?
	Yes.
	You're gonna have to think about that.
	That's really a hard question, Kathy.
	I know.
	I like hard questions.
	I don't even know a word that was coined in 98.
	Well, you gave me a word.
	What was it?
	Discontinuity.
	Discontinuity, oh yes.
	That's my favorite word of all time.
	I cannot claim that word.
	I know.
	That word belongs to Ed Bames.
	All right.
	That makes sense.
	In other words... In total sense.
	In other words... Well, okay.
	A discontinuity being something past which he could not see.
	Kind of like a brick wall in time, if you will.
	And for a period of time, Ed Dames had what he called the discontinuity.
	In other words, there was no continuity past a certain point.
	So, discontinuity, that's a fair word.
	Yeah.
	This television station, VDTV, if you check into it, lo and behold, when I actually put it on today, the first thing I heard was, and I can't pronounce his name right, Joe Furbish?
	Oh, yes.
	Yeah, they were talking about his website.
	Oh, yeah.
	And, of course, they were dissing him like nobody's business.
	Oh, of course.
	You know, what a shame.
	As a matter of fact, I'm going to have him back on the show.
	I hope so.
	I was the first one, as far as I know, in America to break the story, right?
	I had him on the show last Friday night.
	And then the story broke San Francisco Chronicle, had it on Saturday front page, entitled Silicon Wizard Quits Over UFO Views.
	And now, Joe, Has a taste, I'm sorry to say, of what the American media does to people.
	And he's right, you know, he said the only redeeming value out there is broadcast media.
	In other words, he can come on a show like mine and tell the truth and get the word out to those who are reading, you know, the trash.
	Well, I don't think it's trash.
	No, no, no.
	There's a lot of trash written about him.
	In other words, it's too tempting for newspaper editors to play games with headlines once a UFO is involved.
	Well, I sure enjoyed the Disclosure Show, and I hope you do more like that.
	Oh, you can depend on it.
	Oh, I really loved that.
	I have that taped, then they replayed it over here, and I'm telling you, Art, even the second time I listened to that, that show was great.
	Thank you.
	I love your guests.
	Take care.
	All right, well, yes.
	Joe Firmage is, I joked around, I called him a gazillionaire, who is stepping down as CEO Of a major corporation, so that they might not experience publicity that would be negative, and of course, print media has it, and anytime anything out of their little box, you know, regular news is reported, they cannot resist approaching the story with an agenda, their agenda, a certain way they want to tell the story.
	It's like when they write about me, they have a certain way they want to tell it.
	You know, the king of the millennium or whatever.
	So I've kind of learned about them and I'm just going to have fun with the media and
	I guess that's what Joe is going to have to do too, but we are going to have him back
	on the program.
	KMCO Grass Valley, a service of Nevada County Broadcasters, in our 20th year of broadcast
	excellence.
	KNCO News Talk 83.
	Many of the things you hear me talk about on both my shows, mostly unfounded, but there were some problems, a few glitches that did pop up.
	A sign that from here through the new year things could get a little tricky.
	For instance, in Singapore, Computerized taxi meters all went dead at noon January 1st for about two hours.
	Two medical products, a Hewlett-Packard external defilibrator.
	Defilibrator?
	Yes.
	And a, get this, the name of it, the Millennia 3500 multi-parameter patient monitor.
	Perform basic functions properly, but display the wrong time and date if not reset properly.
	Well, that's good.
	Imagine if the patient monitor said he's dead.
	Okay, unplug him.
	According to the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, Australia, computers at police officers, officers rather, in three Swedish airports failed at midnight January 1st.
	They couldn't recognize the year 1999.
	These sorts of things are beginning now to occur, but again, Everybody who knows what they're talking about says do not expect January 1st to be some sort of Armageddon date because only about 8% of what's going to go wrong will happen actually on January 1st.
	The rest of it is going to be spread out between now and the year, the ending of the year 2000 and maybe even beyond.
	International Line, you're on the air, good morning.
	Hi Eric, it's Eric.
	I'm calling from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
	Hi Eric.
	I just wanted to comment, before I get to the main point, that point about discontinuity.
	I think someone beat you and dead a long time ago with that one.
	It's used quite often in math and calculus.
	I don't think Ed claimed that he coined the term.
	No, no, I think the caller did.
	It's been used for... It is a good word though.
	I like it as a word.
	It's a good word.
	Sure.
	Yeah, it's a fine word.
	It's commonly used.
	The main reason I called was that since your guests are going to be talking about the power distribution, we had a recent Y2K program on a local show and one of the people for the local power company was tied into the Minnesota grid and whatever they're tied into.
	Oh yeah, our countries are connected.
	Oh yes, but they said that they had them discuss about what would happen in the event that one of them should Yeah, I know, they all claim that.
	car, all of them come down. And they said that they can apparently, at least here in
	Manitoba, they can disconnect within two seconds. Yeah, I know, they all claim that. But if
	that's the case, then maybe you could explain to me why one-third of the entire United States,
	Canada and Mexico went out and stayed out for a long time.
	Well, it didn't happen in Manitoba when that happened.
	I know, but still, you've got to be able to explain that logic to me.
	But before, hey, we can disconnect in two seconds.
	Well, maybe two seconds isn't enough.
	Well, I'm pretty sure Manitoba Group is tied in there somewhere.
	Otherwise, power companies in the West would have disconnected and we would have had power at least here and there.
	That's true.
	I mean, for them, I don't know why they didn't do it or why they didn't have it set to do that.
	And it's not just one time, but it's happened several times.
	And the most recent one in California, that not everybody knows about, the power company down there can't even explain why it happened.
	They don't even know.
	The power up here rarely ever goes off.
	It's really rock-solid stable.
	I have found that making statements like the one you just did almost inevitably brings on a power failure.
	Yeah.
	Well, in the past century that's been the case.
	Now, of course, there will always be exceptions like when some major windstorm one time knocked out a lot of powers and it was when the jet stream came down on deck.
	Yes.
	It took out quite a few towers with incredible force and power.
	And we have an interesting power transmission system.
	I think, as a ham radio operator, you'd probably think it was kind of interesting.
	The power lines are so long that if they used AC power, you would, for transmission from all the way up north from the hydroelectric stations all the way to the south, so long that if you used AC, it would generate a standing wave.
	So you couldn't effectively transmit a power unit?
	So you're saying they're resonant at 60 cycles?
	Yeah.
	So they had to switch to high voltage DC.
	And then when the power comes out, they use all these switching circuits to switch it back to DC.
	That is really interesting.
	Thank you.
	Long line electric companies are interesting in a lot of ways.
	And you'd have to be a sort of a technical type to understand, but to be resonant at 60 cycles, You'd begin losing most of your power to the air.
	It would be radiated as a horrid noise that would interfere with everything it encountered.
	And then we have the long lines here in the U.S.
	that, when we have a solar flare, they are so much of an antenna that they collect so much voltage that they can literally blow power stations.
	It's really incredible.
	And that's from the sun, you know, when we get a geomagnetic storm.
	That can so overload them.
	Can you imagine that?
	Wildcard line, uh, you're on air.
	Hi.
	Yes.
	Extinguish my radio, please.
	Number one, turn it off.
	Yes.
	Okay, that's good.
	First time callers, area 702-727-1.
	Now see, I would prefer that you didn't give your last name.
	Oh, I'm terribly sorry.
	Forgot about that.
	It's alright.
	What is your first name?
	Charles.
	And you are in Utah?
	Yes.
	Where there's a big controversy going on about the Oliphics.
	Yeah, there's a lot of nonsense going on about that.
	But I didn't call to talk about that tonight.
	Alright.
	I called to talk about... Yes?
	The Masonic, uh, some of the Masonic things you talked about.
	Oh, thank you.
	Uh, tonight's secret numbers are 17, 18, and 21.
	Thank you.
	17, 18, and 21.
	Doggone near forgot that.
	Thank you.
	Anyway, the Masonic business.
	Yeah, well, I know a 33rd degree Mason.
	Yes.
	And, uh, there's a great deal of controversy over that.
	Do his eyes glow red?
	No.
	No, no.
	Unfortunately not.
	That would be quite amusing.
	But no, they don't.
	Even when angry?
	Say again?
	I said even when angry?
	That might be a possibility.
	Yeah, if you could get him angry, he might go red, I don't know.
	No, actually, what would happen is he would just make a subtle little body language sign, which you wouldn't even see, but you'd be dead the next day.
	I don't necessarily hold true with that.
	I think he would have to possess some Malicious intent beyond that which I've ever experienced.
	Well, we were specifying there, if, if you got him angry.
	Oh, of course.
	Well, if you get anybody angry, I don't, you know, who knows?
	That's right.
	But, uh, no.
	Specifically... Yes?
	I also wanted to talk about time, which is an interesting topic.
	Well, now, wait a minute.
	So you didn't really have anything to, uh, expose to us about the Masons.
	Oh, you wanted me to expose something?
	Well, you just said you know one.
	I mean, so, so what do you know?
	Um...
	It's pretty much, you know, even in the 33rd degree, Masonry is a old boy society more than anything else.
	And if you want to... Is that what he told you?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	It's just pretty much an old boy society.
	That's pretty much what it amounts to.
	If you want to try to make a case for some sort of orchestrated malicious intent... Not me.
	...to the universe... Not me.
	I don't think it's there in that organization alone.
	I'm not sure anybody has a handle on stupidity.
	Obviously, I mean, look at the United States and look at our political situation.
	No, nobody has a handle on stupidity.
	It's rampant.
	It's raging across the country.
	Unfortunately, that's true.
	That's too true.
	No, there is, you know, you can definitely make a case for the existence of the forces of good and the forces of evil.
	Um, whatever they be.
	I mean, if you don't, if you read the same dictionary, um... You don't think Bill Gates is evil, do you?
	Oh, that's a really good question.
	I know.
	A lot of people think Bill Gates is evil.
	Well, yeah, the evil empire, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.
	No, mostly people who got the early Windows 95.
	Listen, I really have to run.
	Thank you very much for the call.
	I really respect Bill Gates.
	I shouldn't make those jokes and I want to interview Bill Gates.
	So with the people up there at Microsoft, I know nearly everybody at Microsoft listens.
	So pass the word to Bill Gates that I really want to interview him and pass the word to him that I don't do ambush interviews and so I wouldn't ambush him.
	I have no intent of doing that.
	I really want to ask him about his life, you know.
	And how he feels about the Justice Department coming after.
	Maybe his lawyers won't let him talk about that.
	Trying to break up Microsoft.
	You know, earlier today I talked to an AT&T operator who will remain nameless.
	And you know why I called her?
	I called her.
	AT&T is my long-distance carrier.
	And I'm telling you right now, something is happening to our phone system.
	It's either here in Nevada or it's It's a national thing.
	Because I'm on the phone all the time.
	I make long-distance calls every day, all the time.
	You should see my phone go.
	You know, for guests and stuff like that.
	And over half the time lately that I've been trying to call out during the day, I get, sorry, all circuits are busy.
	And so finally today, after about the fifth or sixth time in a row, I called AT&T and got the trouble operator.
	And I also called Nevada Bell, and both of course blame each other.
	But neither one offered an explanation about what's going on.
	They didn't know.
	They said, well, we'll take your number and call you back.
	I said, Boy, there sure are a lot of phone companies now.
	The lady said, boy, you sure got that right.
	I said, we never should have broken up your phone company, you know, AT&T.
	And she said, oh, you've got that right.
	And she does.
	West of the Rockies, you're on air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	Let me turn off the radio real quick for you.
	Good.
	Okay.
	All right.
	This is Errol calling from Corvallis, listening to 1340 K-L-O-O.
	That's the way to do it.
	And, uh, okay.
	I've been calling you.
	I've been trying to get ahold of you for almost two weeks now, trying to answer this question.
	It's been bothering me.
	All right.
	Okay, um, on December 23rd, I usually listen to you on the radio, but this time I chose to listen to you on Broadcast.com.
	Yes.
	On December 23rd, it was Tuesday or Wednesday morning, it was about 2.25 in the morning, you took a break, you came back on the air, you said to Broadcast.com listeners and said, I have a secret to tell everyone and this is the ultimate secret, you went quiet for about a minute, and you came back on the air and said that's the ultimate secret.
	I was wondering if it had any significance or anything?
	Of course it had significance!
	Do you think I would say, here's the ultimate secret, um, and then, and then detail is the way I... Well, you're so quiet.
	I mean, there's a minute of quietness.
	I was on the edge, literally on the edge of my seat, listening and nothing.
	I thought maybe you accidentally hit, like, a commercial button wrong or something.
	No, I did not.
	What was the significance of that?
	Well, look, obviously, if I thought I could repeat it for the broadcast audience here, I would.
	I can't.
	It was the ultimate secret.
	That's why I told it just to the people on the net.
	But, it was quiet.
	It was completely silent from... You said this is the ultimate secret, and then it went silent for... Contact your provider.
	What can I tell you?
	You're serious?
	There's something wrong with my provider?
	Well, I don't know that.
	I just said I don't know.
	That's weird because... I ran through The Ultimate Secret in excruciating detail.
	Okay, see, what I thought was the excruciating secret was silence.
	Importantly, that's not it.
	But how could it just cut off in that immediate second and then come right back on?
	That's rather interpretive of you.
	That's what I'm saying.
	I don't know.
	I mean, contact whoever supplies you with your feed and ask them.
	Well, the thing is, the feed is going through the internet.
	I understand that.
	The internet is not exactly flawless, you know.
	Okay, but don't you find that... I mean, I think you would find it quite odd that... I mean, anyone would find it odd that... Well, I do.
	I certainly feel sorry that you were unable to hear what everybody else did.
	Was it a great ultimate secret?
	Look, when somebody says the ultimate secret, what do you think?
