A closer look
Billions of dollars were spent globally in the late nineties to update computer systems in preparation for the Y2K bug, driven by the panic that software using two-digit years would register the year 2000 as 1900 and trigger a worldwide apocalyptic meltdown. When midnight struck and airplanes did not fall from the sky and nuclear silos did not spontaneously launch, the general public immediately decided the whole thing was a giant scam concocted by greedy IT consultants. In reality, the disaster was only averted because an army of unsung software engineers worked grueling overtime for years to fix the code, rewarding their heroic, society-saving efforts with decades of public mockery and conspiracy theories
