14. Profiteers and pundits fed on the Y2K fears
As the last half of 1999 began, talking heads on television, seers and prophets, fundamentalists, survivalists (later called preppers), and others spread the alarm that the end was nigh. There were rumors of nationwide failures of point of sale systems and inventory controls. Grocery stores would run out of food, and the first product of American hoarding in times of crisis, toilet paper. Guns and ammunition were sold briskly, as people prepared to protect what they had from predicted rampaging mobs. The widespread belief that the air traffic control system would immediately fail, causing havoc in the skies, adversely affected ticket sales.
Televangelists tied the millennium and the Y2K problem to the end of the world, as they exhorted their flocks to send money while they still could. Others took a less mercenary view, though they too announced the end of the world was nigh. People feared carnage on the streets and highways, believing traffic control systems would fail. Even as more and more critical entities reported their systems tested as Y2K compliant, panic among many spread. Some preppers claimed that prison and jail security systems would fail, releasing thousands of violent convicts to the streets, as police communication and control systems simultaneously went haywire. Others scheduled “end of the world” parties for New Year’s Eve, 1999.