Hard to believe...

[locolobo56]

I worked for the largest (at the time) chemical company in the world, at their largest facility. It was almost comical the amount of people that would never be there on weekends, holidays or any day @ midnight all hanging around waiting for the collapse. Midnight came and went with not so much as a control alarm and the supers went not long after.

 

[yaktamer]

I remember people saying that the grocery stores would run out of food because the automated distribution system wouldn't be able to notify the warehouses when stock was getting low. Apparently no one was ever able to buy food before computers.

 

[Golphin]

There was most definitely a bunch of hype involved.

At the time I was involved in fixing US Navy computer/weapons systems glitches, and the problems were real. Not likely would have caused unplanned launches, but quite likely the systems would not have functioned when required - that would have been a REAL problem.

I agree being in the insurance business where dates are important for coverage and expiration of such there were quite a few software changes and system updates to make the programs continue to work correctly.

 

[Hillbilly77]

I was prepared for that fateful night..... I was 22 at the time.

I spent that night in a motel room with a woman and a whiskey bottle.

 

[Pilgrim]

I was a computer systems tech and had to apply upgrade patches to about 100 computers. I had it done several months in advance.

I went home on 12/31 and went to bed.

The whole world was still there when I awoke.

It's amazing how many stupid people are out there.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Don't believe anything that you hear,
And only half of what you see.

 

[Marshwheeling]

I was prepared for that fateful night..... I was 22 at the time.

I spent that night in a motel room with a woman and a whiskey bottle.

"Taxi, taxi.
Hotel, motel.
I got he whisky, baby; I got the whisky.
I got the
cigarettes."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTvqBgm7isg

Or was it more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6YPgxUdAo

 

[labworm]

I was prepared for that fateful night..... I was 22 at the time.

I spent that night in a motel room with a woman and a whiskey bottle.

Any pictures?

So you were sinning while I was praying, I have never done anything like that.

Me, Telly Savalas in the tower.

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

I ain't gonna worry about it though. I can step out in my back yard and shoot dinner.

Same here, but the wife and I don't care for .22 holes in the Swiss chard. Don't even ask about the tomatoes.

 

[old bear]

Our Y2K prep was fairly basic. Made sure our computers were updated, purchased a few extra food stuffs along with bottled water, made a ATM run, and stayed home that night. Turned out to be "Much Ado About Nothing."

 

[vigil617]

Not trying to drift the thread here, but who would have suspected that the real cataclysm would come down in another year and nine months from then? We thought we were in the clear after Y2K, and in a sense we were, but there was a wholly different threat already in the planning stages by then.

Things haven't been the same since.

 

[rcnixon]

A lot of it didn't happen because the world-wide IT industry spent about a hundred billion dollars to make it go away. For example, Unisys dropped support for an entire line of obsolescent mid-range computers in July 1999 because the date calculation in hardware would have been wrong after February 29, 2000 because the original programmer forgot that a year evenly divisible by 400 IS a leap year.

I spent two years validating (not in the IEEE 1024 sense though) network hardware for correct operation after December 31, 1999.

The phone company ops center where I worked though it was serious enough to double the size of the UPS motor-generator, add additional fuel bowsers and keep two tanker trailers full of diesel in the parking lot for a couple of months. You know those telco engineers, always ready to go off half-cocked and get hysterical. When i saw them spending that kind of money, I figured it was serious.

Russ

 

[RonJ]

I was never worried about Y2K. The Fix was too easy.
I will admit to a small sigh of relief when I got to work and all the electronics powered normally.

 

[snubbyfan]

People'd ask me if I was prepared for Y2K. I'd tell them, "Here's what's gonna happen, It'll be today then it'll be tomorrow, that's all."

 

[Quick10]

I was in Okinawa when Y2K came. We did no preparations other than make sure that the cars were full of gas. The wife and I went out on the balcony of our apartment just before midnight to see if the lights went out. Of course they didn't so we just enjoyed the fireworks and then rang in the New Year

 

[Brian41]

I worked for a superstore at the time and had to work that night and test all our equipment. I went through all my check list with no problems and went home at 0400.
I bought two jumbo lobsters and celebrated the New Year with my wife later that day.
We bought a few extra supplies just in case but nothing too serious. With my wife working at a city hospital and me for the store we figured we'd be too bust working if it all fell apart.

 

[J. R. WEEMS]

Thought about stocking up, but loaded up a case of 45's instead.

 

[cowart]

Any nucleat blast in the atmosphere will cause EMP, they can do it to us, we can do it to them. You can shield or harden your systems against it but if the attacker ups the power of the blast defenses can be over powered. Thatis on a nnational level.

No, the output power of a nuclear blast decreases rapidly as the distance from it increases, and the area being affected increases. Neither the US nor the Soviets have nuclear weapons capable of damaging an entire nation all at once.

 

[Lycan]

I have always thought if a disaster, whether it be man made or natural, were to hit on a large enough scale to make a national (or worldwide) impact, it will be one that we don't see coming.

All of the sensationalized disasters (2000, 2012, etc...) usually involve little reality and allow for massive preparation on the part of those that can ease the impact.

The stuff we don't see coming and isn't in the news is what will be the major events. It will be on us before we know it and before most can prepare for it.

What will that be? Who know's, like I said, it will hit before it is publicized. Maybe war, maybe viral, maybe natural? That is why it pays be be at a certain level of preparedness regardless of what the news reports. It's better to have it if / when you need it instead of waiting until you need it and can't get it. Of course, being paranoid goes to far, be "prepared" is just right.

Let Hollywood make movies, they are fun to watch but the epidemic, meteor, earthquake, weapon, etc... that causes the real thing won't be the one they are making movies about.

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

Some may have, but not everybody was worried about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOu2vqqPVqQ

I've been working restoring a Macintosh SE(c. 1989) for the past few months and am nearly finished with it. I just need to fit a hard drive into a(slightly) newer Quadra 700(c. 1992) then transplant the Quadra hard drive into the SE, as well as rebuild the internal floppy drive, to have my work finished on the computer.

Aside from a dead clock battery that caused the computer clock to reset to 1901 every time I turned it off(since fixed), the computer has had absolutely no date and time issues. I've been able to punch in 2014(and now 2015) without it missing a beat.