If the worst predictions of Y2K had been fulfilled, the technological apocalypse would have arrived at midnight on January 1, 2000, plunging the world into a new dark era.
The world banking system would have collapsed, medical devices would have stopped working, planes would have fallen from the sky, nuclear reactors would have collapsed and egg timers would have turned into small bombs, all due to a fatal flaw in calendar design. human technologies based around the world.
This flaw was the so-called “millennium error”, a poorly thought-out design error that made all clocks unable to differentiate between 2000 and 1900, because they only fixed the last two digits of the clock. ‘year. The change from 1999 to 2000 would have been excessive for these clocks and the catastrophe would have destroyed human society as we know it.
If only we had seen the new millennium coming …
… Unless we did. We were prepared for this, and now Y2K is largely remembered as a silly case of massive hysteria 20 years ago, especially if you weren’t one of the people who helped prevent it.
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However, the scene of the final trial of the aforementioned trial cast a dark shadow over the New Year’s Eve celebrations of December 31, 1999. Many lawmakers, scientists, and everyday citizens were legitimately concerned that there could be technological hiccups (or worse) with the change in the millennium. . And they spent a lot of time and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to avoid it.
The fear
The so-called Y2K scare arose during the last years of the previous century, when technology experts and scientists began to point out that many modern digital calendars relied too heavily on double-digit abbreviations for the year, such as 99. They were concerned that the systems were unprepared to handle change into a new millennium, because they could read the abbreviated year from ’00 to 1900.
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Would computers know the difference between 1900 and 2000? Would they keep working or go wrong? Would a silly mistake with the numbers cause failed problems at airports, nuclear facilities and hospitals?
These were the main fears surrounding the Y2K error and people took them very seriously.
The power grid was turned on in the last days of Y2K testing at the Niagara Mohawk Power Company control facility in Buffalo, New York, on December 28, 1999.
Joe Traver / Link Agency through Getty Images
The global response of $ 600 million
World leaders took a seriously deadly approach to Y2K and spent about $ 600 billion to prepare for and prevent any problems.
At the head of the prosecution was John Koskinen, the tsar chosen for all Y2K preparations by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Koskinen oversaw a $ 100 billion effort to prevent Y2K disasters in the United States and chaired a $ 50 million war room tasked with monitoring all problems related to the millennium bugs on New Year’s Eve. ‘Year and New Year’s Day.
John Koskinen, of the President’s Council on Y2K Conversion, spoke to the media during a press conference in Washington, DC, on February 29, 2000.
Michael Smith / Getty Images
“Our biggest concern is that we may have a whole host of otherwise manageable events, but, especially internationally, there may be several,” Koskinen said on December 5, 1999, according to the Associated Press. .
“We may be watching and responding to more difficulties than you would normally face. And I think that’s probably our worst case scenario. “
Koskinen’s office helped coordinate the first Y2K exercises across the U.S. to ensure things went smoothly on December 31st.
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson holds a 9/9/99 poster with Bonneville Power Administration administrator Judi Johansen as the clocks struck midnight during a Y2K exercise at the BPA control center of Vancouver, Washington, Wednesday, September 8, 1999.
Photo AP / Don Ryan
Many countries, including Canada, created their own command centers, working groups, and public information lines to deal with Y2K. The United Nations also helped distribute funds to developing countries for preparations and supported a global coordination effort.
Captain Dave Wickware trains Gilles Levasseur in the reporting section of the Canada Year 2000 Monitoring and Coordination Center in Ottawa, Wednesday, November 24, 1999.
Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press
In fact, China declared war on Y2K’s problems and promised that organizations would be “criminally responsible” if they allowed the millennium-related mistakes to occur on January 1st.
The preparations
Bottled water became almost impossible to find on New Year’s Eve 1999, as worried consumers withdrew supplies. Just in case.
Some people took the threat more seriously than others, but the massive madness unleashed a major rush on non-perishable food, toilet paper, gas and camping supplies. Many store shelves were bare to begin the second millennium.
Brad Morningstar, deputy director of Canadian Tire in Richmond, BC, shows empty shelves in the aisle of camping goods after there was no hasty suspicion about returns of purchased goods due to fears of Y2K in January 2000.
BAYNE STANLEY / MACLEANS THROUGH THE CANADIAN PRESS
People prepared in the same way they would for a major storm, and in the end skipped a few trips to the grocery store in 2000.
Many companies also earned revenue using Y2K and Millennium Madness to boost their products.
The product capture of the Millennium / Y2K items was photographed on December 7, 1999 in New York City.
Yvonne Hemsey / Getty Images
The new millennium
Spoiler: Everyone survived Y2K.
In fact, there were very few failures worldwide, Y2K boss John Koskinen told AP on January 1, 2000.
“We literally can’t find any relevant Y2K-related incidents as the world has entered the year 2000,” he said at the time.
The few problems that occurred were largely minor, such as poorly printed receipts and dates from funny-looking websites that said “19100.”
The change was not much of an event, prompting some strange comments from people calling for doom in the early 2000s.
“I’m totally stunned,” said Dennis Grabow, an investment banker who had predicted a financial overthrow of Y2K for two years before the big day. Grabow had been advising billion-dollar companies on how to invest before a potential Y2K-related financial crisis.
“Those of us who have followed this issue are very surprised that we have this perfect transition,” he told AP in January 2000. “It’s phenomenal.”
Many non-experts laughed at the hype after the new year, and one woman summed it all up in a comment in 2000.
“It’s annoying,” said the woman, who had stocked up on food, water and gas.
Former government officials could argue that there were many things behind the scenes during the pre-2000 period, and that their efforts protected the everyday person from harm.
“The Y2K crisis did not happen precisely because people began to prepare for it more than a decade in advance. And the general public who were busy stocking up on supplies and stuff just didn’t feel like the programmers were working, ”Paul Saffo, a futurist and adjunct professor at Stanford University, told Time magazine recently.
In retrospect, the real winners of Y2K could have been those who ignored the hysteria and simply partyed like it was in 1999.
–With files from The Associated Press
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