[1][2][3] The virus infects classic Macintosh computers, and the intention was that on 2 March 1988 all infected computers would show the message "RICHARD BRANDOW, publisher of MacMag, and its entire staff would like to take this opportunity to convey their UNIVERSAL MESSAGE OF PEACE to all Macintosh users around the world", and the virus would then delete itself.

However a bug in the virus caused infected Mac II computers to undergo system crashes before this date.

Another bug, which affected very few users, caused files other than the original virus to be deleted during the termination stage.

It also caused a great deal of anxiety among users who found that their computers were infected with an unwanted program the nature of which was unknown.

When confronted by users who had been adversely affected by the virus he used to reply with an argument about the level of handgun ownership in the United States.