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Y2K was the first digital doomsday scenario Not only did it stem from a computer glitch but programmers survivalists and government agencies all had the benefit of digital bemer communication tools to help spread the word develop solutions and market products designed to ensure survival once the catastrophe began

Although modern technology was the source of the Y2K glitch the predictions of widespread panic and chaos hit a nerve and triggered responses rooted in fears and stories much older than the current crisis Prophets and soothsayers have predicted the end of the world for about as long as there has been a world In his "Book of Facts" Isaac Asimov relates that an Assyrian clay tablet dating from 2800 BC predicted the end of the world linking it to the degeneracy that its author saw in his own culture Doomsday myths are part of cultural mythologies ranging from the Native American Pawnee tribe to the Norse stories of Scandinavia to the Indian Vedic religions to the Christian Book of Revelations

The Y2K Problem

The source of the Y2K doomsday scenario was a programming convention that started back before computers were even invented as stenographers working to store data on punch cards with fields that only left room for 80 characters began abbreviating the year using only the last two digits This practice first originated in the 1930s bemer partner and it was adopted by early computer programmers who either didnt foresee the complications that would arise once a new century began or just didnt believe that anyone would still be using their system long enough for it to become an issue

This system worked fine as long as all of the dates recorded by computers fell within the same century but it was clearly going to be a problem once the calendar flipped to the year 2000 and the notation "30" could either refer to "1930" or "2030" In 1958 a programmer named Rob Bemer was the first to predict that this convention would cause problems down the line He worked for 20 years to alert his colleagues to the problem but nobody took him very seriously

There were a couple of articles about the potential problem during the 1970s but folks really began paying attention until the mid 1990s when the potential fallout was right around the corner On one end of the spectrum software developers and government agencies began facing the possibility that their systems could be disrupted due to confusion stemming from misinterpreted dates At the other extreme survivalists religious zealots and folks who were generally disenchanted with contemporary society began predicting that the glitch could cause a widespread meltdown of financial government and infrastructure systems leading to public panic and even apocalyptic scenarios

The Buildup

Once it became clear during the mid 1990s that there was some real cause for concern the government as well as hardware and software development companies got serious about trying to fix it They invested hundreds of billions of dollars reprogramming systems Although it may seem like a relatively simple task to fix a date it was actually quite complicated because the programming convention happened to be part of the systems foundation rather than a peripheral element It wasnt just a matter of going in and changing a couple of digits; the solution involved updating the entire way that the system read digits

The federal government passed the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act and governments all over the world invested time and resources in addressing the issue The American governments approach to the problem involved taking steps to solve the problem before the date arrived and the real difficulties began educating the private sector about the issue and encouraging them to be proactive as well and then developing contingency plans so services and government institutions would not be seriously disrupted if the glitch really did have widespread consequences

Individuals who took the problem seriously and feared dire consequences made preparations of their own They stocked up on staples like food and water and bought generators to provide power in case of infrastructure failure Some folks left the cities preferring to spend the transition period in an environment where technology did not play a central role and disruptions in critical services would not cause major problems

Entire industries sprang up catering to the needs of people who feared the worst Manufacturers of canned and dried foods found an enthusiastic new market for their products Companies designed and marketed Y2K survival kits and one publisher printed a Y2K survival cookbook Websites sprang up specifically devoted to Y2K survival offerings and radio talk shows hosted repeated segments soliciting reader participation sharing preparedness ideas

Aftermath

In the end nothing happened or at least there were no widespread world changing events There were some isolated problems the most serious of which was probably a series of misdiagnosis by a hospital in Sheffield England which sent incorrect test results to 154 women As a result one woman who believed she would be giving birth to a healthy child birthed a baby with Down Syndrome and two women aborted normal fetuses because they were erroneously told that their children suffered from birth defects Slot machines at an American racetrack briefly stopped working and safety monitoring equipment at a Japanese nuclear facility shut down although fortunately there happened to be no major problems to monitor during the time it was offline

In all the estimated cost of fixing the actual problems arising from Y2K related computer problems was about 13 billion dollars While thats certainly not a small sum of money it is relatively inconsequential when you compare it with the anticipated cost of the disasters that were predicted

Its quite possible that all of the time and effort that went into reprogramming computer systems successfully averted a doomsday catastrophe Its also possible that the potential consequences of the problem just werent as dire as the warnings predicted After all even countries and organizations that did little to address the problem came out unscathed

Well never know whether the widespread preparation indeed helped us dodge a bullet or whether there was never any real threat in the first place Theres no way to rewind the tape and see a scenario with different circumstances and a different outcome The most likely explanation is that there is some truth to both of these explanations: the preventative measures were in fact effective and the problem itself was serious but not serious enough to bring about the end of the world even if nothing had been fixed

The Lessons

Despite the fact that the drama of actual events paled in comparison to the predictions the Y2K phenomenon was hardly a silly incident that can be easily dismissed as mere hysteria and fear mongering On the technological side the concerted coordinated effort to address the problem could serve as a model for handling other situations that are bound to arise There are idiosyncrasies about the ways computers register leap years as well as several other upcoming dates that could also lead to confusion and disruptions and it would be unfortunate if the absence of dire consequences from this event bred complacency causing us to overlook other potentially problematic scenarios

For the survivalist and religious thinkers who prepared for the end of the world the most important lesson may be that the emotions that the Y2K scenario evoked are legitimate frightening and important even if the details of this specific event didnt pan out as predicted The Y2K scenario was grafted onto an age old story and archetype and bemer partner as long as day-to-day life persists in a relatively ordinary fashion there will probably be occasions for constructing similar prophesies around upcoming events

Nicholas James is an expert in doomsday theories and predictions and runs the very successful and popular website about past present and future doomsday dates He has helped thousands of people understand them thoroughly Visit his website right now for more information and/or help on doomsday and apocalyptic information