A FATAL DATE

The second millennium's last year, 2000, is around the corner. This rather «round-numbered» year (three zeros!) has become the source of mass expectations of something unusual, some catastrophic upheavals, social, cosmic or even eschatological. A little more time, a few more months, and something horrible is going to happen. The devout Christians think this will be The Day of the Last Judgment. Meanwhile, the New Testament says nobody can predict the time of the Judgment, no matter what kind of year comes up. «Well,» say the learned-looking laymen, «there will be a collision with a comet far larger than the Tunguska meteorite.» To which astronomers only shrug their shoulders in contempt, for they have calculated everything very accurately. More moderate people expect «just» a global social collapse. This is more credible, especially taking into account nothing but our own country. However, great crises are prone to occur always and irrespective of the year's numeric shape.

Many prophets are loath to remember that the year 2000 is not the first round-numbered year in our history. A doomsday was expected back in 1000: this was also associated with a «zero-type» system of chronology from the genesis (according to the Bible), where there are, of course, round-numbered dates. So one of the latter made our medieval ancestors get ready for doomsday. The world, however, is still here.

Why is the myth about the end of the world so widespread? One of the reasons must be the idea of Western civilization as a single axis around which global life pivots. Meanwhile, Christians only make up a third (or even a bit less) of the Earth's population. Other nations use religious calendars of their own, in no way connected with the birth of Jesus. Those calendars, such as Buddhist and Hindu, do not portend any round-figured date in the nearest future. For instance, Muslims are only going to see in 1421 next year. Why should they worry?

Contrary to logic and history, our civilized society is full of medieval passions whirling around the figure 2000. Rife is the problem of tax codes containing the figure 666. (Orthodox believers gave all those interested an occasion to finagle over such codes). Prophets and soothsayers, very often in black cassocks, promise sinners the approaching Gehenna, call to reject the codes and trident-bearing passports. «There will be no pension? No social security? Does it really matter on the eve of Doomsday?» Bookshelves are stacked with numerous apocalyptic ravings written both picturesquely and primitively. And how many articles on this subject are editorial offices snowed under with! They are often written by our academics.

However, the year 2000 may really witness a global-scale disaster costing the world millions and millions of dollars. The question is about the computer systems developed 30- 40 years ago, when the year 2000 seemed so remote and specialists decided to enter their current years in computers not in four figures but in the last two (e.g., instead of 1999, the computer identifies 99). This was a very short-sighted approach. For when clocks strike the beginning of 2000, all the world's computers will stop recording a normal succession of time: the year 99 will be followed by the year 2000. This will in fact break the logic of planning, statistics, transportation schedules and industrial flow-charts, financial accounting, etc., and thus bring along a genuine «doomsday.» But scientists of many countries have been slaving over this bug for several years and, as it has become known recently, found a way to rescue us.

The idea of the Last Judgment attracts not only the common people but also modern Ukrainian philosophers and theologians who have come up with some interesting concepts. For example, Professor Krymsky affirms wittingly that the Last Judgment has, in fact, already begun and is punishing people for the evil they constantly cause each other and nature. We never ponder over this and are only adding fuel to the fire. Metropolitan Volodymyr Sabodan has expressed his idea that The Day of the Last Judgment is not pre-determined in advance forever but is closely linked with the number of sins in the world. When evil gathers strength, the last days come on rapidly. But if people recover their wits, the terrible date shifts a little. This is very convincing for me and even inspires hope, for something still depends on ourselves.