The Year 2000 problem, colloquially dubbed "Y2K."
TL;DR version, as best as I can summarize: Complex circuitry and processors have an internal clock, which keeps track of date and time. Storage space was at a premium in the earlier days of the computer age, and programmers strove to save space wherever they could. They usually took the shortcut of abbreviating the "year" space from four digits to two. For example, 9/10/2018 would be rendered as 9/10/18. This was all well and good for the twenty or so years that we could count on the computer to assume "1980."
However, someone realized that most hardware and software would not recognize "2000," and accordingly go back to "1900," thus causing errors and glitches on a sliding scale, from mere annoyances to catastrophic systems failures.
I concluded the "Millennium Bug Signal Intrusion" arc of Halloween 2014 with Orson Welles' closing words from his radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds: "This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that 'The War of The Worlds' has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo!" I chose that very carefully, because, like The War of the Worlds, the hysteria surrounding Y2K far eclipsed the problem itself.
To that end, I'm going to split this article into two parts, the first dealing with the factual problem; the second dealing with the problem as it existed in the public consciousness.
1. JUST THE FACTS
84% believe that it will trigger at least a 20%+ drop in the stock market -over 1800 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, given its current levels- and some business bankruptcies.
Two-thirds (66%) believe that it will cause at least an economic slowdown, a rise in unemployment, and some isolated social incidents.
Over half (56%) believe that it will at the least result in a mild recession, isolated infrastructure and supply problems, and some runs on banks.
One-third (34%) believe that it will at the least result in a strong recession, local social disruptions, and many business bankruptcies.
One-fourth (26%) believe that in additional to all the above, the Y2K problem will at least result in political crises within the United States, regional supply and infrastructure disruptions, and regional social disruptions.
One-tenth (10%) believe at least that the United States will suffer another depression (or worse), that financial markets will collapse, that the national infrastructure will be crippled, and that martial law will be declared in some local areas. (http://www.co-intelligence.org/y2k_isitreal.html)
As you can see, the Year 2000 problem sat in a sliding scale. Generally, it proved to be a whole lot of nothing precisely because it spurred programmers to prevent it from getting to the stage of total catastrophe. There were a few things here and there, as the Nostalgia Nerd points out, but nothing like what was hyped on TV and in print.
2. OH NOES! OH NOES!
I remember Y2K: The Movie, and am in the middle of tracking down a copy of it for review (to little luck, sadly). One thing I can tell you for sure is that there were a lot of emergency-preparation books, pamphlets, and videos, all of which were fairly common-sense guides for what to do in case of, say, hurricanes, mass blackouts, and other phenomena, but with a "Y2K" wrapper and perhaps some new text to boost sales. There were so many Y2K-specific books put out that they're still common about 20 years on, their price tags so far removed from their original $19.99 price tags*.
In my search for information, I came across a video on Digg.com, in which computer-management consultant Peter de Jager is quoted: "Business would come to a halt," with "billions of dollars lost." Understandable. But from there, the public imagination ran wild, and the 'Bug spun out into airplanes falling from the sky, nuclear power stations spontaneously going into meltdown, pacemakers going awry,
The biggest purveyor of mass panic was Alex Jones, who started out on Austin public-access TV and then found a national platform on major news networks with the coming of the new millennium. On 12/31/99, he described on his radio show scenes of chaos vivid enough to top even The War of the Worlds broadcast. (I'm not a fan of his, and would rather not give him a direct platform. If you know where to look, the 1999 broadcast is readily available.) The show may have had one or two grains of truth, such as a nearby gas station running out of food, gas, and water, but I'd wager that it was because demand exceeded supply, as people rushed to get said supplies just in case. Choice line: "It's absolutely out of control. It's pandemic, ladies and gentlemen." Erm....I think he meant "pandemonium" there, 'cause "pandemic" usually refers to the spread of some terrible disease. Or did he? The word choice might well have been intentional, so as to add one more bad thing on top of everything else.
More discerning listeners might notice frequent use of "I have a good source," which means he was making it up from one kernel of actual information. Basic Journalism 101--if you have a good source, NAME IT. Don't say "Oh, I have a good source," 'cause that's as bad as saying "A friend of a friend told me" or those two dreaded words, "Some say..." and "Experts say..." What experts? Who says?
He described all these apocalyptic scenes with the fervor of a zealot...and then, on 1/1/2000, we woke up in the morning, many of us rather badly hung over from all the champagne and free-flowing booze from the night before. Surprisingly, the world around us was still very much intact if tilted at a 45-degree angle.
Looking back, Y2K was only one of many other concerns. There was a lot of religious end-of-the-world prophecy, which media such as End of Days and Dracula 2000 marketed on (as did the Millennium series, if to a lesser extent). Nostradamus, millenarianism, and our own technological hubris snowballed into a veritable whirlwind of terror. In my case, all of that plus the usual seventh-grade bullshit, which sort of turned the event into "the forgotten New Year's Eve." I seriously can't remember a thing about it, save for brief flashes of Blackadder: Back and Forth on Channel 11 and of being relieved that the world did not, in fact, end at the stroke of midnight.
Happy Halloween, dear readers!
(*See what I did there? I put "there, they're, and their" into one complete sentence! Boo-yah!)
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