	Of course it was a great secret.
	Alright, I've been dialing you for two weeks now trying to get a hold of you about this.
	You've got to say the ultimate secret or... No, no, no, no, no.
	I can't do that.
	I did that specifically so that certain people on the net would get it.
	And then I didn't have to broadcast it, so... You know now, a lot of people are going to be asking you about this.
	Let them ask!
	Okay.
	Well, anyway, it was great to talk to you, and I don't want to make you mad or anything.
	I'm just trying to figure out... Oh, you're not.
	No, you're not.
	I'm sorry you missed it.
	Was it worth it?
	Was it worth the hype or whatever?
	I'm letting it up to me?
	Is the understanding of life itself worth it?
	Wow.
	Well, anyway, I gotta go.
	Okay, well, thank you.
	Have a good night.
	You take care.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	Yes.
	Carol, I'm down in Delray Beach.
	Hi, Carol.
	Hi.
	I wanted to talk about the Y2K for a second.
	Good, because that's where we're headed at the top of the hour here, you know.
	Yes, indeed I do.
	I had to call Social Security this past week on the 8th, in fact.
	And our office in West Palm Beach came on and said, this office is closed.
	And I said, hmm?
	So I tried it again, and it had the same deal.
	On a whim, on Monday, I tried it again, and by golly, somebody picked up.
	Yes.
	And I did my business, and then I said, what did you do?
	Take a week off at the office?
	Because the office was closed.
	And she said, what?
	And I said, the office was closed?
	And she said, no, no, we were here.
	I said, well, I called on the 8th at 1030 in the morning, and the voice said, the office is closed.
	And she said, oh.
	And really a long pregnant pause.
	Well, we've been having phone trouble for three months now.
	Why do you think people use that expression, pregnant pause?
	Because there's nine months between, you know.
	Yeah.
	I see.
	Anyway, I said to her, three months you've been having trouble with your phone lines?
	And she said, yes, in fact, I'm surprised you got through the day.
	And I said, We aren't having a little Y2K problem already, are we?
	And?
	And she said, uh, how did you know about that?
	I said, why listen to Art Bell?
	You're kidding.
	I am not.
	She honestly said, how did you know about that?
	Yes, she did.
	Oh, I'm just feeling all the warm and fuzzier.
	I know you would be.
	I just had to get through.
	So, there we are.
	Alright, thanks.
	Thank you, Art.
	See you later, yeah.
	Doesn't that make you feel all warm inside?
	You ask him if it's Y2K and he says, how did you know about that?
	I wish I knew the truth about Y2K.
	I wish I knew the truth.
	And I really don't.
	I'm seeing stories on both sides, big time.
	Anyway, if you stick around, that is what we're going to talk about.
	Stuart H. Rodman is my guest, and he's going to be talking about the power grid.
	Now, that should be close to the hearts of all of you out there.
	You know, the power grid.
	Any idea what it's like to go without power?
	Well, you're going to find out.
	Actually, you can find out right now if you want.
	If you feel like doing it, and you can do it safely, then just go turn off the main circuit breaker to your house and sit there for a couple hours.
	It's like being in a tomb.
	We really do depend heavily on electricity.
	We depend on it being there.
	So that's going to be the topic of discussion coming up next.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is the Go Anywhere, Coast to Coast AM.
	We're going to be talking about Y2K, Get a comfortable seat.
	We'll be right back.
	Remember how you used to feel.
	Enjoying some seasonal winter weather here today.
	It's cooler than normal but still very pleasant.
	Your typical daytime temperature is about what?
	I would say that normally we would have a high this day probably in the upper 60s and typically at night it might get down into the 50s.
	It's slightly on the cool side.
	It's a little cooler here, but daytime temperatures are about the same.
	That's interesting.
	Okay, well anyway, you have written, I guess, if I understand what I'm reading here correctly, you've got a hell of an education.
	Then you began doing some writing about the Y2K business coming up and ran into some sort of brick wall regarding publication because of the nature of the material.
	I'm not sure if I would characterize it exactly as a brick wall.
	Some of the pieces that I have written are relatively new.
	I started doing my writing as such in response to a report which I saw, which really motivated me to put the pencil to the paper.
	And that report was released by the United States Department of Energy on or about September 17th of 1998.
	And so many of the articles that I've written really deal specifically with the content of that report.
	And I've tried, in fact, to maintain a very narrow focus.
	The report that I'm referring to...
	How'd you get the report?
	I came about this basically in a sort of circuitous way.
	I started out looking into the issue of the electric power grid through the help of my local congressional delegation.
	I was quite concerned as I learned more about the problem that we could be facing more than just a minor inconvenience.
	And just as a normal citizen, a father, a husband, a working person, I was quite concerned about what all this was going to mean to myself, my family and my community.
	And probably like a lot of people I imagine, I wanted to get a handle on this as quickly as I could because I understood that the clock was ticking.
	It sure is.
	It definitely is.
	Now, the title of your website, The Last Days of Power, that's pretty ominous.
	Right.
	There's certainly plenty of reason to be concerned.
	As you pointed out, I heard some of your discussion in a previous hour.
	There's a lot of talk being said on the optimistic side, and I'd like to talk about that in the course of our discussion also.
	But in balance, even those who are responsible for explaining to the public and to the government what the condition of the power system is, themselves hold back some degree of reservation.
	I think your listeners might want to hear about that as well.
	Well, I think they might.
	Was this a...
	A private report or a public report that you got?
	Okay, the report was commissioned, actually.
	It's a public issue.
	Maybe I can just start near the beginning to this and some of these matters will become clear.
	Under a special authority granted by the President of the United States on February 4th, 1998, the United States Department of Energy selected a private group of industry
	bleep the queen
	we hope both from you might say of the electric power industry in this country would these be the technical
	people or would these be the c e o's and stuff like that
	i would say it's a cross-section although the people that are in this organization and
	we should probably identify that organization just a moment work for that organization they're no longer necessarily
	affiliated with any of the so-called bulk providers of which there are about two hundred in the
	continent they work for the organization up for the most part on a
	full-time basis and so the organization has its own organizational management
	hierarchy and it includes certainly some very talented people both
	administratively And just exactly how many of them are Masons?
	Okay, now that's a question that I'm not really prepared to answer.
	It's a good one.
	Sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	I just get out of control every now and then.
	No, I think you saw the brass ring and you had to take it.
	So, you have this group, a mixed group of industry leaders and technical types and they're doing a report on the state.
	What is it?
	The state of the power grid itself?
	Okay, let me try to explain what their mission was.
	Alright.
	Getting back just a moment again to the United States Department of Energy.
	They selected this group and I'm going to name it because it's important that we discuss them and their work and who they are.
	This group is called the North American Electric Reliability Council.
	Actually listeners of your program may be among the very first in the nation to know
	about them because a very gifted and talented correspondent Linda Moulton Howe wrote that
	story on her Greenland segment on December 13th.
	That's correct.
	And I think she did a tremendous public service in doing so.
	This group as I said is comprised of representatives from within the industry.
	They do not have enforcement powers.
	They work exclusively by peer pressure much like a trade association.
	However, they were formed in 1965.
	Bye.
	Okay, well doesn't that kind of make them industry friendly then, automatically?
	Yes, that's going to be, yes, it's fair to say that they are going to do the best they can to put a happy face on this.
	Okay, that is important to understand.
	Right.
	Although I in no way want to impugn their objectivity, integrity, or dedication.
	In fact, I would say that this particular group of people is extremely dedicated to making next New Year's Day, if they can, a happy New Year's Day for all of us, me and the representatives of their industry.
	Do you think it's going to be a happy day?
	Can I answer that in two ways?
	First, talk about myself just for a moment.
	And I will try to answer that too, specifically, but I just want to let the people know who are listening that the work that I've done, I tried very hard And I want to try to maintain that posture throughout the show.
	I want to be more the messenger than the analyst.
	What I think that I'm going to be able to do for your listeners is bring you inside the industry and let you hear what these people are saying.
	And I think that'll be the first time that this has been done.
	Up until now, most of the information that's been distributed from NERC, that's the N-E-R-C, North American Electric Reliability Council, Has been published from their website, which anybody can see.
	It's in public domain, it's written in that Adobe format that we all love so much, the PDF.
	So you would need an Adobe reader to see it, but you could also get it from them in the mail, or you can get the report downloaded on the internet from the... So this is not secret stuff?
	No, but for some reason, it has not reached a level of dissemination that it really deserves to be.
	It's crucially important, and it represents not the speculative work of observers, but the actual results of an assessment, which they were commissioned to do at the behest of the United States Department of Energy over the summer.
	And it details what they found within the power grid, in terms of parts that are and parts that are not life-day vulnerable.
	And it details, as well, a plan.
	People may want to know.
	Maybe they won't want to know.
	What, the power companies are planning?
	Right, they actually have a Y2K rescue plan.
	It is a plan.
	The official plan.
	And I... No kidding?
	Yes, there truly is one, and... Now, is this something that the power... You said they don't have powers of enforcement.
	Correct.
	They will pass on their recommendations, I suppose, get passed on through the power associations and back and forth to the power companies.
	How much reliability would you put in the concept that power companies are going to Embrace this plan and go to action.
	Well, that's a great question.
	I'd hoped that you wouldn't ask me that one until a little later on in the show.
	That is a great question.
	And it's sort of an auspicious, you've selected a very auspicious time to ask it anyway.
	Because I've referred in the last couple of moments to the plan that was released on September 17th, 1998, which was The result of the very first ever formal industry-wide assessment of Y2K preparedness.
	Now, as part of the arrangement that they made with the United States Department of Energy, NERC agreed to put out additional quarterly reports and post them on their website for public inspection right through July 1999, among other things.
	They also took on other responsibilities in the By way of public disclosure responsibility.
	And it just so happens you're asking this question of me the day after the second ever quarterly report was published.
	That would have been yesterday, Monday, January 11th.
	Good timing.
	Good timing, right.
	So the question of how much progress is being made, you can kind of chart what has been made, what the progress that has been made, and the progress that has not been made.
	Right.
	Literally as we speak.
	We have the first before and after, so to speak.
	Okay.
	Again, if you look at what has just been released or what was previously released in an overview kind of way, is it going to be a serious... Look, I've had so many different people here on Y2K, Gary North, Ed Jordan and a lot of very knowledgeable people with different views.
	But before we get to the details, if you were to answer the question that I did pose, and that is, are we going to have a really good day or is it going to be a rough day?
	Sort of as an overall thing, what would you say?
	I'm going to try to answer that based on The facts, as I know them, in the plan.
	Now, this is an overall question.
	Good day or bad day, do you think?
	Good day or bad day, gut feeling kind of a thing.
	Yep, yep.
	I think it's going to depend on where you live, and I'll explain why that is.
	I think some people are going to be unhappy.
	Okay, on that note, we'll break off and we'll resume and try and explain that when we come back.
	We'll see you next time.
	Thanks for watching.
	Subscribe to our channel for more videos.
	Thanks for watching.
	Subscribe to our channel for more videos.
	Thanks for watching.
	Subscribe to our channel for more videos.
	Thanks for watching.
	Subscribe to our channel for more videos.
	Thanks for watching.
	Now, maybe I'm reading this wrong.
	In other words, they are going to set up a sort of an action call that is going to result in some problems, even if there's no problem at all.
	Yes, I think that one way to phrase it that might make sense of that, and maybe this is a little bit overly cute, but I think that it's fair to say that the North American power grid has contacted a bug.
	I don't know which bug that is, but I think what we might want to add is that there are many people that may not like the somewhat bitter medicine that's going to be used to cure it.
	All right.
	Are we going to say, do you want to start out by saying that Y2K is not necessarily a real problem?
	Do you want to make that statement or can you not make that statement?
	No, I would make that statement.
	Y2K is very much of a real problem in the power grid.
	It is?
	Yes, very definitely.
	And the plan that I referred to a moment ago as bitter medicine is necessary because of the threat that Y2K does pose to the infrastructure.
	All right.
	So, what is their plan?
	Okay, in its essence, of course, they have dates that they've established.
	They're going to basically spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources financially to identify where the vulnerable pieces are.
	And I think we should talk a little bit about what that really is, what those parts are.
	Many people think those are computers.
	Right.
	Well, if only that were the case, we'd all be a lot happier.
	Computers are kind of warm and fuzzy in a way.
	Granted, they're certainly machines, but think of a computer.
	It's sort of big.
	You can see it.
	And they're put in places where people will see them because they have keyboards.
	They have monitors.
	In other words, they're built and designed for access by human operators.
	Now, the computers... Now, this may be somewhat in controversy.
	NERC says, though, that in the electric power grid, surprisingly enough, Computers play only a very small role, and they're fairly confident that the computer problems, and I'm speaking about computer problems specifically, will, in all likelihood, be resolved well in advance of the mail-over date.
	Did you hear Cathy from Woodbridge, New Jersey, who called last hour?
	I believe I did, yeah.
	She said that they're worried about their billing.
	More than they are the power.
	Correct.
	That's a very good point, and she was quite right to bring that up.
	The computers that are used in the industry, according to the NERC reports, are primarily used in what we would call secondary or tertiary functions.
	Like billing.
	They don't think of it that way, I'm sure.
	Right.
	I would hate to have a bill for $100,000 instead of $100,000.
	hundred thousand dollars instead of a hundred dollars. Oh, me too. But at least, hopefully
	if that should happen, and hopefully it won't, but if it does, at least we'd have a point
	of debate there and we wouldn't freeze to death or go without running water or have
	any of these other horrible things.
	Okay, so if computers then are not the real problem with the power companies and the grid, what is?
	I would say it's the automated, to borrow a term from the Cold War maybe, the automated black box equipment.
	We're talking about things that are built into the system.
	Maybe they're not visible to operators.
