Some bad news for those in the Y2K bunker: No returns on flashlights and solar radios at Major Surplus & Survival in Gardena, Calif.
But despite a lack of any immediate calamity stemming from the rollover to 2000, residents of a refuge in the hills of Floyd County, Va., say it's too early to say the danger has passed."I'll wait three months before I think the coast is clear," said Ken Griffith, who established the Rivendell refuge in case of a Y2K-related breakdown in infrastructure.
Griffith, a 28-year-old Virginia Tech graduate and former computer programmer, said damage from computers unable to recognize 2000, reading it instead as 1900, could come over time.
"Y2K may not be so much acute as it is chronic," said Meril Stanton, who moved to Rivendell with her husband, Doug, and six children from Houston last spring.
Rivendell residents -- about 22 families live on the former farm -- fear a domino effect in which small, scattered computer glitches compound one another and send destructive ripples through the economy.
In Crossville, Tenn., Tim Wilson said the December issue of his twice-monthly Y2K News Magazine was its last, but that he thinks fallout from the Y2K glitch is far from over.
"I never said the world would end or that everything would break down that night," Wilson said of the rollover. "The problem was not that night and weekend but in the next few weeks and months."
Wilson's magazine had been telling readers how to stock up on supplies and food for what it described as the coming crisis.
Converting such supplies back to cash might be a problem for some stockpilers in southern California.
Fred Morris, manager at Major Surplus & Survival in Gardena, said Sunday that customers cannot return any Y2K-related items, including lanterns, solar radios, flashlights and water purifiers.
"If we had people bringing all the stuff back, stores could go out of business," he said. "We discussed this with our customers before their purchase."