The Computer Bug That Almost Ended The World | The Y2k Debacle

The year 2000 was going to be very special, for a multitude of reasons. We were entering into a new millennium, a new era, a year that only existed in Science-Fiction stories. This was by no means a conventional New Year. It was finally the future, but maybe not the future everyone was anticipating. Millions of people around the world spent their last moments in the 1900s staring at the clock, but not for the reason that you think. Instead of celebrating, they were terrified, because as soon as the clock struck midnight, the world was going to end, and within the blink of an eye, the year 2000 would instead be a future now past.
Word had been going around about this upcoming event for years now. The public even coined a name for this phenomenon: Y2K, and as the late 1990s creeped up and the year 2000 approached, people crowded up stores across the world and lined up to buy food, water, weapons, and supplies to create survival kits, because on this date, according to many credible sources, computers would malfunction, prison gates would open, dams would flood, banks would lose all their money, nuclear missiles would launch by themselves. They did this because they were told the end was year, but why? What exactly caused such a strange worldwide panic like this one, to arise? If the year 2000 was so dangerous, how are we still here?
To fully understand the curious story behind Y2K and how it was able to cause such the level of panic that it did, we first need to discuss what exactly all of it means. To be clear, world ending predictions were by no means a new thing, but no this was something different. Y2K wasn’t just some Armageddon story made up by conspiracy theorists, this was actually something that might have validity to it, and many people at the time took note of this, and prepared for the worst. And that’s exactly what made Y2K such a crazy story. In fact, there were three big things going on in the 20th century, and especially the 90s, that were responsible for the Y2K scare: the exponential growth of technology, the ambiguity and mystique that was present behind the brand new personal computer, and the overwhelming access of information that the world saw at the end of the century. And these factors also tie into the origins of the Y2K story; so what exactly was the story, how did Y2K work? The answer to this question actually goes farther back than you might think. The first known mention of Y2K as a legitimate issue goes back to 1958, discovered by an IBM employee: Bob Bemer, who was also one of the most renowned computer scientists of the 20th century. He proposed his idea during a time where computers were still brand new, a lavish and costly byproduct of World War II, but with time, these machines could become incredibly sophisticated and part of our everyday lives, and he recognized this. In 1958, memory was extremely expensive, and naturally to save money while maximizing efficiency, they removed what they thought was redundant information. And that’s what Y2K was centered on, it all had to do with how numbers were presented on a clock; that’s where the term Y2K comes from, abbreviating “Year 2000.” You see, computers at the time only took the last two digits of a year into account when calculating the date, having the “1-9” at the beginning of each set of digits just used up more memory than was worth. The last two digits were more than fine. It is not like people were looking at these computers to see what year it was anyway, it was used for logging and record keeping, and the last two digits were plenty for that. There were even some computers that only used one digit to represent the year: so instead of 1978 you just had 8. I mean everyone knew it was still the 20th century…but what would happen as we approached the 21st century? Well naturally, the year 2000 would have to be represented as 00, but how would a computer that only stores the last two digits of a year react to that? Would it read as 100, or would it backtrack and read it as 0, and slowly tick back up as the year’s progress? Is the year 2001, or 1901?

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[nationsquid]

Michael Bolton? Wow! Is that your real name?

[livingoutloudly]

I was 10 during y2k. I remember my dad telling us kids to be realistic because of course things weren't going to end, so not everyone was panicking

[marisolramirez]

I was born in 1999 so I never seen the whole thing unfold, but it's always fascinating hearing about this. Reminds a bit of the 2012 panic in a way.

[NotEmilio]

As someone who never witnessed Y2K i kinda feel bad for the people afterwards like the turn of a millennium is a pretty big event and not celebrating it because of fear is kinda sad

[DEADisBEAUTIFUL]

My family has thrown New Year’s Eve parties for many, many years- my grandparents started throwing them and eventually my parents took over as the New Year’s party had gotten too big for my grandparents to be able to host it in their home. I have an incredibly large family…so large that when we held our casual yearly Christmas family reunion party, we had to rent the two largest “event rooms” in the community center. Many of the attendees at the Christmas party would find themselves having fun, and so they then turned around and attended the New Year’s gathering as well. The turn of the year- 1999 slipping away and the enigmatic 2000 taking its place- seemed to bring in a great deal more people than was typical.

I was 15 in 1999, and I remember the panic so many people were falling victim to quite vividly. Well, my parents didn’t think much of the whole situation and went about setting everything up for the party as per usual.

We ended up with a house full of people dancing- or at least undulating to whatever music my father was blaring from the speakers that hung from the ceiling in nearly every room in our house and drinking whatever kind of beer, cocktail, or shot was handed to them. Basically, it was a huge crowd of drunk “country fried” people who were just a bit more susceptible to believing certain things than they would’ve had they been sober.

Once midnight was peeking around the corner, my father put on a CD that was loud and had a beat that would get people dancing. Then he, two of my uncles, a cousin of mine, and I went into the walk-in closet in my bedroom.

There in the wall of my closet was the breaker box…and in that box was the breaker which would “kill” the power to the entire house. We opened the small door to the breaker box, and we stood there gathered around that large breaker while the music continued to drone on in the background. We froze in place, we listened intently, and we waited for the music to pause. That pause would unknowingly signal to the nerved up group of us that were jammed into my closet that it was time to set the “master plan” in motion. It would also let the sizable cluster of drunkenly swaying people to start counting down the seconds to midnight. We stole furtive glances at one another and chuckled quietly.