	They don't need human operators for the most part.
	When they were built, there was no expectation that anything could ever go wrong.
	One of these black boxes, give me an idea or a typical function where one might be used.
	Okay, let's start with the concept of Voltage regulation in your car.
	In our automobiles, as far as I know, almost all of them have some kind of voltage regulation.
	Absolutely.
	In the power grid, they have similar kinds of devices.
	They're not something you buy off the shelf.
	You wouldn't go to a radio shack.
	Right, you wouldn't be able to do that.
	They were built, many of them, years ago.
	They are fully automated in many cases.
	They don't have, in other words, switches, dials, gauges, or things that would tell a
	human operator what's going on inside of them.
	They have what other guests that you've had correctly identified as embedded chips.
	Oh.
	Oh, he says again, embedded chips, yes.
	Which are date sensitive, in some cases at least.
	Correct, in some cases, that's true.
	In some cases not.
	And that's kind of why there's a debate going on somewhat, or some confusion about the information
	that's been coming out of NERC lately as it's been delivered to the U.S.
	Department of Energy because there are automated parts that do not have date sensitivity and so therefore are not Y2K vulnerable.
	But what I'm going to be speaking about are the parts that NERC has positively absolutely identified with any without any doubt as being date sensitive.
	Okay.
	And they use another term which listeners should want to In addition to being date sensitive, they're also mission
	critical.
	Mission critical?
	Mission critical.
	That sounds like a military term.
	It probably originated there.
	I heard in the last hour some discussion of the origin of other vocabulary.
	You know, like discontinuity.
	Discontinuity, right.
	I don't know.
	Mission critical is another good one.
	Right.
	That's a big buzz word, actually.
	There are two.
	You'll see mission critical is the issue that's discussed by the United States Department of Energy, and it's kind of caught on throughout the industry.
	And so the relevance here being that it's the mission critical parts that really pose
	the threat to the supply and generation of electricity.
	So they have identified with certainty some black box regulator type...
	Right.
	Regulators.
	Equipment.
	And other things, I guess, too.
	Other things which are very important to know about, yes.
	We all understand the concept of a surge protector now.
	Sure.
	Well, they have specialized surge protectors.
	Digital, automated surge protectors.
	And they perform... The reason that they're there is very much like why we would have a surge protector in our homes.
	Because if these surge protectors were to fail, or if they weren't there, If we were to have unexpected fluctuation in electric current, many components that are in the grid, which otherwise are not necessarily Y2K vulnerable, but which are important, would be adversely affected, damaged, destroyed possibly.
	Yep.
	Rendered inoperable.
	Yep.
	Most people who own computers know about that.
	Right.
	Well, they have these digital electronic surge protectors and then a lot of the other componentry
	which is and I'm only going to speak about the mission critical componentry not the customer
	service as important as that is but as far as mission critical also the parts that we would want
	to talk about would be circuit breakers and obviously we can all appreciate the importance of
	working circuit breakers yes and relay switches yes and so the function of these parts in general if I can
	characterize them is to on the one hand protect the infrastructure
	A lot of these are protective in nature to prevent further more widespread damage.
	Yes.
	In the event of unregulated flow of voltage.
	Right.
	And other ones, mission critical, other ones are used in the transmission of energy from point to point.
	Right.
	Right.
	Uh, breaking it at the right point, whatever.
	Correct.
	Maybe here's where we ought to stop for a second, Stewart, and I should ask you, what do you know about the grid itself?
	Actually, the power grid is a really, really mysterious thing.
	I would assume the mission of the grid would be to sort of be a Yes.
	interconnected net in which if one little segment fails, other areas can rush in and fill the gap temporarily until
	whatever it is comes back up.
	That would seem to me to be the intent and a good idea.
	Correct. However, the very accomplishment of that mission makes possible the exact opposite apparently at times.
	In other words, one, we've had lots of power failures out here in the West.
	I mean, some real whiz bangers where the western third of the US, Canada and Mexico went off.
	And the final story we get is that a little power generating plant somewhere in Idaho went down.
	And so, you know, 40 million people lost power.
	So, apparently the grid works two ways.
	It can protect, or it can be the domino chain.
	Right.
	You know, I'm so glad you're bringing that up.
	And I've heard you talk about this issue before, and I want to try to add some clarity to that.
	Please.
	Okay.
	First of all, you're quite correct, as usual, when you say that the grid is complex, and also that it's interconnected.
	But it's also autonomous.
	Generally speaking, the grid is comprised of, you know, some people say four, but there are basically three broad sectors in the grid.
	The eastern, the western, and one which is called the ERCOT, which is basically the state of Texas.
	Really?
	Yes.
	Figures.
	Somehow it makes sense.
	Yeah.
	And they are designed to operate autonomously.
	In other words, they don't need each other to work within their own Separate domain.
	Right.
	And so a disturbance in one should be contained and not necessarily spread like a virus might spread into another.
	Right.
	That's what you would think.
	Now, there are two reasons, though, that I want to bring up.
	That general logic breaks down.
	Specifically, it breaks down in the Y2K scenario.
	And I'm going to explain that.
	But first, before I explain why in Y2K, let me just give you one other General idea about how these parts interrelate to each other, which may explain some of the phenomenon that you've been talking about.
	Of course, there's always the possibility of an accident.
	A truck could roll into a power station, whatever some important connections are.
	And that could have a cascading effect through that interconnection.
	In fact, NERC in their report talks about the fact that If even one power station were to go down, it would and could theoretically adversely affect that entire interconnection, which they really mean is the sector.
	In other words, the western third of the U.S.
	as an example.
	Right.
	Sector.
	Right.
	Now, there's another way, though, before getting into how Y2K poses a unique threat, in their own words, to the infrastructure.
	And this is very important.
	Yes, I live in New York City.
	It gets cold. And if I have electric heat, I'm going to turn up the thermostat. It's just human
	nature. I'm going to do it. Most people would. It would be logical. That's correct. The way we live.
	And if enough people do this, or if it gets cold enough, the local utility company in New York
	City may no longer have enough localized generating capacity to meet that demand.
	Out here, it occurs during the summer, peak demand with air conditioners and so forth.
	Okay, I understand and we have the same kind of situation here in Florida.
	Mm-hmm.
	But routinely and without our knowledge, Art, and it's perfectly fine and legitimate in most circumstances, our local utility company has already made arrangements as a member of the grid When this happens, when the demand increases beyond their immediate supply, to use this automated equipment, which I've referred to, to enable electric power, maybe from Nevada, if it's a nice, pleasant day over there, to come into New York City to meet that rise in demand.
	On the surface, this certainly makes sense.
	Okay, now that's going to be very important, I think, though, to understand why I'm concerned about what's going to happen next year, though.
	This is called a transfer.
	It's logical enough.
	It's an energy transfer, a power transfer.
	Sure.
	And that's why we have transmission lines.
	Yep.
	Now, if one of those, just to go back to your basic question, if one of the sectors, let's say that exactly what I said takes place, that people in New York want energy from Nevada, but let's say that the western section did have one of the disturbances Of the nature that you described actually having happened in the past.
	Yes.
	The transfer wouldn't take place.
	You just simply wouldn't have anything to offer to New York.
	And so, in that way, very clearly, we already have an adverse impact.
	That's pretty clear and easy to understand.
	Yeah.
	If we don't have a sponsor and what we don't have, we can't loan.
	Right.
	You can't get blood from a stone.
	Right.
	And that's what we would be dealing with.
	I'm going to use another term here.
	This is kind of a nice vocabulary.
	And I'm going to use a good one here because this is the ultimate nightmare for planners in the electric industry right now as they think about Y2K.
	Right.
	It's called the common mode failure.
	Three words, common mode failure.
	Common mode failure.
	The common mode failure is when parts of the same type with the same function Uh-huh.
	From the same manufacturer.
	All go down.
	All go down for the same reason at the same time.
	Gotcha.
	Irregardless of their physical location.
	Right.
	Now if you think about the fact that there are 200 so-called bulk energy providers in the power grid.
	Those are the people you send your electric bill to.
	Yes.
	They talk to each other.
	And they're working for profit.
	And also they have a responsibility to keep the cost down.
	They have that responsibility to the shareholders that own those companies.
	And to the public.
	We don't want to have to pay any more for the power than they have to.
	Right.
	So they talk, and they may find out, or the vendors may tell them that, you know, hey, my electronic relay device has been used in all your competitors for the last 10 years, and it's got a proven history of reliability, etc., etc.
	It's cost effective.
	It works great.
	I won't charge you a lot if you buy it.
	So it's probable to assume, because there are only X number of vendors and X number of specialty, Uh, Power Transmission Parts Makers, that a given part, a given brand, a given function is fairly widespread throughout the North American continent.
	Right, gotcha.
	Well, if, now for years and years that was no problem, and in fairness, NERC points out that as the system developed, they made provision for this common military concept, although I doubt that they ever really expected that they'd actually Come face to face with that exact scenario so soon.
	It's just, put another way, um, electric companies tend to use the same vendors and equipment.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	I think.
	Sure.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	You probably see that in many industries.
	So having said that.
	Right.
	The common mode failure though, the common mode failure is the ultimate nightmare as far as, um, the operation of the power grid next year.
	If it turns out that for instance that there are components like that spread throughout
	the continent and they are undetected, they go undetected by the best efforts of all the
	people that are out there trying to find them.
	And then surprise, surprise.
	Exactly.
	So you have a piece in Nevada, you have a piece in Texas, you have a piece in Florida,
	maybe you have a piece in Quebec and they're mission critical and they escape detection
	and they're all aid sensitive and they're all Y2K vulnerable, they all go out at the
	same time.
	So now you have three or maybe even four sectors of the continent that go down for the same
	reason at the same time.
	Right.
	And so, despite the fail-safe mechanisms that are built into the different sectors, we found a way, or Y2K in this case, has found a way to defeat that defense barrier.
	And now we have, in this nightmarish scenario, a full-blown, widespread, continent-wide blackout.
	Alright, I assume that NERC Assumes for their report that that is a possibility.
	They say that, in their language, that Y2K poses a unique threat.
	Their report is more upbeat than the scenario that I've described right now.
	And with good cause.
	I think that they've done a good job up until now in assessing the respective utility companies
	to determine how many parts are out there that are date sensitive, where they are, and
	what can be done about them.
	They have a timetable.
	They say that by the end of June 1999 they're going to complete this process.
	They do say, on the other hand, in their literature, in each report that they've published, that
	they've been asked to publish, that it is, and I'm going to attempt to quote them here,
	it is inconceivable that they're going to close down the grid for two weeks prior to
	and then maybe two weeks after Christmas.
	Right now, they hope that it will not be necessary to go to that extreme.
	But they plan.
	And what they say in here is the language that they use.
	And it's in their report for your listeners to see.
	Sure, go ahead.
	The grid will be operated in what is called a precautionary mode.
	It's a precautionary mode.
	During the critical transition period, which is the time that I just discussed, examples of precautionary operation include reduced power transfers, bringing additional generation capability online, increasing the staffing levels at stations and substations.
	And so what they're hoping is that because they're going to basically make it impossible Or very difficult for a utility company to buy power outside of its own district.
	They're hoping that by bringing on older generation power generating equipment that they may be able to work around the potential need to transfer.
	I don't know.
	Did I state that?
	Is that clear?
	It's clear.
	What's unclear is the The projected effect of this, in other words, if you... I don't know how many areas on a regular basis, because of demand, are forced to presently buy power.
	From others, so I don't know how big of an effect this would be.
	In general, the answer and the reason that I think we need to be concerned about it, basically, Art, it takes place without our knowledge.
	It's a routine operation.
	Oh, I know.
	I know.
	Nothing that we worry about.
	Right.
	But what we would worry is if we were having, for instance, I talked about an act of God and a weather emergency.
	And, you know, we're talking about midwinter on the North American continent when we're talking about January 1st.
	Yes.
	And that can be a very unforgiving time.
	And in fact, we may know from recent headlines that during the Christmas season this year, 93 people, according to the Associated Press, died nationwide during the ice storms that we experienced here on the East and in the Midwest.
	So, the idea that we will be able to go two weeks without having some kind of adverse weather situation for somebody somewhere within the continent is really expecting a great deal of good fortune.
	But even beyond that, on a regular basis, I would imagine there are areas that use power in excess regularly of what they generate locally.
	Yes?
	No?
	Yes, I think that's correct.
	They buy the power from a neighboring utility on the grid or maybe pump power away and have it... So those would be the ones that might be in trouble if the sharing stopped?
	Right, if they do that, yes, I see what you're saying.
	Yes, even under normal conditions, if that's what they do, they'll have to live within their means, so to speak.
	They will not have the luxury of obtaining that power on a casual basis as they do now.
	So a company like that would issue a local alert saying, you know, cut down on power or else?
	Yes.
	In fact, I wanted to talk about that.
	Our state, the state of Florida, and most states around the country have a load management plan.
	They call it a capacity generation plan.
	And there are actually Steps which are taken.
	We're going to be hearing, I think, later on this year from the media, the desirability of voluntary conservation.
	And we'll be hearing things like, next time it gets cold, put on a sweater before you turn off that thermostat.
	Turn off your lights when you're not using them.
	So there's going to be a lot of that.
	Excuse me, I'm sorry.
	I said there's going to be a lot.
	You know, they've had these drives in the past in other areas and Usually it results in one thing, higher prices.
	They've had water conservation and areas have actually done better than expected.
	People really conserve a lot of water.
	And then, you know, the thanks they get for it is a higher water bill because the company has to make a profit.
	If they're not pumping a lot of water, they're not making a lot of money.
	It's got the... The consumer is always the loser.
	Well, you know, that's a really good point, and in fact, I'd like to point out that for many of us, whether or not there are Y2K equipment failures, whether or not there is bad weather, the disaster has already happened.
