the end of the world that never was and why everything could collapse in 2038

In 1999 it seemed like the world was going to explode because not only was the year and the decade ending, but also the 20th century and the millennium. Without a doubt it was a different new yearloaded with symbolism.

But the statistics themselves were joined by a collective hysteria that brought together technology experts, media and governments in a feeling of uncertainty: the “Y2K problem” or as it was also called: “the mistake (bug) of the millennium”.

The term meant in English “Year 2000” and the K for kilo, which in the metric system is equivalent to 1,000. The acronym referred to a technical error that could cause the collapse of computer systems when the date passed from 1999 to 2000since almost all computers at that time only represented years with the last two digits (99, 00, 01, etc.).

Computers, then, could interpret it as 1900 instead of 2000, which would generate, according to experts, errors in calculationsin control systems, in operations and in millions of databases around the world.

Let’s imagine what would have happened if from the night of December 31 at midnight and the first second of January 1, the calendars of almost all companies had gone back to the year 1900.

For example, if in a bank the savings accounts returned to the balance of January 1, 1900, all the accounts were going to dawn empty or closed for non-payment.

And so on in other supposed cases. Y2K – they claimed computer security experts– It would fully impact transportation companies, services (electricity, gas, telephones), health, military security, airlines, software, nuclear energy, finance, banks, hospitals, public government offices, supermarkets and an almost infinite list.

If we go back to the technical root of the problem, we have to travel back to the 1960s. At that time, memory was very expensive and the first programmers chose save bits of space in computer memories making software whose years were represented by the last two figures.

The decision, practical at the time, meant that the source code of the applications and systems were not programmed to correctly handle the turn of the century. In the ’60s, the turn of the millennium It was seen as too futuristic to plan computer software for such a long term. The famous “we’ll see later.”

Then came that after and towards the middle of ’99 the fear did its thing. For example, in December of that year, Gun sales grew by 20 percent compared to the same month of the previous year because, as portrayed in the very good documentary Y2K: Time Bomb (can be seen on HBO Max), “many were preparing for a possible wave of violence in the face of chaos.”

Evangelical pastors who in their sermons assured that chaos was God’s plan, millionaires who built bunkers to protect against a social outbreak and books about surviving Y2K on bestseller lists. A truly crazy end of the year.

However, fear of a general collapse materialized in some specific episodes. A few days before December 31, some warning alarms began to sound.

For example, some 13 thousand electricity bills from the province of Córdoba arrived due in January 1900, but they quickly achieved correct the error. But the fear was palpable.

One day before, on Thursday the 30th, the government of that time (the president was Fernando de la Rúa) announced the maximum alert in all hospitals in the country for the night of the 31st. And on the same day the newspaper Clarín headlined on its cover The ghost of the 2000 effect.

But was the fear and danger of global collapse real or just a trap to get companies and governments to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare their systems to deal with the problem? It is known that few things sell more and better than fear. And the fear of Y2K unleashed massive investment in the technology industry, estimated today at more than $100 billion globally.

In the last three years of the last century, companies of all types and governments hired specialized consultantsthey updated their systems and conducted extensive testing for many months before December 31.

Some countries, such as the United States and others in Europe, set up national committees to supervise compliance with the contingency plans. Others, like ours, in Latin America, and some in Africa, hoped that the impact of Y2K would be less due to the limited digitalization and technological infrastructure that we had at that time.

But as everything comes, the zero hour of Saturday, January 1, 2000 also arrived. First – as always – the new year arrived in Australia and New Zealand, countries that became a kind of test tube for the rest of the world.

Hundreds of reporters traveled there to broadcast live what would happen with Y2K. Then the clocks struck 12 and… nothing. The truth is, nothing happened.

There was no chaos, far from it. Only some very minor incidentslike that of a Pennsylvania school library, whose books appeared in the system on loan for a hundred years. But the debts were eliminated and a holy remedy.

In all corners of the world, millions of people toasted and celebrated witness a historic moment that very few in history can cross. The world continued to spin.

Y2K was a complete bluff, the product of a mixture of exaggeration, general fear and the encouragement of a few consultants. Others claim the opposite: there were no serious problems because the preventive and invisible work of thousands of programmers was effective and managed to mitigate the risks.

Enrique Carrier, a consultant specialized in telecommunications, remembers: “The problem had some basis in truth, which impacted above all on older software systemsless updated. But then it turned out that nothing much happened. Those whose systems were compromised surely did what they had to do before that end of the year.”

Carrier admits that “in rough seas, fishermen gain”: “Yes, there were a great psychosis that allowed huge businesses to be made in the private and government sectors,” he says. “I remember being in San Francisco that New Year and the fear was such that in the supermarkets, the shelves of water and other basic things were empty. “People believed the apocalypse was coming.”

However, beyond the few consequences and the debates (now anecdotal) that it left, Y2K was not in vain. It served to teach us some important lessons. The first is to have understood the notion of the global interdependence of the technological systems in which we live and the importance of planning with a long-term vision when designing new software. In addition, it also marked the beginning of a cultural change in the perception we have of technology: greater awareness of its vulnerabilities and its transversal impact on all industries worldwide.

It is very difficult to think about facing and solve a technological challenge current without collaboration on a global scale.

But we know that fear never gives up and a new cuckoo has already appeared on the horizon.

It’s called Y2038. Again, this is a computer problem related to time overflow.

Electronic devices that use 32-bit microprocessors They could collapse on January 19, 2038 at 03:14 a.m.. Well, there are still almost 14 years left but there is already one certainty: that day will come.