Real I’m not quite sure Y2K should be in there since it didn’t really result in anything happening.
Hopefully “possible WW3” will turn out the same way.
It was considered pretty serious at the time. I remember being at a new year’s party and everyone went outside at the ball drop to see if the world turned off.
Y2K was like the ozone.
It became a big nothing issue because of the spreading awareness, hard work, and other activities that went into preventing it.
So like I said in another post.
The problem with crisis is always the people.
If nothing happens, cause of the hard work to prevent it, people riot over it being a big waste of time cause nothing happened
if something happens, then people riot because no one worked hard to prevent it.
Oh I know. My uncle was a big part of all of the work to make it a non-issue.
I’m just saying it was hardly scarring, unlike the other things listed. Most people didn’t really think it would be a big thing and it turned out, because of other people’s hard work, not to be a big thing.
Mostly it was just a giant waste of NASA’s time trying to explain to people why it wouldn’t result in toasters exploding no matter what anyone did or did not do, because toasters don’t care about the date.
I don’t deny there was some hysteria around the subject.
but given how stupid the average human is… its probably better to err on hysteria, than to err on common sense, when you need to build public awareness and support for something critical.
A theory of mine is that one of the reasons people don’t take the various crises threatening to destroy civilization seriously is that we’ve lived through so many crises that were solved without the average person suffering that much.
Y2K, overpopulation, the decay of the ozone, acid rain, all major problems, which received major attention from government, media and the scientific community…and were solved, by the scientific community through incredible efforts that were unthinkable a generation before thanks to advances in science. But things didn’t really change that much for your average schlub on the street. The change in fluorocarbons in bug spray or air conditioning units may have changed the price a bit, but not enough to really hurt the ordinary person’s wallet.
In World War II, everyone participated, everyone did something, be it as big as risking their life on the battlefield, or as small as collecting old newspaper to recycle. Nothing in the past eighty years has demanded that kind of investment or sacrifice or commitment. A great swathe of our population simply cannot believe there is or can be an existential threat to life as we know it.
I have a similar theory about politics, that most Americans thinks of the modern American democracy as inevitable and irrevocable, thus don’t take it seriously when the President’s platform seems built around totally destroying democratic norms.
Apparently IT people at the time had to deal with bunch of stuff and come to work at christmas just in case.
Bird flu is scheduled before WW3 so plural plagues
We already had bird flu check your records
We’ve had one bird flu, yes, but what about second bird flu?
Do people not remember that they didn’t have cars until like 1920? Do people not understand that most roads weren’t paved until like the 50s? It’s foolish to think we’re the only generation living through lifetime events. Motherfuckers they were people that went through World War I and World War II. They were veterans of World War 1 that enlisted in World War II. There are people born in the fifties that lived through the computer Revolution. Do people not understand that the internet is only 30 years old?
Yes. They do understand. Its just that These events get closer to each other more and more.
Y2K wasn’t that bad compared to the rest
In hindsight. There was some degree of hysteria at the time, which prompted ended at the turn of the millenia when planes did not fall out of the sky and computer systems did not all fail in unison.
Y2k was a non event because a lot of time, effort, and money was spent fixing it before the deadline.
The estimated cost of fixing the bug was between 300-850 billion dollars in 2000 - adjusted for inflation that’s about 0.5-1.5 trillion dollars
The estimated worldwide cost of fixing the Y2K bug, according to analysts: Cap Gemini America Inc. — $858 billion; Gartner Group Inc. — $600 billion; International Data Corp. — $300 billion.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1372100/some-key-facts-and-events-in-y2k-history.html
Nothing personal, I try to correct this view everywhere I see it.
Y2K didn’t happen because a lot of talented engineers worked their asses off to prevent it from happening. It is the bane of IT people everywhere that the working state of the systems they create and maintain is being taken for granted by the public, with barely a thought givem to those who fight bugs, spam, cyber attacks and pure entropy every day. It is in fact a minor miracle of engineering that we’re even having this conversation.
A-men
And A-women too 😁
Thank you. I was on the Y2K team.
Thank you for your service. I mean it.