	The disaster has already happened for many people.
	A conservative estimate of the cost of the Y2K repair effort in the electric utility industry, a conservative estimate is $2 billion.
	Wow!
	Yes, and... How much have we spent so far?
	That is apparently the money that's already been spent and we haven't finished.
	One utility company in Iowa has spent, estimates their cost, just for this one company alone, ranging between $32 to $75 million.
	Now if you project that out, over 200 bulk energy providers, if they should have a similar experience, you're talking about maybe from $3 to $7 billion.
	And certainly we all hope that it's not necessary to spend that much money.
	But ultimately, who will bear the price?
	So I believe that if the Herculean efforts of those involved in remediating the grid succeed, that still hasn't prevented the catastrophe of the public having to come up with another two, three, six, seven billion dollars.
	We have that.
	However, the concept of rationing as they plan it may or may not have an additional monetary
	consequence. I don't know exactly about that. But it is the plan that the, as I said, that each
	district will live within their own means.
	They will attempt to offset the loss of transfer by, as I said, bringing on additional
	pieces of generating equipment. But that does not guarantee in any sense that
	the level of demand will not exceed the supply. And you mentioned just a moment ago
	the fact that there are alerts and so on and so forth. And I wanted to mention
	there are such things as generating capacity plans and they generally follow three stages.
	One is the advisory stage. Then there is a formal alert.
	And finally an emergency.
	Mm-hmm.
	And the alert, if we start with the advisory, we may start to hear about that again towards the end of next year, where they will be encouraging... I should probably back up just a little bit.
	Each utility company knows how many megawatts they have online at any given moment.
	So in other words, if you hear your local radio and TV stations really beginning to issue Severe, cut back, turn that switch off kind of things, then you could be in a problematic area.
	Exactly.
	They will tell you, I suspect, during the advisory stage, first, you know, the lowest level of alert, the lowest level in a plan to voluntarily curtail.
	Now you know, many states, we do here in Florida, have contractual plans available on a voluntary
	basis where you as an individual customer can have your bill reduced by agreeing in
	advance to granting your local electric company the authority to turn off certain of your
	appliances.
	Oh, we have that out here too and they have little gizmos they attach to for air conditioning.
	Exactly.
	That's in the early stages of, that goes after the advisory.
	In order to bring demand down, the first line of response is for the electric companies
	to take advantage of those contractual grants.
	And start turning people's power, consumptive devices down.
	Right, now that of course is consensual.
	And they also have another, they have interrupted service, which is another concept.
	That's where, for the most part, industrial customers who have their own independent power
	generating equipment, you know, stand-alone generators and so forth, backup provisions,
	will then be shut off.
	They'll be cut off from the grid because they've agreed to allow this to happen knowing that
	they have capacity of their own, which will get them through for some period of time.
	So that would be the next step in the alert.
	They'll cut them off if it should be necessary to do so.
	If demand continues to rise, despite these efforts, is doing a whole lot these days.
	The next step would be to with or without warning.
	They do say that every effort would be made to provide advance warning.
	In fact, if we had the time, I'd like to tell you about a very infamous experience.
	Nevertheless, we do have the time, not right now, but you were going to say with or without warning, they would shut an area off.
	They would shut it off.
	It would be turned off.
	All right, Stuart, hold on.
	Stuart H. Rodman is my guest.
	Y2K, the topic.
	I've got to tell you, I've been racking my brain, hoping to find a way out. I've had enough of this continual rain.
	Change is a coming, no doubt.
	Y2K will help people.
	You know, stuff like storable food, radios, lights, that kind of thing.
	It just makes basic sense.
	It does.
	And so I hope people are paying, I really hope people are paying attention.
	I know my, for the most part, my listeners are.
	But I have this feeling, Stuart, that the majority of America has not yet quicked With what lies ahead or may lie ahead.
	I have that fear and I think that it's a good point to raise that right now as far as I'm concerned at the moment for two reasons.
	One is that I have a short tale to tell which I think may bring this point of the capacity alert problem to the forefront of reality.
	Go right ahead.
	Okay, I'll start with that.
	I had another piece of information that I wanted to pass along in reference to that too, which maybe later on in the show if we have a chance I'd like to bring up.
	People, as you say though, may be Sleeping through this and I don't mean the show but I mean
	through this whole y2k thing and people leaving that A lot of people sleep through my show
	Something you have to I hope that's not true, and I'm not usually one of them myself
	You you we have to we should take a moment to mention in fact what a tremendous public service
	You and your guests are provided for your listeners in the public well
	It's an alternative source of information that really isn't much elsewhere
	Yes, it's unique and it's regrettable.
	I heard you speaking earlier in the evening and I have to agree with you that it seems as if the mainstream media doesn't hear what they want to hear.
	They simply pretend it isn't being fed or worse.
	Yeah, that's correct.
	And so if people want to hear, get a balanced view of what's really going on, they need to attend to forums like the kind you provide for people.
	That's right.
	And I think you More than anybody else that I'm aware of really deserve special praise and recognition for the fact that you've been talking about this problem for months and years before you know the mainstream even began to whisper it.
	Yeah well they have begun to whisper it.
	That's another really interesting fact.
	I was the only one for a long time and then suddenly on the first day of 1999 Everybody ran stories.
	I mean, every network, CNN, everybody suddenly ran a Y2K story.
	It was amazing.
	Right.
	Well, we hope that it's not too little, too late.
	And I'd like to mention, too, as your listeners hear all this, that they may feel like I did as I started to learn about the potential gravity of what we're really up against.
	I for one, and I assume that there are other people who feel as I do, I can't sit back helpless and passive and just leave it up to others and hope that all of this is going to work out and that they're always working to make sure that the outcome for me is going to be the one that's right for my family and neighbors.
	That's pretty much why I started to pay attention and to become active.
	First, as I mentioned, gaining information about this problem and then trying to distribute that information to anybody.
	Alright, let's start with this.
	Since we're talking about the media, why is the public not aware of what you've told us tonight about the power company plans?
	Yeah, that's a tremendous puzzle to me.
	Now, I have seen references to it, and I don't know if it's appropriate to mention some of the commercial media outlets by name, but I have seen... I don't care.
	Okay, MSNBC, certainly at least on their website, has...
	Provided some coverage to the Senate hearings last summer, and they identified in their story NERC.
	I really like MSNBC, actually.
	Right.
	They've done an excellent job, I feel, compared to, you know, the other, many of the other major media.
	Unfortunately, they don't rise to the level of a Brokaw or a Jennings or whatever.
	Right.
	They have, yes, they just, that's true.
	I don't think that they're as widely read or viewed.
	I think another possible problem is that most of the people within the industry itself are people that probably could come forward and talk about their experiences, and they could come forward and say, hey, I'm a credible person.
	Listen to me.
	I work in the electric industry, and I want you to know these things.
	Well, I'll tell you what I can do.
	When I open lines here, I can open lines for people in the electric industry.
	That would be great.
	Well, I can do that.
	That would be great.
	I've seen a couple of reports, one released nationally, I wish I had it in front of me right now, I don't, which seems to be sort of a soft-pedaling, we've got it under control, power companies across America have it under control type report.
	Others are somewhat skeptical of similar reports, saying that, well, they think they have it under control, but they don't really know.
	Right.
	Let me, if I might ask, when this report that you're referring to, though, that says it's under control, is that something that you saw in the last 24 hours?
	Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is.
	That's a reference.
	To the auspicious event I referred to at the beginning of our discussion, where NERC released a second annual report to DOE.
	A 78-page report came out yesterday, the 11th, in which they basically stated that we have it under control.
	They continued at the same time, though, under close reading, to say exactly the same things that I've been talking about, which I attribute to them.
	Almost everything that I have said during the last 90 minutes or so comes directly from the pages of their own recent publications.
	And so you can see very easily that the concerns that I'm voicing sort of juxtaposed next to the idea that we have it under control seems to create a pretty clear disparity of views.
	Uh, what you have told us is worrisome enough.
	Gary North, when he was on, went well beyond that.
	And he said, and I can summarize it very quickly, that if everything goes wrong as he imagines it might, a worst case scenario type deal, the power could go down.
	And for all practical purposes, not come back up again at all.
	Now, he talks about lines of supply of fuel and that sort of thing.
	Correct.
	Those are legitimate considerations.
	They are?
	Well, when you talk about supply, if the power was down long enough, the reserves that, like for instance, the coal-burning generating facilities have could be theoretically exhausted.
	The entire grid was down because of, let's say, the common mode failure scenario that I spoke of earlier than in theory.
	At some point in time, the supplies could be used up before it's possible for the rest of the infrastructure, the truckers and the trains and so on and so forth, to resupply those kinds of facilities that need the coal and the other raw material.
	I personally I sincerely hope that we don't see that.
	And according to the recent publication that was released yesterday, NERC is trying to reassure us specifically, for reasons that we can be fairly specific about, that that is a scenario that is on the edge of the bell-shaped curve of likely events.
	In other words, it stands as a possibility that nobody can discount, and NERC does not discount any possibilities, but one which is relatively low in probability as we see it right now.
	That's good.
	That's not to say that there aren't going to be some potential hardships, and it's not to say that it can't happen that way.
	There could be common mode failures.
	And I believe, from reading the materials, what NERC is trying to do is say that they are going to, as we said earlier, find these parts to the greatest extent possible.
	They won't find all of them, but they'll be continuously, between now and June of 99, attempting to Reduce the likely suspects so that if there were to be a failure, let's say next Christmas, a serious failure in componentry, the place to look for those parts will be relatively limited in scope compared to the huge job that they would have if today was January 1st.
	Even though this report, on the face of it, is pretty worrisome, do you think that we're being told, this is a subjective opinion type question, do you think we're being told Uh, the real truth, the absolute truth about what they think may occur.
	You're going to have to read between the lines to do that.
	Well, you've done that.
	We haven't.
	So when you read between the lines, what do you think?
	They are concerned that some of these efforts are not on track.
	I think I said, I don't know if we did now, earlier in the show that, or you read in my letter on the air, that many of the companies have refused to participate in the plan.
	How many?
	Do you know?
	This is an interesting story.
	When the report was published on September 17th following the initial assessment, only 75% of all entities Reported so there are 200 bulk service providers and another 3,000 Entities of different kinds that contribute power different ways right 3,200.
	So if we're to go on their stated report 800 or so of those 3,200 refused to participate at all as of September 17th Now this is something they're proud of so I Because between September 17th and yesterday, through, they say, the process of peer pressure, and I submit, due to forums like the one that you provide, and due to the fact that there must be some people who are aware and actively, and when I say people, I mean in the public, who are actively concerned and are keeping somebody's feet to the fire, the percentage of participants has grown
	From between September 17th and yesterday, from 75% to 98%.
	I see.
	So that's a very positive sign.
	Okay.
	It doesn't say that we can eliminate from our Consciousness the possibility of common-mode failure part part of the common-mode failure is really scary But part of also what people are curious about and I am and it may be out of your area of expertise But some percentage of our electric power in the u.s.
	Comes from nuclear power plants, right?
	They would be more I would think computer-reliant Then the power companies, the more traditional ones you've discussed.
	Right.
	Would that be true?
	Well, you are moving a little bit out of my area of focus.
	I didn't choose when I got into this to examine the nuclear issue in the same way as I wanted to look generically at the issues confining the grid.
	I've heard figures.
	Uh, that maybe 10 or 14 percent of our power comes from nuclear reaction.
	Right, I have, yes, I have seen those figures also.
	And, uh, there is some reference to the readiness level of the nuclear, um, facilities in the NERC report.
	Although, one of the reasons that I have thus far avoided tackling this issue in a comprehensive way is because the nuclear utilities are under the uh... offices of a separate government agents correctness
	and so i do plan to look into that issue tend to come up with a uh...
	comprehensive uh... so i want you to because i've heard some unsettling
	things about it right on listen uh... we're coming toward the top of the
	hour there's a couple of things i want to do i want to ask you just one
	quick question what are you doing personally
	in other words what preparations are you making
	for stewart and stewart's family in tampa Okay, my concern is that there could be, and I don't know if we're going to have more time to talk about it, that we very well may look at the scenario of these isolated blackouts and brownouts.
	And in fact, we lived through one here in Florida, and I very much wanted to tell the story about that for people who think it can't happen here.
	Yes.
	Right.
	We may not have the time right now to do that, so just let me ask you, what are you doing personally?
	What are you doing?
	Okay, I think it's prudent.
	I personally intend to make sure that, at the very least, that we have provisions on hand, let's say on our property, to get us through what I believe, and this is my own opinion, I'm not... That's fine.
	...for maybe five days of hardship at a time.
	I say this because I believe a couple of things based on the research that I've done.
	One is that that's a long period of time to be in the dark, based on the way that I see this evolving.
	But also, I have chosen not to talk about this in great detail tonight, but I also have other lines of research which show that our state, and probably most of the states in the country, are planning to have emergency management crews on the street.
	After a relatively short period of time, if there should be some kind of a catastrophic breakdown.
	Well, I do know the Canadian government is making tremendous preparation.
	Correct.
	Our National Guard are beginning to make preparations in some states.
	Some of that information is beginning to surface.
	Correct.
	Yes, the situation in Canada, as I understand it, is that all leaves have been cancelled for military personnel in Canada.
	That's correct.
	For several months surrounding the rollover date.
	Correct.
	And more and more we're hearing stories like that.
	And I have, to be honest, He contacted directly the project coordinator for the state of Florida for Y2K Preparedness and had received significant materials from him about what the state of Florida is planning to do in coordination with FEMA.
	And what is that?
	Basically, as I said, I think that they feel that they are going to do everything that is possible within the joint resources of the Florida Emergency Management Agency and FEMA.
