Remembering the Y2K Scare 25 Years Ago

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On New Year’s Eve in 1999 – 25 years ago – I sat in the publisher’s office at the Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches as the clock approached midnight. Across the Angelina River, my counterpart at the Lufkin Daily News was doing the same. A buddy who was the local manager for Southwestern Bell sat in his office as well, as did the fellow who represented the gas company. All of us were waiting for the clock to strike 12 to see if the “Millennium Bug,” also known as the Y2K phenomenon, would wreak havoc on our computer systems.

All of us remained stone-cold sober as we sat in our offices, watching the various celebrations on television, an admittedly unusual state on New Year’s Eve when I was a quarter-century younger. Now I am lucky to make it to 10 p.m. before heading to bed.

As 2000 approached, folks paid to consider such matters worried that the transition from 1999 to 2000 would disrupt computer systems worldwide. Most computer systems used just two digits to represent the year when exhibiting dates – such as “99” for 1999. I am uncertain if designers thought civilization would never make it to 2000 or just decided this would be someone else’s problem, the designers long retired and holed up in a cave somewhere, waiting for chaos to ensue. Regardless, the fear was that if 2000 was rendered in computer systems as “00,” it could cause computer systems worldwide to fail. In our case, we printed our newspapers early to ensure that we would at least get the New Year’s Day issue out on time, if the computer systems did indeed fail when midnight struck.

Across the world, according to the American history website for the Smithsonian, the cost for Y2K remediation was estimated worldwide at $600 billion. Then there were the “doomers,” the survivalists convinced Y2K meant the end of civilized society. They cashed out retirement accounts, bought gold, stockpiled MREs and barrels of beans and rice. They bought compounds in rural areas and loaded up on weapons and ammunition. Some of those survivalists likely are still holed up out there, awaiting the next cataclysmic event.

These fears led to an acronym: TEOTWAWKI. At first, I thought this was the name of a little-known Native American tribe, like the Tonkawas, but it actually means “the end of the world as we know it.”

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So, my buddies, coworkers and me sat in our respective offices on Dec. 31, 1999, occasionally calling each other to see how things were going, if anything unusual was occurring. A couple of us decided to get together after midnight if all went well, to toast in both the new Millennium (it didn’t technically start until Jan. 1, 2001, but no matter) and having survived Y2K. Of course, if things went south, we all would be far too busy to celebrate.

Nothing happened, largely anywhere. Our computer systems dutifully clicked over to display the correct date: 01/01/2000. A few smaller institutions across the country reported problems, but the IT folks employed by all our companies successfully made the transition to a new date-naming convention. I headed to a friend’s house for that long-delayed glass of bubbly.

ChatGPT tells me that while some view Y2K as vastly overhyped, many experts credit the extensive preparation for preventing major issues. Certainly, both private companies and governments worldwide devoted vast amounts of resources to making sure catastrophe was averted.

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I made it home after Y2K about 3 a.m. and slept in that morning, something I rarely do. I figure I deserved it after my stint as a sentry, keeping a watchful eye out for a disaster that thankfully never arrived 25 years ago.

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