Couldn’t agree more and do not in any way intend to diminish the hard work of those that prevented a widespread systems failure.
Y2K wasn’t that bad because a billion engineers saw it coming and prepared accordingly. If everyone hadn’t been freaking out about it for years beforehand things could have gone very differently.
Gen X here - we had Mutually Assured Destruction as well.
Gen X checking in. Here’s a list of world crises just in my lifetime. This is by no means a comprehensive list:
1975 - 1990: Lebanese Civil War
1976: Tangshan earthquake (China) - 242,000+ deaths
1979 - 1989: Soviet-Afghan War
1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident
1980 - 1988: Iran-Iraq War
1981 - Present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
1983 - 1985: Ethiopian famine - 1 million+ deaths
1984: Bhopal gas disaster (India) - 15,000+ deaths
1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster (USSR)
1987: Black Monday stock market crash
1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill
Late 80s - early 90s: Recession 1990 - 1991: Desert Storm
1991 - 2002: Somali Civil War & famine
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War & Srebrenica massacre
1994: Rwandan genocide - 800,000+ deaths
1999: Columbine High School massacre (the beginning of a trend)
2000: Y2K
2000: Recession (Dot Com Bubble, etc)
2001: 9/11
Early 2000s: Recession (Fallout from 9/11) 2001 - 2021: Afghanistan War
2003 - 2011: Iraq War
2004: Indian Ocean Tsunami - 230,000+ deaths
2005: Hurricane Katrina - 1,800+ deaths
2007 - 2008: Global Financial Crisis
2008 - 2009: Great Recession
2009: H1N1 swine flu pandemic
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010: Haiti earthquake - 160,000+ deaths
2011: Tōhoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
2011: Arab Spring uprisings & Syrian Civil War begins
2014: Ebola outbreak (West Africa) - 11,000+ deaths
2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
2015: European migrant crisis
2017: Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico) - 3,000+ deaths
2019 - Present: Covid19
2020: Australian bushfires - 3 billion animals affected
2020: George Floyd protests & global BLM movement
2021: January 6th US Capitol riot
2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
2022: Pakistan floods - 1,700+ deaths, 33 million displaced
2023: Turkey-Syria earthquakes - 50,000+ deaths
2023 - Present: Hamas-Israel war and open genocide
2025: Global Trade WarThe first third of this list took place during the Cold War, when WWIII and nuclear attacks were a real fear. Add in climate change, the discovery of microplastics in everything, the world seemingly embracing Fascism again, and a whole slew of other shit, and it’s no surprise that suicide rates have increased almost 40% over the past 25 years.
Another one for the list in early 1980 when US tried to start a nuclear war with Russia and that’s when the doomsday clock was born. They told kids ‘just roll under a desk if a bomb drops’
Yes, a nuclear bomb. The same as the one in Hiroshima.
My high school had a fallout shelter. I had English classes down there.
lol hot damn. Gen X started off with some bangers. They just on going for millennials.
Guess what? I was born 1995. So my life as a newborn was spent in a shelter. Same again as a 4 year old toddler. Now that’s fate.
We didn’t start the fire.
It was always burning, since the world’s been turningNo we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it…
Did we fuck
I still remember watching the news as a child right after the tsunami of 2004 and seeing the death toll rising day by day.
It is only going to get worse with climate catastrophy barely being addresed. Hunger and water shortage is only going to increasr the frequencies of wars and pandemics. Which will result in more and more extremism.
Did y’all forget about the Zika, Ebola, Bird flu and Swine flus?
Thanks, but I’m totally wasted on typhoid over here, i couldn’t possibly do any more!
I turned 40 in February and I only forsee things getting worse. 😩
Older Gen Z have lived through all of those as well, but before the age of 30 😭
Gen X went through a wall street crash and recession. We went through a recession when reagan screwed up the economy in the early 80’s the frequency is just increasing.
I for one would really like to get off this ride.
Gen Z here. Bitch, this shit just getting warmed up, hahaha
Add a housing crisis, the construction of a corporate surveillance state, a fascist takeover and the impending employment apocalypse of AI implementation.
Aint it great!
And we saw both Hulk Hogan’s and John Cena’s heel turns.