	To provide whatever resources are necessary in order to sustain life for people if there should be, you know, a breakdown of our ability to get drinking water due to the failure of electric cars.
	All right, Stuart.
	Hold on.
	Hold it right there.
	What I want to do is the following.
	I am going to begin taking calls when we come back.
	If you work for a power company, I want to hear from you.
	Now, you need not identify yourself nor the company you work for.
	I would just like to, uh, I think I would like to get a feel for whether people generally agree with what they've been hearing this morning, or whether they think it's all a bunch of hooey.
	And what better people to hear from than people that work in power plants.
	So again, all of my phone lines, please everybody, just hang up Hang up the phone unless you work for a power company.
	And if you do, I'll put you on the air anonymously.
	You need not even say where you're calling from and what company you work for.
	I don't want to know.
	And I would appreciate your honest assessment.
	I don't think that's ever been done on the air before.
	And it seems to me with Stuart Rodman here, it would be a good time to do it.
	Therefore, that's my plan.
	This next hour, if you work for a power company, call me now.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	Identify yourself, even by first name, location, or the company you work for.
	for watching.
	And so I want to advise the listening audience that, obviously, with anonymous sources, you'll have to use your own reasoning and judgment with regard to what you're about to hear.
	But all of my phone lines are now closed to everybody except power company employees.
	It should be interesting.
	Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
	Dated Washington, uh, Dateline Washington, January 6, 1999.
	FEMA officials are urging the emergency management, fire, and emergency services communities and the public to get ready now for Y2K.
	Quote.
	It is very important that counties, municipalities, school districts, and other organizations that have not yet begun to work on Y2K issues start now.
	End quote.
	FEMA Deputy Director Mike Walker said, while some failures will be minor annoyances, there may be some that have more serious consequences.
	The Y2K issue is worldwide and refers to electronic and computer system problems that may occur
	because of the inability of date-sensitive devices to compute 2000 when systems move
	from 1999 to the year 2000 or Y2K.
	Virtually all systems, listen now, that rely on computers or electronic devices that refer
	to date and time may be affected by Y2K in one way or another.
	This includes power, dispatch and communication systems, 911 systems, microcomputers and much
	It goes on from there.
	That is the government's own recently posted advice.
	And once again, here is Stuart H. Rodman.
	Stuart, we've got a lot of power company employees on the phone, but you wanted to relate a personal story?
	Yes, thank you.
	Yes, I do.
	I think that it has significance for all of us.
	In the, here in Florida, in the Tampa Bay area, which is where I'm at, in the Christmas holiday of 1989, we experienced an event that affected literally millions of us here, which I think is pretty much a precursor, in my view, of the kind of scenario that I've been describing.
	Maybe a mild form of it, but it was real, and it happened, and it did affect A lot of us at exactly the time of year that we're talking about.
	And what happened on Christmas Eve of that year, 1989, the temperature fell to 17 degrees Fahrenheit at Tampa International Airport, which still today stands as a record low.
	Oh, I remember, yes.
	Were you in the area at that time?
	No, I just remember the reports.
	That, as it turned out, you may well remember that anyway, because as an added bit of bad luck, that was part of a deep freeze that gripped virtually the entire nation during that time, which is in part why we had the problems that we did have.
	But at any rate, and probably because of the cold, not only here but around the country, The other areas of the country were using their generating capacity at near peak levels and prior to the time that we really hit the cold wave.
	We seem to be the last one.
	It seems the cold weather moves generally speaking from the north to the south.
	Sure.
	And so these people are already in the grips of it in the other parts of the nation.
	And so they were already making these transfers that we spoke about and pretty much had Used up the available capacity that otherwise would have been able to be used to help residents here in Tampa who are just not accustomed to that kind of weather.
	So we here in this area just decided, of course, as people would, to turn up the thermostats.
	And we were all shocked at what actually happened.
	What happened?
	Well, instead of actually getting more heat, we actually wound up getting less.
	We experienced the exact scenario that we spoke about earlier tonight when we discussed the practices involved in the generating capacity planning stages.
	We were unable, by planning, and I should probably sort out just a little bit if I can, I want to mention that if you think back a few moments ago we talked about how NERC and the electric power industry believes that their plan to ration power During the upcoming Christmas holidays, that's, you know, prior to the Millennium Day, is well-founded in part because statistics show, believe this or not, and I was surprised, frankly, statistics show that demand for power is low during the holiday period.
	And I guess this is attributed to the fact that industries, for the most part, are working at skeletal levels, or people are off.
	And actually, according to NERC, The statistics show that demand is almost at an annual low during Christmas and into New Year's.
	And so they're thinking, well, if we have this rationing plan, people probably will have a lower likelihood of needing to have power transferred into their municipalities because their demand is going to be low.
	So it's more likely that the local utilities will be able to meet that demand.
	Well, that's what they thought in 1989.
	And we live in Florida, which is a Relatively mild.
	Sure.
	Well, it hit 17 degrees and people reacted.
	And because of, at that time, some bad luck and maybe some complacency, the electric companies here at that time, at any rate, did not even have their normal capacity available.
	And they had two major power stations down, offline.
	by design for maintenance purposes because they figured this would be a period here where
	it's unlikely that it would be needed and any unlikely event that it would.
	They were ready for that kind of weather.
	They were ready.
	And because of the fact that the excess capacity around the nation was already accounted for
	by other cities that had made previous commitments to take it.
	You couldn't leave it unleft.
	So, on Christmas Eve, we were told, on maybe 15 minutes notice, that our power was going to be turned off, and it would be turned off deliberately for everybody, and it would be turned off for about two hours.
	Each time it would then again be turned on for about an hour.
	And it would then be turned off.
	Wow, this was for all of Tampa?
	Yes, and actually not only Tampa, the entirety of Hillsborough County, Pinellas County, and Pasco County.
	So we're talking about an area that affected several million people.
	Wow.
	And this went on and off, on and off, on and off.
	For how long?
	Through Christmas Eve all the way through Christmas Day, probably into the wee hours of the 26th.
	I remember very vividly, if I can just digress slightly here, we had plans like most people, I suppose, for Christmas Day.
	And one of our plans included making a turkey.
	And we were going to wake up early in the morning on Christmas Day.
	We already had this turkey.
	It was a small turkey.
	We thought maybe we'll put this in about 10 o'clock in the morning and that way we'll be able to have lunch early in the afternoon.
	Well, it was about 10 o'clock that night before our turkey was finally cooked.
	You were cooking her an hour at a time.
	Exactly.
	And I know you're a cat lover, so you might appreciate this.
	At 10 o'clock at night when we finally took the turkey out of the oven, we decided that
	after a rough sampling that probably the only person being in our home that would really
	appreciate it was the cat.
	So, that's what happened to our Christmas.
	I understand.
	That's an interesting story.
	First time caller on the line.
	You're on the air with Stuart Rodman.
	Hello.
	Are you a power company employee?
	Yes, sir.
	I work in sales.
	Actually, you mentioned Canada earlier.
	I work for a provincial power company.
	They're called Hydros up here.
	Okay, you need not identify them necessarily, but...
	No, I don't want to identify a particular one.
	Well, you just did.
	Every province are called Hydro.
	Oh, I see.
	Okay, what do I know about Canada?
	Okay, so you work in sales.
	What do you know?
	What can you tell us?
	Well, what we're being told in customer service seminars to tell people is that they might have intermittent periods
	where they won't have power.
	I guess it's called brownouts.
	When you have like a, sorry, brownouts.
	Sorry, I'm a little nervous doing this.
	I understand.
	What I'm hearing at work though, especially on the institutional side and industrial side,
	They're telling municipalities to start buying some industrial sized diesel powered generators.
	I don't know if you recall there was that great eastern freeze that happened in Ontario.
	I recall very well.
	You mean they're telling individual towns and municipalities buy generators?
	Yeah, because what's happened is some large municipalities, city-sized places like Toronto,
	Montreal, really haven't done much about compliance.
	And they control the local power companies.
	For instance, there's like a Toronto Hydro or a Regional Hydro, or Vancouver Hydro, and
	they buy it off the provincial power companies.
	And there hasn't been a lot of coordination in between, it seems.
	So I guess it's a, I don't know, it's an emergency measure that's only going to do this.
	But we're being told to, you know, tell people not to panic.
	It just might have intermittent losses of power.
	But from what I understand, it could resemble what happened in the Eastern Freeze, which happened for different reasons.
	But it lasted, in some cases, up to eight weeks.
	That's right.
	Not a lot of people know that.
	All right, I appreciate that input.
	So there's a man who's saying, look, the inside, the industry talk is that it could go for several weeks.
	That there could be, in Canada, for example, millions of people without power.
	And they know because they did, they went like seven or eight weeks without power in some places.
	So they're saying that could happen there.
	Interesting.
	Do you have much communication, Stuart, with the power company employees?
	Not as much as I would like.
	You know, and this is really important, because most of the things that we're hearing are, including the reports, of course, that are going to the Department of Energy, are being prepared by the management personnel in these electric companies.
	Understandably, they're the ones that have, you know, the bulk statistics and data.
	I think a lot of people that we're liable to hear from this morning are mid-level people or even line people.
	I very much want to hear from them.
	I believe that what we're really looking at here is a situation where over the period of several decades, we have moved rapidly in the electric power industry into automation.
	And we as the public encouraged us for obvious reasons of course
	by having automated black boxes instead of human technicians were the kind of money producing that
	power of course of course Profits are bigger.
	Are you a power company employee?
	I work for a solar electric power company.
	Oh, you do?
	Yes.
	A solar electric power company?
	Well, yes.
	We're actually thinking of a name change to sound more like a utility because of the deregulation.
	People are more open to... Oh, that's very interesting.
	I found it curious that around early October of last year we started to get a lot of inquiries.
	I tend to chat with people.
	They don't just call and order a solar system because people aren't familiar with them and they want to know how they work.
	These are big solar systems, right?
	Usually we don't sell one large enough to run a whole house.
	They would run maybe a third of a home's load.
	Some people go all out and get the large system.
	Yeah, that's still pretty good size.
	Oh yes, I mean, compared to what a system would... Yes, it is a good sized system, yes.
	Often like 800 to 1200 watts capacity.
	Yeah, that's pretty good size.
	And I had a chance to look over some paperwork while I was on hold and Actually, 8 out of 22 of our last sales have been either to Florida Power & Light executives or to the Keys Power Cooperative.
	No kidding?
	One of them was a lineman, not executive, or their immediate family.
	Wait a minute now, you're telling me that Florida Power Company executives are buying solar power?
	Yes, in fact, one of them is, I actually think, a board member.
	These are people that, you know, publicly they're kind of friendly.
	They have solar hot water systems on their roof.
	Sure.
	They've never been big advocates of solar power.
	They're very quiet about it.
	I just thought it was interesting.
	Oh, is it?
	Well, how comforting, Stuart.
	And that's down there in Florida.
	South Florida, yes.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	I have very little doubt.
	Across the country, including people in Florida, that we will and we should prepare for the likelihood of a scenario, at the very least, if there are no Y2K related failures, if there are none, we should be preparing ourselves for some period of disruption.
	The clear implication of what this man has said to us is that People who are really in the know, executives who run power companies, are ordering solar power for their own homes.
	Now, that sort of carries a message with it, if it's true.
	Very definitely.
	I can see the invoices.
	I appreciate your call, sir.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	That's a little worrisome.
	Yes.
	That's a little worrisome.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Stuart H. Rodman and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Howdy.
	Howdy.
	Art, I just wanted to say I love your show.
	Thank you.
	I've been listening for a while.
	This is my first call.
	I wondered if I could make a comment and then ask a couple questions.
	Well, you may.
	Are you a power company employee?
	I am.
	Okay.
	As far as the comment goes, What I'd like to say is that I am aware that at least some major power companies are seeking legal opinions as to the extent of their liability due to a Y2K power outage.
	Uh-huh.
	Uh-huh.
	Yes, I can imagine they would be doing that.
	Very interesting.
	So, they're going to their attorneys and they're saying, look, what is our exposure You know, if something happens.
	That's exactly right.
	There's a number of considerations there.
	One being time.
	Two days versus two weeks.
	Another, for example, being third party liability.
	As we've heard tonight, a lot of these companies are connected to the grid and it might be a third party company that has a Y2K problem that causes The power outage or it might be another third party issue for example is something like a hospital which I would suppose and I'm sure most do have alternate power supplies
	Um, what do those power supplies cover?
	How long do they last?
	Should that hospital have realized the problem and prepared for it in advance?
	And this also would play into other large industries.
	Um, another aspect is everyday people who may have a power outage and if it goes for a long enough period of time have the impetus to file a lawsuit.
	Thank you very much.
	That is debt on the money.
	Stuart, I hadn't even thought about that part of it.
	I think when Gary North was on once, he said this is going to be a field day for the lawyers.
	Right.
	And I'm sure he's correct.
	Yes, I saw some estimates by MSNBC when they were covering the Senate hearings with Senators Bennett and Dodd last summer.
	And MSNBC was estimating based on testimony that The cost of litigation, potentially, at that time, if intervention was not undertaken, could exceed one trillion dollars.
	One trillion dollars.
	One trillion dollars.
	Alright, you've got a minimal website up, and I should tell the audience that we've got a link to it if you want to read more about this.
	Stuart Rodman's website is available by going to my website, www.artbell.com.
	Scroll down to the name Stuart H. Rodman, click on it, and you will go to his website.
	Also, by the way, don't forget, take a look at Arts Hole.
	That's right, Arts Hole.
	It's a new photograph I put on the website as of tonight.
	There is no explanation to go with it.
	That will be forthcoming, eventually.
	Anything like that?
	Well, my best advice right now for people that would like to contact me directly or if they would like to contribute some other ideas or news is to visit the website that you have linked to your site.
