> There is a limit inherent in this thinking. A fatalist doesn't worry about *anything*, because everything is pre-determinted. A free-will'er, of which I assume you are one (being Christian) worries about things "in his control" because he has the ability to change or influence those things. But where do you draw the line? I can't directly go over and change the firmware on all those decrepit ex-Soviet missiles. But I *can* write or call my Congressman and implore him to bring it up for discussion in the US Congress, which might in turn vote to send money to the former Soviet states in order to make this change.

Good point. Guess I never thought of that. But I guess that's not the point.

> So when do I stop worrying? I suppose it's a personal decision. I, for one, am not losing any sleep over this not because I think that all the missiles will be made Y2k compliant, but because I can't think of any mechanism that would actually cause the missiles to launch just because the date was messed up. I was mostly just being funny.

I think I heard something a couple of years ago about how in Moscow C&C, if a certain sequence isn't performed on a computer, the missiles automatically launch (in case all the command personnel were killed off somehow.) I do not have the faintest clue as to it's validity, but I guess it would be bad if the system thought it had been 99 years since the timer had been reset. Once again, that's probably speculation on somebody's part, and I may have heard this before the fall of the USSR (or maybe it was something that surfaced as a result. I just have no idea.) I also doubt that such a system would still be active.

Anyway, that's another side issue to the question of where you draw the line. And I agree with what you said about it being a personal decision.