Why were people afraid of Y2K?

Question

OK, I know what Y2K is.

But the h**l did people think it was going to happen? Were people just paranoid lunatics, or was there actually a reason for the fear of the new century?

Ha ha, random question I've been thinking about lately.

Answer 1

It was made out to be a bigger issue than it was and I was almost disappointed that nothing really happened.  

The problem came about when in the early days of computing, adding the entire date used up a lot of memory or power.  It was easier to write 9-75 as the date instead of:  09-12-1975. The dates kept getting larger but there was no program written for 01-00 so everyone thought computer controlled equipment would stop working somehow.  This included water purification, electricity, air travel, some cars, banks, schools, personal appliances and electronics like VCR's and maybe stereo equipment and microwave ovens,  most computers in business and home.  The fear was they'd crash all at once, when the date changed from 12-99 to 00-00.  So it was thought computer chips would "think" it was back to the year 1900

KABOOM! Break out the banjo and horse-drawn carriage.  Keep your guns clean.    

This caused many superstitions to develop such as people being asked or told to stock up on water in case the water department collapses and buy lots of batteries or generators in case the power grid collapsed.  Some even thought airplanes would suddenly develop metal fatigue and fall out of the sky and with a lack of air traffic control, the skies would be complete chaos.

It was forecast to be the end of the world as we knew it, but I felt fine.  It was also called a "bug"  the "Y2K Bug"  It wasn't a bug, but a programming work-around.  Tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on trying to head off major disasters that may or may not have happened left up to chance.  One reason I suspect the global warming scare to be the same thing.

Answer 2

Computers were for many people a new phenomenon, and the people that marketed them wanted them to buy ever newer computers, and spend money on them. Part of that strategy was to get people hyped on problem s with old operating systems so they would buy into Windows 2000.

Many many jobs were created by the highly manipulated scare, and it was a great example of marketing through fear.

People were led to believe that because of one silly piece of arcane code, the entire system would collapse.

People love and embrace fear, so they went for it.

As it turned out not a single thing happened to confirm the danger.

The day after 2000, the public promptly forgot the whole episode and the vital lesson to marketers and the government was duly noted.

Scare people and you can control them...

Kind of paved the way for the official response to 9/11. We've been attacked and the moslems will destroy us if we don't shop shop shop.

Frankly, the human race pretty much disgusts me.

Answer 3

it was a wide paranoia but at midnight on the year 2000 the lights stayed on and it was business as usual

Answer 4

it's pretty well spelled out here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2k

it was mainly a computer thing, which "could" have led to a number of outages, had they not been resolved by 12/31/1999

Answer 5

As with everything else in the country, the media hyped it to be a disaster.  I think the computer companies did this so people would by programs that were supposed to stop Y2K.  I think it was compounded with the thought of Armageddon that was supposed to happen in the year 2000 or something like that.  It just goes to show you how stupid people can be.