	There is an email link there.
	Okay, so they can send you email?
	Right.
	They may notice on that site, which I do intend to update periodically and add additional links to, we're using this day as an opportunity to launch Operation NERC Watch.
	Operation NERC Watch.
	And there's a link to that on my website.
	And basically the idea there is not to look over anybody's shoulder, but I'm hoping that People who are listening to the show and others may want to contribute information from their own local communities to a central source like Operation Nerdwatch where we can then on the web make available news as it breaks from isolated areas around the country perhaps where otherwise these people would not have a central place to... So kind of giving us all an overview of what's occurring?
	Correct, exactly.
	All right, makes sense to me.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Stuart Rodman and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	You are a power company employee, sir?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I was talking to you about the old Cobalt language that computer systems of the older model computers had.
	Yes.
	For the software where they, you know, had the two digits.
	Yes.
	You know, for saving RAM space is what they used that for.
	Right.
	Computer systems that I work with, the control systems, they've been converted over.
	That doesn't mean that there's not a problem in the system because there's still a lot of equipment out there that is not Y2K compliant.
	so you have a complication of things where some of your systems are not ready and you're
	going to have weather and demand that are going to impact the power and that's what
	we've been hearing is that's why we're talking about in our particular system for controlling
	people's power in other words rationing it out to them.
	Doing exactly what this NERCA report suggests will be done.
	Correct.
	Alright.
	It'll be necessary.
	I understand and I appreciate the heads up.
	So there's a fellow who says that's exactly what they're planning.
	Obviously someone signed on to this NERC plan.
	Yes, and people who want to know more about the NERC plan can reach NERC on the web at www.nerc.com.
	Where they can go to my website, yeah, and there is a link.
	There's a link there?
	There, correct.
	Good.
	First time caller on the line, you're on there with Stuart Rodman and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Hi Stuart.
	Hello.
	Hi Art.
	Hi.
	I have three things that I thought as a network distribution engineer I could cover with you.
	One would be distribution.
	The other would be the origination of where the power sources come.
	In the Northwest anyway, in TVA, we get power from hydroelectric plants.
	In the Northwest, we no longer have any nuclear power production.
	And the third thing would be the actual people in our facilities anyway who are in the know, who have been buying generators.
	Well, it's rather interesting.
	I live in a rural community outside the municipality that I work in and I have a shallow well and a septic tank, but even to run a one and a half horse motor I have to have a 6kW generator.
	I see a lot of people buying 3,000 watt or 4,000 watt at the hardware stores and they're even on back order now.
	Really?
	It's becoming quite a problem.
	Really?
	And so you're telling me you work for a power company and you're saying the same thing these other callers have said.
	All six people in our office have all bought six to twelve KW generators for our homes.
	Great!
	Now I want to talk to you a little bit about a lot of people don't understand on the hydro thing where these water sheds are actually controlled from. They are actually
	controlled by computer on flow and level from a site in Arlington, Virginia. And so here is
	another potential source. If we have extensive rains, we might not be able to even
	control the dams without going to a manual mode. Wow. Now as far as distribution, let me
	explain.
	Since 1974, all of the line load balancing has been done by computers.
	To actually do that by hand anymore would mean that we would have to have a person who, and a lot of these people who even know how to do that no longer work for the utilities.
	So, we're looking at a serious problem.
	And I am amazed that people don't address it.
	Also, I'd encourage some other upper management people to perhaps tell you what we're actually facing as far as our risk management liability insurance rates.
	We're paying as much as $177,000 a month now for our insurance.
	Wow!
	And it's going to get worse.
	Well, I don't know how to thank you.
	I appreciate your assessment.
	If I may, I'd like to ask the gentleman a question.
	Fire away!
	In the work that he's familiar with in the power plants, is he also aware of the black boxes?
	Yes.
	I'm calling them the digital, the DCS equipment and the other automated systems that are referred to.
	Right.
	Do you disagree that these particular systems are problematic?
	They are.
	We have somewhere between 30 and 50 billion PLCs in the world.
	One-tenth of those are date-related.
	Of that number, somewhere between 3 and 5% of those we know will fail.
	But you also have to understand that power companies communicate via the transmission lines from site to site, station to station.
	So, you're telling me that if the power were to go down, as in a massive area failure, the companies could no longer communicate?
	That's right.
	Now a lot of the facilities we have for controlling we use microwave and satellite linkages and if those go down, which is also a possibility, basically in the trade shows I've been to, I hate to tell you this, but it sticks it once it fails because we can't find where all these boxes are.
	So, great.
	And that doesn't encourage you any, but distribution is our biggest problem.
	I also would encourage you to maybe have people take a look at some of the other sites around on the web.
	There was a memo, it's a protocol from Great Britain that leaked out from the United Nations protocol sessions they've had about government confiscation of all manufacturing of power and distribution of power.
	And you can quite readily see that has a lot of us concerned in the private sector.
	You bet.
	Thank you very, very much for your call.
	Wow.
	Stuart, do you get this kind of information normally or do people generally not want to talk?
	I'm fortunate to get somebody first hand that has the kind of information that this gentleman has been sharing.
	In general, I would say that fortunately you granted this person anonymity.
	I believe that most of the people that are employed within the power companies right
	now are, would probably be ill-advised to go public with their knowledge.
	I believe that most of the communication that's coming out of the power companies is coming
	through NERC.
	Well, the hell with ill-advised.
	I want to know what's really going on.
	I don't want it soft-pedaled.
	I want to really know what's going on.
	And if it takes going to power company employees, I wouldn't advise them to keep their mouths
	I'd advise them to tell what they know if it's the truth.
	Absolutely.
	And it's a great thing that we're able to start hearing from the people tonight as we are.
	And it's interesting that last caller that you were just speaking with, I have to say that the things that he was saying is very closely corroborated in the information that has been published.
	And I think he's just right on with the things that he's been saying.
	All right.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Stuart H. Rodman and Art Bell.
	Good morning.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	How you doing?
	I'm okay.
	I love your show.
	Thank you.
	Are you a power company employee?
	Yes, sir, I am.
	I'm a construction foreman.
	All right.
	I do power lines as well as maintenance.
	Yes, sir.
	And I'll just tell you one quick thing I picked up out of a meeting down in Phoenix was that one of our operations people said in the event of a big Y2K problem, One of their plans, excuse me I'm a little nervous.
	That's alright.
	One of their plans was to go through and physically remove the umbilical cord from the 12 kV breakers.
	As far as distribution, so they were not connected to any computers at all.
	And manually close them.
	Now the last call I just talked about distribution.
	Yes.
	Being a big problem, that is your distribution, your 12 kV.
	That's right.
	I think I've got a 12 kV line here, as a matter of fact.
	Pretty standard.
	So, in other words, the plan would be to dispatch people at your level to go cut these off?
	Exactly.
	Remove any computer controls on them at all.
	That's just a comment I got out of a meeting I went to.
	It wasn't a Y2K meeting.
	It was a regular A refresher training type of a... Is there a lot of talk within the industry at your level about this Y2K thing?
	Yes, at my level, on the construction level.
	On the computer level, when you talk to our computer people, they poo-poo it, they soft it.
	You don't get much out of them.
	So they think it's baloney?
	Either that, or they've been told not to say anything.
	Appreciate your call, sir.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Thank you, and take care.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Stuart Rodman and Art Bell.
	Hello.
	Good morning, Art.
	Good morning, sir.
	Yes, I was listening to your radio shows on the way home.
	I was leaving work.
	And yes, I do work for a utility, and I work at a nuclear power station.
	Oh, okay.
	Now, a lot of what you're talking about, our company started, well, our power station started two and a half years ago, looking at this YK2000 problem.
	Right.
	And of course, our nuclear station is an older station.
	So, a lot of the equipment in there, you know, required that, you know, investigation, you know, because they're just about everything.
	You got some kind of computer chip in it.
	Right.
	So now, here in the last year and a half, they've been changing a lot of the older equipment to upgrading the electronics in it to make it comply with what, you know, what we've been talking, what y'all been talking about.
	Now, as a company, as a whole, React, our company actually sends out a newsletter Uh, comes out maybe once every two or three months on what the, uh, what the situation is with YK2000 as far as the company's concerned.
	Yes, sir.
	And, uh, right now, uh, pretty much, you know, we've seen some advancements in our, from the point of, uh, from the nuclear stations to where we've been getting rid of all these, what they call, we call them dump terminals or mainframes.
	Right.
	And, uh, upgrading to the new piece, going to the PC-based, uh, operation.
	Our communication system has also been upgraded to the point where our company itself, we actually have our own communication system throughout the state to bypass the local phone companies in order to ensure that we can get through when the times are necessary.
	Now as far as the company goes, as far as why, they just opened a new distribution center in our capital city, in our state.
	and which is now Y2000 compliant.
	So this, they control, from there they can control everything in the western part or mid part of the state
	all the way down to the seacoast.
	And then plus too they have another center located in town across the bay here from where I live
	that also has just come online with all new equipment.
	Well, are you at all shocked by hearing from the other power company employees with respect to what they've heard
	and the fact that their management's all going out and buying generators and stuff?
	Well, I'll be honest with you.
	I own a generator.
	You do too?
	But not for Y2000 here in the lab.
	Well, we just went through a... Yeah, but my question went to specifically the fact that power company execs are going out and buying generators.
	That's a little... Well, if you notice, you've been talking to people about it in Florida.
	You've been talking to people about it up in the...
	In the northern part of the country.
	Right.
	And you're basically talking a lot of areas where a lot of utilities have gone to deregulation.
	Oh, that's a very good point, yeah.
	Right.
	Now, we're in the process here, but we don't see, we won't be in full deregulation until probably year 2005.
	But the thing is, a lot of these utilities, because of this, you have the smaller utilities who are not going to be able to compete out there in the world of big business have more or less
	been absorbed by the larger utilities.
	Yep.
	And then plus you go up north and you look up there, I mean you've got a lot of your
	nuclear stations, you know. People are not, you know, they're closed. They're shutting them down
	or either they're out because the NRC took them out of service.
	I've heard that.
	I've heard that there are quite a number that are going to have to shut down.
	And speaking of shutting down, Stuart, it really has been a pleasure having you on the air with us.
	And we'll have you back.
	I think this is one of those things where during the year, as the year goes on, we're going to begin gathering information.
	It's like tonight, the calls you just heard.
	You're going to get a gazillion emails like that as a result of the broadcast, and you're going to collect a lot more information.
	And I'm sorry that we have to be collecting information on our own, and we can't necessarily depend on what we hear from others.
	But I'm all for doing that and getting out whatever the truth really is.
	Well, Art, I certainly want to thank you very much for having me on the show tonight.
	And as I said at the beginning, I think that you provide a unique and very important forum for ideas that otherwise, and information which just doesn't
	seem to otherwise be getting out as quickly as it ought to. And I also would like to thank
	you for the opportunity to hear from the callers that we've been hearing from over the last few
	minutes.
	A little disconcerting, huh?
	Yes.
	You know, when you start hearing about industry executives buying their own home generating equipment, that definitely sends out a message.
	It certainly does.
	All right, everybody.
	Stuart H. Rodman's website is linked to ours.
	www.rpel.com.
	Just go down and click on his name.
	You'll go over to his website if you wish to send him email.
	Anonymously, you may do that.
	Stuart, thanks a million, and good night.
	Well, my pleasure.
	Thanks again.
	All right.
	In some markets, we'll be back with more.
	stay right where you are or as the old saying goes and don't touch that dial
	there they were and I'll stick she by the chocolate frosting
	To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first, dial your access number to the USA.
	Then, 800-893-0903.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Art at 702-727-1222.
	If you're a first-time caller, call Artists 702-727-1222.
	From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	West of the Rockies, in Colorado.
	Good morning.
	We're about to go into Open Lines again.
	Call Art at 1-800-618-8255 or call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
	This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nine.
	It certainly is and I'm Art Bell. Good morning.
	We're about to go into open lines again.
	I try to keep a certain component of open lines in every program.
	Mostly the first and final hours but occasionally an entire program.
	So actually there's going to be more of that.
	I'm kind of in an open line mood.
	But I do have some interesting guests scheduled.
	Tomorrow night, Matthew Alper, he's one of my favorites.
	I find what he has to say to be so mentally challenging, so challenging to traditional belief systems, that it's just, it's a real pleasure, and the way he presents his material is really special, and tomorrow night he's got a lot of new material, new angles.
	He wrote a book called The God Part of the Brain.
	And it's a real challenging book.
	Believe me.
	Then, next week, I've already booked the Chief of the entire Lakota Nation.
	And that's a really rare one.
	So you're definitely going to want to be on hand for that.
	And otherwise, we sort of just let it come as it comes.
	Now, I think the last several hours have been And particularly, the last hour particularly, it's really unnerving hearing from power company employees that their bosses are buying generators, you know?
	That they believe that there's real problems ahead.
	Very unnerving, and I imagine you'll hear probably more of that this hour, but we are now going into open lines, and you're welcome to react to what you've heard.
	Maybe you think it's all a bunch of baloney.
	Maybe you don't.
	Maybe you're preparing.
	Maybe you're not.
	Be kind of fun to hear from the general public and that's what's coming up next.
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	To set the clock, press 1 Honey, there's no...
	Okay, to the phones we go.
	And on the international line, you are on the air.
	Cheerio.
	Yeah, all right.
	Hello.
	Hello, sir.
	This is Kevin from TJPK, London country.
	Hello there.
	I've got a couple of comments for you.
	First, I love your show.
	Thank you.
	I've got to blame you for keeping me awake at night.
	Sorry.
	That's okay.
	The guest that you had on tonight about the power grid.
	Yes.
	A very interesting topic.
	You brought in some very good points.