After what felt like an eternity, the music suddenly cut off and the drunken throng began enthusiastically chanting, “10! 9! 8! 7!…” All of us standing in the closet in my room had various degrees of devious grins on our faces. One of my uncle’s remarked, “You better hope that no one freaks out too badly.” All of us laughed as the crowd thundered, “ZERO! HAP-“ Then my father threw the switch.

The whole house fell into complete darkness and total silence seemed to actually hang in the air…but only for a moment. The silence lasted for only a second or two at most. There were shrieks and fearful screams from some of the guests, but, oddly, they were somewhat quiet. It was as if, in those few moments into the new millennium, people were scared of being scared. Looking back, I don’t doubt that people were feeling that very thing. We’d been told that everything was going to continue as per usual, but still the nightly news would air segments that showcased the proper items that would be most needed if in fact the planet did enter into some electronic apocalypse that would leave us trapped…and trapped without even the reruns of Roseanne to at least give our minds something to “help take the edge off the ending of the world”. Had humanity been a coin in that moment we’d have been perched on the edge of the coin- neither heads nor tails. Just some strange almost purgatorial state of indecision. I remember thinking that this whole situation was just some game that we were being forced to play. Well, at least in the brief moments after that switch had been thrown, we were the ones in control in a strange way. We again laughed. And that dystopian feeling melted rapidly away.

Then, coming from the living room, was my mother’s voice, “GODDAMN IT, BRYAN! If you don’t turn the electricity back on, I’ll-“ My father flipped the switch on faster than he had turned it off only moments ago.

My uncles, cousin, and I laughed hysterically at that moment. It was clear that things in the new millennium weren’t going to be any different than they were before.

[CasioMaker]

Ah, the Y2K scare. I remember my parents buying a whole bunch of things “just in case” and my uncle flipping his shit up ‘cause my cousin and I wanted to play games on their computer and he thought we would end killing the hard drive

[stickyfingers]

The reason Y2K never "happened" is because countless people worked very hard behind the scenes reprogramming various systems, etc. This was a serious problem that would have resulted in many important computer systems shutting down.

[BG_CRY_]

one of my favorite parts about the whole y2k scare is that there were news reports listing some of the concerns that would come with it, and one of them was "dog packs". incredibly curious how the destruction of the internet would result in feral dog packs attacking?

[SeonmiJ]

I am 27. I was born in 1996 and still remembering when I was 4, late at night, we were camping, and suddenly my mom saw the news on her phone and rushed me to the supermarket, and to the home again. I think it was like already 10:50 when my mom started leaving the camping site but she made it in time, before 12 AM. As I witnessed, I kept asking my mother: "Mama, what's wrong?" but she never answered, in fact she responded with: "Be quiet." I was terrified. But I knew something was very wrong, but I didn't knew it until like a week later my mom told me: "Sorry for ignoring you. I was preparing for a massive destruction. It didn't happen." I remember having a nightmare getting eaten by a monster that same night, haha.

[Nazereth]

I still have a vivid memory of going to best buy to upgrade our family computer shortly before y2k. It was a pretty serious conversation had with a sales agent to "make sure you turn your pc off" before the clock turned over. Funny enough I ended up working for best buy from about 2016-2019 and while working with the project team to renovate our store we found some of the y2k stickers they used to place on computers under a base deck. Me and a couple others grabbed a few and I still have them. Great video!

[carykh]

Y2K is so fascinating! I wonder if this debacle will repeat itself in 2038 when the Unix timestamp overflows...

[avalon_amy]

A big reason my family immigrated to the states was because of this. My dad used to be a computer programmer and the US was recruiting people all over the world to help debug computers to prevent what you describe from happening. It’s pretty amazing that my upbringing and life path was heavily reliant on this bug. Great video!

[iliketurtles]

Man I remember being 6 years old, my grandpa flew us all to his country because "if we die, we die together". The joy on his face when the countdown hit 0 and nothing else happened besides fireworks...

[tehangrybird]

The people who helped fix Y2K deserve more credit. Thankfully we have people who took into account the situation early

[eathanfinal]

I can only imagine how akward it was when absolutely nothing happened and they've been preparing for months

[upsetspaghettio]

I remember a couple of times when my parents would gloss over this story, they usually say something like “everyone thought that the computers were going to blow up” and left it at that. I never knew there was a reason to why they thought that, and how many people took it very seriously. This video was awesome and I really enjoyed it.

[halleyscomett]

I was talking to my mum about her experience with y2k, and she explained to me that she went out clubbing with her friends that night and there were only about 6 people there actually celebrating New Years and that everyone else was at home thinking the world would end.

[pixystixnfairycrack]

Good ol' Y2K. I was a homeless punk kid during that whole mess. I fully admit to getting drunk with a couple of my friends and sitting next to an ATM until after midnight just in case it was all true and the thing would spit out a bunch of cash.

[Darklink]

My house was actually purchased as a result of Y2k. The false preachers told the people that lived here before us to sell all of their property (and valuables and such too I think) because the apocalypse was underway. And thus, we got the house roughly around 70 grand cheaper probably. Was great for us but was unfortunately sad for them because they were deceived though. Hope they didn't get too financially and emotionally damaged because of that. :/

[angeldelarosa]

I just remember seeing my parents computer screen flipping upside down when 2000 came on. It may have been just a trick my dad did on the monitor but it freaked me out a bit.