	One of the things that was mentioned, there was some reference made to Last winter we had that major ice storm down in Ottawa in
	Quebec and Montreal especially was a good example of what can actually happen.
	Just going on further than that, the Y2K problem in general as to what you have on your show,
	I kind of think that in a way it is a bit of a, not as much as a cover up, but as a
	bit of a screen for something that seems to be a lot bigger.
	The reason why I say that, I find it rather amazing that power companies, banks, government, have all been alerted to this problem for at least the last ten years.
	At the least.
	And they seem to be the last ones to have done anything about it.
	Well, the story that I've heard, and that's all I can really pass along is what I've heard, is that people who work in companies and program computers have known, of course, about the Y2K bug for a long time.
	But it is reasonable to assume what I've heard, and it is as follows, and that is that, look, if you were Let's say in your 15th or 18th year or 20th year as a power company employee or an employee that was working with computer programming in a large corporation.
	As a mid-level employee, the last thing you would do is go to your boss and tell your boss that there is a problem that is so large That it's going to take most of the profits of the next several quarters that the company might report to fix it.
	You're not likely going to go tell your boss that, because... Because that's the last thing they want to hear, and you might well be out of a job, so you keep your mouth shut, and that's what I'm told has occurred.
	On the first time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello there.
	Going once, going twice.
	Three times gone.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air, hi.
	Hello?
	Yes, Mr. Bell.
	That's me.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	I have done that.
	Good.
	I'd just like to say I'm not an electrical employee, but my father is.
	I'm Sean from Duluth, Minnesota.
	Yes, sir.
	And he has bought himself a 5,000-watt generator.
	Uh-huh.
	And he's been working for the power company for about 23 years.
	And he also has about four 55-gallon drums of gasoline that he has planned to store himself up for this next coming millennium.
	I just wanted to add that to your callers that have been adding in for the last few hours here.
	How do you feel when you listen to power company employees calling up as we had last hour?
	Well, it's rather discerning.
	I really don't think there's going to be much of a problem myself.
	I think it's mostly going to be, the problem is going to be known for the hysteria that it creates, but I have to look at what my father has done, and I listen to my father, he's a wise man, and it concerns me quite a bit.
	What can I do?
	I know I plan on spending next year, I'm 30 years old, I plan on spending next year up there with him.
	And spend the New Year's with my family.
	And we'll see what happens as it passes.
	Yeah, indeed.
	We'll all see what happens at once, I guess.
	You know what I'm going to do?
	I'm going to continue to try to bring you an array of guests on Y2K.
	And on all sides of it.
	Not just those who think something is, you know, something evil this way comes, but people on all sides of the question.
	We've had quite a few, and I'm going to get quite a few more.
	And I'm open to having just about anybody on.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is Dave in West Des Moines.
	Hello, Dave.
	Hi, how are you doing?
	Fine.
	You know, they're preparing for Y2K, and I've got the Beijing radio.
	And then I've been looking into the food companies.
	Right.
	And I can't afford, you know, what they're costing, so I had another suggestion.
	You know, my wife is from the Philippines also.
	Oh, no kidding?
	Yeah.
	And she shops at the Oriental markets, the food stores.
	Yep.
	And you can buy food in bulk there.
	That's right.
	Like 50-pound bags.
	That's right.
	Great way to go.
	I just wanted to point that out to everybody.
	No, it's a good tip.
	It's really a good tip.
	Yep.
	And I appreciate it.
	He is exactly right.
	You have to be careful, of course, what you store and how you store it because one of the worst things that can happen, obviously, in any emergency situation is that you would have some stored food and you would eat it and get sick and the last thing you want to do is get sick.
	During an otherwise serious emergency that wouldn't allow people to get to you to help.
	So you have to be careful, but his advice is good and sound.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	This is Barry from Windsor.
	Hi, Barry.
	And I'm echoing something that a lot of people say.
	My cousin works for PG&E here in California.
	Yes.
	And he's told me they've got over 200 people working on Y2K full-time.
	Really?
	They're lost.
	They're not going to get it done in time.
	He's bought a generator.
	He's got a 30-day supply of fuel.
	He's taking and liquidating a lot of his assets until he has cash money.
	He doesn't trust the banks.
	My cousin's a person that's got both feet firmly on the ground and doesn't react to things like this.
	You know, that weren't serious unless they are serious.
	And he's scared.
	And it's kind of disheartening and frightening as you say.
	Yeah, it really is.
	I'm hearing it again and again and again and again.
	And it's very disconcerting.
	So he's otherwise a really solid person.
	Totally solid.
	I listen to you all the time.
	He's never heard of you.
	He's never heard of Gary North.
	When I asked him about Y2K, he had a funny look on his face.
	And it is automatic depositing.
	It's a check to the bank.
	He won't do that for the next year.
	And he's keeping all the cash on hand.
	He can.
	And he's got food stored.
	And like I said, 30 days supply of fuel for a generator.
	Have you seen the surveys they've been running on CNN?
	No, I haven't.
	Okay, well, let me pass this on to you and everybody else.
	And what I'm telling you is close to right, if not correct.
	CNN did a survey that they've been Airing over the last several days in which 53% of the American people, a slight majority, say they will not go to the bank and withdraw extra money.
	And I'm pretty sure I'm correct when I say 47% of the people will go and get extra money.
	And I'm not sure what that means in terms of what the banks face, but if 47% of the American people go to the bank to get cash, extra money, To have on hand for whatever may or may not happen, 47%, what will that do?
	I suppose you could try and come up with some sort of average amount that people would withdraw.
	And then try and project whether the banks actually could handle that or not.
	But I think that's a worrisome figure.
	If that survey is accurate, I think 47% is a pretty worrisome figure.
	First time caller line, you're on the air, hi.
	Hello, going once, going twice.
	Raw and wild card line, you're on the air, hi.
	Good morning.
	Oh, I see.
	I'm sorry.
	I didn't push the button.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Art.
	This is Larry in Fort Lauderdale.
	How are you doing?
	Just fine, Larry.
	I wanted to add a comment about YTK.
	Sure.
	I believe that all of our preparations and all of the problems that people are preparing for are real, and I think that we need to do that.
	but when they mention that gigantic machinery such as a generator or a crane that would
	lift food from a boat, let's say, to a truck or operate, like I said, elevators or anything
	big, and if it's dependent upon a thumbnail-sized microchip that is hard-programmed, I believe
	that yes, it could shut us down, but I don't believe that any red-blooded American who
	is intuitive and who is a technocrat, as I believe a lot of your listeners are, would
	sit by and see this equipment totally disabled without doing something as simple as a jumper
	wire.
	Now, I've seen after Hurricane Andrew in South Florida, a lot of equipment, especially traffic
	signal devices, would not operate because they couldn't talk to their central computer,
	but they could work on their own.
	And it took them a while to realize this, but that's when the emergency resources of People's imaginations start kicking in, and they start saying, look, this motor wants to work, and this microchip's not going to let it.
	So what they do is, just like I'm sure you would... No, I exactly understand what you're saying, and people will become innovative and fix things themselves.
	Some of that absolutely is going to go on, but I think the operative question is, for the average citizen, what should they prepare for?
	Sort of a short period of disruption and problems, or...
	They should prepare exactly the way everybody's telling us to prepare.
	Maybe not going too crazy, but the water, the food, the cash, the self-sufficiency.
	But there's this notion that this gigantic, like the power company is just, they're going to sit there.
	They're not going to sit there.
	If they have a generator that's turning but they have a switch that's open, you know as well as I do, they'll find a way to put that together and there's 10,000 more people on and we'll learn one hell of a lesson from all this.
	But I don't think that we're going to be down for like months and months and starving.
	I hope that's exactly correct.
	I mean, just think of yourself being the technical knowledge you know from being a licensed ham.
	Sure.
	And there's a lot of us out here, I think, that would kick in.
	And we may learn something very interesting from it.
	But in no way should we ignore the warnings.
	Appreciate your call, sir.
	Thank you.
	So people really do have a, from what I can tell, a pretty serious concern.
	And apparently with pretty good cause.
	You know, I think he's right, though.
	And people will do what they can.
	And he's right about the fixes that can be implemented.
	Uh, there are workarounds and that kind of thing.
	I just wonder how many of them we're going to have to be doing.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Good morning!
	Are you there?
	Going once, twice, gone.
	International Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art Bell.
	It's Ross Dauer from the Australian UFO hotline.
	And how are you?
	I am quite well.
	Hold on, let me get rid of the echo here.
	Um, how's everything down under?
	Oh, a lot of static.
	I can hear you fine now.
	Good.
	A number of things to report.
	A couple of things.
	First of all, the Australian Government doesn't seem to be doing very much about the Y2K situation.
	However, people in Australia have noted with interest that the British Government is mobilising their forces in December for some strange reason, and that again in the United States and also Canada.
	Major exercises in the United States, I understand, are going to be tested in May this year for a massive mobilization for a Y2K trial.
	That is right.
	And so then why do you think Australia is more or less doing nothing?
	Oh, we can chuck boomerangs at each other and get the message across.
	I know, but at the government level, Okay, being serious?
	Yeah.
	I think that you'll find that we've only got a population of about 20 million people.
	About half that of Canada.
	Right, well 18 million actually, and if you look at the power grid system and the infrastructure system in this country, it wouldn't take a lot of people to resurrect the system that went down, especially that we are somewhat advanced in many areas, but also they have manual overrides and they still have the old system in place, so that they can quickly re-establish the infrastructure, that's the word.
	Um, and so there we have an interesting scenario for Australia.
	Uh, so it appears that the Australian government is not really concerned about it at all.
	Uh, do you think they are too, uh, lazy fair about the whole thing?
	Well, it's either they're thick or, uh, or they're outright stupid.
	Uh, of course, Australia has suffered in certain portions of Australia gigantic long-term power outages.
	Wasn't there a big problem in Perth?
	Yes, there has been power outages there, but Australians are used to power outages.
	We're a fairly versatile sort of population.
	We come from a descendancy from hard times.
	Our forefathers came to this country and we had to learn to make our own things.
	So we're much more apt at making and applying our minds and hands to getting on with life.
	than say a more advanced civilization or Whatever such as United States who is more reliant upon the
	infrastructure Australians really aren't that reliant. We're not that centralized
	So we you probably have a completely different mindset here And I think you'll probably find a lot of people would clap
	their hands in great laughter if the system went down really
	Yes, really in great laughter. I listen. I appreciate your report
	But there won't be a lot of people laughing here if the system goes down as you put it
	All things are possible.
	In other words, we have millions and millions and millions of people who live in cities.
	And they depend on the light going on when the switch is turned.
	They depend on water coming out of the tap when they wish it to.
	They depend on a lot of things that the infrastructure provides happening, and if they don't happen, there's not a hell of a lot of reserve for a lot of people in the cities.
	I mean, if you live on the 20th floor of an apartment building, and you go over and turn on the tap and no water comes out, you're pretty much in trouble right away.
	Particularly if you have not planned.
	If something's coming along in the wet and the power's not there, you're in trouble.
	Pretty much right away.
	I do certainly see what you're saying about Australia, though, and Australians in general being more prepared for adversity.
	And of course, there were.
	There were thousands and even millions of people without power.
	Hundreds of thousands, certainly, in Australia for a protracted period of time.
	And they did okay.
	I'm Art Bell.
	This is Coast to Coast, and...
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	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	Now again, here's Art.
	Here I am, and here's an interesting piece of email.
	Hey, Art.
	You used to be a dispatcher for a police department.
	That's true.
	Did you notice that many cops had little faith in their own department to stop criminals and took measures to protect themselves and their families?
	They knew better.
	The utility workers are no different.
	I'm afraid that, uh, that, that, that really is true.
	And, uh, most of the cops that I knew, and I knew a lot of them, They all had their own protective measures.
	I mean, besides the fact that a cop carries a gun anyway.
	With respect to crime, they took their own measures, as you should.
	And I've said this on the air a million times.
	Particularly if you live in an outlying area, the police may arrive in time, if you don't protect yourself, to draw a nice little chalk line around your body.
	You've seen those in movies, right?
	Well, that doesn't do you a hell of a lot of good.
	And so, you really, um, the police do all they can, and believe me, they do a lot.
	But, you are your own best first line of defense.
	I'm a firm believer in that.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Yes.
	Welcome.
	Is this Art Bell?
	Yes, it is.
	Hi, this is Terri, and I'm calling from Kansas City.
	Hi, Terri.
	I've got a question.
	Sure.
	And really I guess I'm calling for information more than anything else.
	Getting the generator is one thing and I think it's great because I'm preparing for this.
	I think it's a real, real, could be a real disaster if we don't.
	But even if we have generators and can get a hold of them, how can we stabilize the fuel or keep enough fuel Well, there's hardly any fuel, particularly gasoline, that's easy to store or safe to store.
	It's very hard to store, you know.
	You've got to have underground tanks and a lot of things.
	Propane is one possibility.
	It has its dangers.
	It's what I use.
	Um, so I, I don't, I don't know what to tell you.
	The storage of fuel is problematic and if you do it, you've got to do it right.
	Right.
	Well, this, this, because I live in a small town outside of Kansas City.
	Sure.
	And I've looked at different, different types of units, but, um, of course what I get, I don't want to blow up my house doing it.
	You know, that doesn't, that's not an option at this point.
	And so I was just trying to find out if somebody else had maybe an idea how to stabilize the fuel.
	Um, because you give enough quantity to keep you going for 30 or 60 days, and you've got a lot of fuel.
	Um, yeah.
	I'm not qualified to give you advice, but your plea will bring some response, I guarantee, ma'am.
	Thank you.
	I'm really not qualified.
	In my case, I use propane.
	I've got a propane tank.
	And they're problematic also.
	I mean, any kind of fuel is volatile.
	Even oil.
	And there are dangers to just about anything you do.
	Gasoline is particularly problematic to store.
	Other than that, I don't know a whole lot.
	My choice was to use propane, which was the fuel of choice here anyway.
	Wild card line or on the air?
	Hi.
	Hi.
	How are you?
	I'm doing pretty good.
	How are you doing?
	Alright.
	Who am I speaking to?
	Art Bell.
	I'm the only one here.
	This is Art?
	Yep.
	Wow.
	So you guys are on a delay right now, huh?
	Six seconds, yes.
	Okay.
	I don't screen calls.
	I just pick them up.
	Okay.
	So what I was hearing on the radio currently when I turned it down was previous show.
	Am I on the air right now?
	Yes, you are.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	My name's Troy.
	I'm from Reno.
	Okay.
	You know, my question for you is, with this Y2K thing happening, Are we talking about a total economic shutdown?
	As far as all the businesses and everything would go?
	A worst case scenario, I guess?
	Again, I'm not qualified.
	I'm not qualified to answer that.
	Oh, okay.
	I don't know.
	I've been having various guests on.
	Right, I've been listening to that.
	Yeah, and some of them are more dire than others.
	I guess my question for you, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you try to predict the future.
	I know you don't do that.
	My question for you is, Wouldn't it be better if we do say we do have a shutdown?
	What good would money, as far as the dollar, do?
	I mean, there's no system to support it.
	Should we store something?
	Well, over the long haul, I mean, if everything goes down and stays down, no good at all.
	Right.
	The only thing that would work then would be barter.
	But I think the A reasonably safe assumption is that there's going to be a period of disruption.
	Right.
	And one of the things that might get disrupted would be the banking system.
	Right.
	And so I guess it's pretty much of a no-brainer.
	Right.
	To steer clear of that.
	Well, I mean to have some money around.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Another question for you is on I just started listening to your show again probably about a month ago.
	My mother is an avid listener.
	She's listening right now.
	As a matter of fact, she is on the computer.
	Anyhow, my other question for you is do you have a list on your website then that I can
	print up some of the items, maybe by manufacturer names of the items that would store over a
	long period of time better than others?
	Thank you.
	Well, we have some sponsors that sell that kind of equipment and product, you know, storable food, radios that carry their own power.
	Yeah, I've heard about that.
	Flashlights that work 20 times longer than others, that sort of thing.
	But no official list.
	We'll be getting one, I'm sure.
	And we're going to just keep exploring.
	I'm going to continue to explore these areas until I figure out how real.
	And it's going to kind of unfold as the year goes on.
	I frankly don't know.
	Right.
	It'll unfold.
	We'll find out.
	OK.
	I wish I had the answers.
	Yeah, me too.
	In short, you know, short of the answers, my only advice is to do at least minimal preparation.
	Right.
	Do you think it's, you know, I started gathering around, I have friends that I've hunted in the area with.
	I grew up on a ranch out in the Palomino Valley area and I have friends that now we're getting together and actually, you know, we're We're mobilizing.
	I guess we don't really bring weapons because we all know that we have weapons and we're not weirdos.
	So those are like the last case, worst case scenario if we had to pull our weapons out.
	We're more mobilizing to start to go back to our roots where we used to, for fun, have these field trainings that I guess you could call them.
	I guess the Cub Scouts do it too.
	We did it as kids because there were no Cub Scouts out in the sticks.
	But as far as snaring animals, tracking, just different survival techniques.
	There's about 11 of us now.
	I'm just curious if you've had anybody else call that said that they might be making, I hate to call it a unit because the word militia nowadays Is a bad buzzword, because you gotta be some weirdo to be in a militia now, and I'm not in a militia, but I guess you could call it... Let me tell you what I think, alright?
	I have plenty of protection in terms of weapons.
	We still have the Second Amendment in this country, and you're allowed to have guns, and I have guns.
	They're the last thing that you would ever want to have to use.
	I mean the last thing.
	I think...
	The best thing that everybody can do locally, if you're aware that there is going to be a problem, one way to keep from having to use the last line of defense is to go and begin making people in your community aware that there may be a problem and that they, people shouldn't panic, but they should quietly prepare for a period of disruption and That's your best defense.
	In other words, if your neighbors left, right, forward, rear, and around you are prepared, you're less likely to have to deal with the neighbor who wants what you have.
	Does that make sense?
	I hope so.
	Most of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Oh, thank you.
	I'm, uh, Charleston Kawai, and I have the open initiative in your basic question, and it's how much, how, how would it be possible to make you a toy that would, uh, What I've said is, the people who claim to have free power, free energy, I request of them to produce, at the very least, a toy that demonstrates over-unity, which means more power is produced to propel the toy than is inputted to the toy.
	So this thing would... My chip would start in a vessel of tepid oil, and it would make electricity.
	But it would cost $20,000 to use dumb money to make it.
	If you put smart money with scientists, the nanochip fabricators, they can make it for cheaper than that, but they hate the idea.
	Because it violates the laws of science.
	So I'm in a trap there.
	Well, see, that's where I have a problem.
	You say, well, we can do it.
	But doing it violates the laws of physics.
	Well, I have yet to see anybody successfully violate the laws of physics.
	I'm sorry, I haven't seen it.
	I've heard a lot of claims.
	I've heard a lot of talk.
	And I'm not saying that it ain't so.
	I'm just saying that I have yet to see it demonstrated to me, and when I do, I'll be here yelling and screaming to you about, my God, look at this, over unity, free energy, whatever it is.
	I'll be screaming it from the rooftops, but I haven't seen it yet.
	So, first time color line, you're on the air, hi.
	Mr. Arbel, I just turned my radio down.
	Good for you.
	Calling you from KENI up in Anchorage.
	KENI Anchorage, yes sir.
	For the lady with the fuel stabilization problem.
	Yes.
	There are plenty of products out there that are additives.
	You add it to it.
	There are certain blends depending on what time you want.
	But like if you're going to store a boat or a motorcycle.
	Right.
	You either have to drain it and flush it or put in stabilizer.
	They sell it at almost any Napa store.
	But for long-term storage, you know, like you want to get a 55-gallon drum, you're going to have to dump in a couple gallons of this stuff.
	And that makes it non-volatile?
	It's stabilized.
	You know, if you leave gasoline laying around, it turns gooey.
	I mean, you couldn't, you can't force it through a carburetor.
	There's no way.
	Yeah.
	And most people don't realize, like we're up here in Anchorage, I'm just going to buy like a 10 kW generator.
	The only thing you really got to run is your refrigeration and your heating.
	Lights?
	Hey, who doesn't have a Bay Jam light?
	I mean, they're fools if they don't.
	Yeah, I know.
	I mean, you know, just let's be real.
	Um, gone it.
	No, I forgot the second one.
	Number two.
	Just real quick.
	This is kind of sort of the same subject tonight, but a couple of times, I think one of them was a rebroadcast.
	People mentioned that they, uh, they're walking down the street and the street lights turn off.
	Oh, yes.
	I've heard that.
	I know what causes that.
	What?
	It's Harvey.
	Harvey?
	Harvey.
	Who's Harvey?
	Well, think about it.
	Jimmy Stewart and Harvey?
	Oh, that Harvey.
	I took you a second, didn't I?
	Hey, I love your show.
	Whoa, the last question.
	This is the most important thing.
	Okay.
	When is this new codec with Intel, and when are you going to get hooked up on that?
	I'm a web designer.
	I'm in here working now, building pages, because the only time I can design.
	Okay, the... I'm hot on this.
	I hear you.
	The new codec... I'm on your website right now.
	The new codec is already there.
	It's already done.
	That part's done.
	Um, Intel and Broadcast.com have made their deal with me for a 90 day test.
	And we've ordered, uh, I should say we, I believe, I believe Broadcast.com ordered a frame rate line or frame line, whatever they call it.
	I know what it, yeah.
	And that takes anywhere between 30 and 45 days to be installed.
	So.
	You think it may be 60 days it'll be up and running?
	I'm hoping for less.
	I'm hoping for a month.
	Okay, an associated question.
	Is this like a real audio?
	You were talking about downloading a plug-in, real audio video?
	There's going to be something different.
	The new G2.
	Yeah, I got it.
	That's the one that you need.
	I think I'm the only webmaster up here that does streaming audio and video.
	And we've linked, I've linked out at several of my sites.
	Oh, there are several systems now that do that, but what I'm telling you... Up here in Alaska, I mean, there's a lot of web designers that do it.
	No, no, I understand.
	What I'm saying is, what you're going to be seeing is a new Kodak that, you know, allows a much higher frame rate to go out to many... It's a stronger compression algorithm as it will be.
	Yes, sir.
	Doggone it, you know what that's going to do to the internet?
	Though it's really kind of sad in a way.
	We're going to find out.
	If we move the last barrier to total commercialization of the internet, you're going to have TV commercials online.
	Well, that's what I'm hoping for.
	Look, think of the millions of channels that would be available once there's enough bandwidth.
	Well, yeah.
	I look at it this way.
	We're just happy that one of the big phone companies up here just got a new fiber optics cable in between Seattle and Anchorage.
	That increases our bandwidth.
	We have the same amount of bandwidth as the U.S.
	to Great Britain or the U.S.
	to Japan.
	It should be hooked up, like, within the next 30 days.
	Oh, that's excellent.
	Because we host all our stuff in the lower 48 because of the bottlenecks going in and out of Alaska.
	I try to listen to you, and sometimes it'll work great at night, but during the day, we're I know.
	It's a, you know, I don't care how much bandwidth you got over 48, we got nothing up here, and we're so lonely without it.
	Well, it's coming, so hang in.
	You know, one of the reasons I work nights is not just so I can get work done, it's so I can listen to your program, man.
	I like your show.
	I mean, it's just, some of it's too outrageous to believe, but this stuff like Y2K?
	Yes.
	I work with computers all day long, and most people just don't realize How much is going to be affected?
	I mean, they can't go to a restaurant and run their credit card.
	I know.
	Because their cash machines aren't going to work.
	These POS, point-of-sale systems, they ain't going to work.
	I know.
	They ain't even started talking about thinking of fixing the programming on those little things.
	I know.
	Much less a bank or electric utility or telecommunications.
	I know.
	I really don't understand.
	I've written a couple of magazine articles for it up here.
	I'm very concerned about my own job, actually.
	No, you will be there because people will string mile-long antennas to get you.
	Well, they may need mile-long antennas to get me, thank you.
	You've got to remember that my being here depends on a lot of things.
	Phone lines incoming.
	Outgoing.
	Satellite links.
	One, two, three satellite links.
	It depends on power.
	It depends on radio stations being able to continue to broadcast.
	That's an awful lot.
	That's an awful lot of electronics that has to work right to get from here to there.
	Now, I am making some contingency plans, which I'm not going to discuss right now.
	Sorry, I'm sorry I teased you with that.
	There are some things that I'm beginning to think about and do to try and keep the lines of communications open if something does occur, but that's for another day.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	All right, good morning again.
	Good morning.
	This is Richard out in San Diego.
	Regarding that fact that I've seen present this afternoon about O.B.J.
	and Harry Truman and Jerry Ford and so forth.
	Yes.
	I didn't point out on there, obviously because of the facts and limitations, was so many other guys have been presidents that were masons.
	And you get like Teddy Roosevelt who was third degree.
	And Thomas Jefferson and George Washington who was also third degree.
	So just kind of the point going that you don't have to be really high up to be a high political leader and be in the masons.
	But what I wanted to do Well, it could be part of the rationale behind kind of the enmity that the Masons have had with the Catholic Church at times.
	If you'd like to go into that for a couple minutes.
	All right, that's about all I'll have.
	Hold on just one moment.
	I've got something I must do.
	The best advertising is word of mouth.
	So, please allow me to introduce the words of Gilbert of Oak Harbor, Washington.
	You do have a couple of minutes.
	That's about it.
	What do you have to say?
	Are you familiar with the Knights Templar?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Have you had anyone, obviously I don't catch all your shows, but have you had someone that's maybe put together some of the connection between the Masons and the Knights Templar?
	Yes.
	Okay, so you know about how the Knights Templar were basically sold out by the King of France in the early 1300s?
	Right, I've heard the whole story.
	Right.
	It's, you know, obviously there's something that's impossible to prove since this happened in the early 1300s, but it's my contention that there's a fair amount of crossover between the Knights Templar and the early Masons.
	Uh, reasonable to presume, I think, yes.
	And at that point, the orders to excommunicate the Knights Templar and to seize their assets, property, etc., etc., was done by Pope Clement V, who was basically a puppet pope set up by Philip IV of France, who'd been one of his cardinals, at which point the papacy was moved from Rome to Ebony on France.
	Sure, I've heard all this.
	Right.
	So, a lot of it has to do with, um, I think part of the original enmity was that this was basically orchestrated by some less than noble figures in the Catholic Church and the noble houses of Europe.
	It's my contention, personal belief, that some of the early Masons were, like I said, very much involved with the Knights Templar and that it's kind of a way of staying underground per se they had to pretty much do some
	of the things they did as far as being a little secret.
	So that myth has been perpetuated from that time?
	Correct.
	And also part of it is one of the reasons that Catholics have a bit of a problem with
	being in the fraternity is that obviously to those outside the fraternity you cannot
	disclose such items as what goes on in the large room, means of recognition and so forth.
	And for a good Catholic person, you're not supposed to have any type of things that you cannot convey with your father confessor.
	Gotcha.
	Alright, thank you very much for the call.
	Well, that may be true.
	Then again, there may be a larger secret that we don't know about.
	Nobody knows about until you get to be a 33rd.
	I don't know.
	What I do know is we're out of time for this night.
	Tomorrow night, Matthew Alper.
	You're going to enjoy Matthew Alper, or not, but you will not ignore him.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	Good night!
	Well, the High Desert is great!

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