What if the Y2K disaster really did happened?What if the computer programmers failed?

Guys I wonder what would happened if the Y2K disaster happened for real? What if the computer programmers failed to fix it it in time

In an alternate universe let say it happened. I mean if the Y2K really happened the common belief is that all computers will shut down and banks will fail.

What will be social and political effect if Y2K really happened and the what if the computer programmers failed to fix it it in time? Theories abounded ranging to from Nuclear holocaust to the end of civlization itself. And if if Y2K happened would there be President Bush and other events that happened in the 2000s of our real timeline?

which country would be a major a player in a post Major Y2K disaster world?

If it had really happened then the grid would have shut down and we'd not be discussing this on an ATS thread - so thanks! Now you've created a paradox and the entire universe is doomed!

~Heff

It did happen. Its called the year 2000.

reply to post by Hefficide


Hmmm which means in the alternate universe is in danger as in no more civilization

reply to post by JayFlores


sorry for not being specific enough what I meant is what happened if the Y2K disaster really did happened as computers shutting down for real

reply to post by starwarsisreal
What do you mean? Y2K totally happened, and was...generally underwhelming:

When 1 January 2000 arrived, there were problems generally regarded as minor. Problems did not always have to occur precisely at midnight. Some programs were not active at that moment and would only show up when they were invoked. Not all problems recorded were directly linked to Y2K programming in a causality; minor technological glitches occur on a regular basis. Some caused erroneous results, some caused machines to stop working, some caused date errors, and two caused malfunctions.

Reported problems include:

In Sheffield, United Kingdom, incorrect Down syndrome test results were sent to 154 pregnant women and two abortions were carried out as a direct result of a Y2K bug. Four Down's syndrome babies were also born to mothers who had been told they were in the low-risk group.

In Ishikawa, Japan, radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight; however, officials stated there was no risk to the public.

In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight.

In Japan, at two minutes past midnight, Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications carrier, found errors in the date management part of the company's network. The problem was fixed by 02:43 and no services were disrupted.

In Japan, NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest cellular operator, reported on 1 January 2000, that some models of mobile telephones were deleting new messages received, rather than the older messages, as the memory filled up.

In Australia, bus-ticket-validation machines in two states failed to operate.

In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working.

In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory, which runs the master clock that keeps the country's official time, gave the date on its website as 1 Jan., 19100.

In France, the national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said a Y2K bug made the date on a webpage show a map with Saturday's weather forecast as "01/01/19100". This also occurred on other websites, including att.net, at the time a general-purpose portal site primarily for AT&T Worldnet customers in the United States.

In New Zealand, Telecom New Zealand had to replace its entire payphone network prior to 1 January 2000, as the previous payphones were not Y2K compatible.

DOOOOM!!.....?

reply to post by Praetorius


Well I meant what if Y2K was very widespread as in it really became a major issue. Imagine in the Alternate universe where computer progarmmers failed to solve the problem

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
reply to post by Praetorius

 

Well I meant what if Y2K was very widespread as in it really became a major issue. Imagine in the Alternate universe where computer progarmmers failed to solve the problem

edit on 17-8-2012 by starwarsisreal because: (no reason given)

Most of us would be dead....3rd world countries would be the least affected.

Des

reply to post by Destinyone


Such a world would be very interesting I mean which country would be a major a player in a post Major Y2K disaster world? Cuba, North Korea, South Africa etc

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
reply to post by Praetorius

 

Well I meant what if Y2K was very widespread as in it really became a major issue. Imagine in the Alternate universe where computer progarmmers failed to solve the problem

Well...say what you mean, then. Trying to make me look like a jerk here?

I'll remove this from Y2K itself somewhat, then, but basically if all computers went down more or less globally and we were unable to restore networks, etc., pretty quick, there'd be a heap of trouble since almost all nations rely heavily on computer networks.

You'd of course have business and economic disruptions, but I believe they'd pale in comparison to any sort of infrastructure we rely on - primarily power grids, etc - going down as an effect (not even accounting for independent systems further down the line being affected directly), because then you've shut off everyone heating & cooling, the ability to store perishable foods, possibly the ability to clean water and provide it to the people, etc.

I look at it as a slightly-smaller version of a modern day Carrington event, EMP blast, or something similar that destroys all electronics. If you're living a rural life, you might not be too poorly off if not depending greatly on any modern conveniences.

But if you're in a big city...entirely reliant on all these interwoven systems built on and around computers...now that's a different story altogether. Society as we know it might well grind to a halt, and I wouldn't be surprised to see people eating one another before long.

reply to post by Praetorius


sorry I don't mean say your a jerk I'm just elaborating more besides I have been pondering about this after hearing an alleged time traveler named John Titor mentioned that if Y2K were to hit the world he mentioned that tere will be martial law in the USA and China taking Taiwan. I'm trying to ee if anyone in ATS can back this statement up if you want I can post the link here

I really don't understand these "what if?" threads when it didn't happen. Y2K was a real problem. Any big organization paid attention to the issue. As a result, a whole lot of new computers were purchased, and a lot of old systems died.

I had a program at the time that was an accounting system that processed a billion dollars worth of transactions. It had a small Y2K bug that I was able to patch around, no harm done. Had I not patched it, the program would have failed and checks would not have been written.

I was also affiliated at the time of the Western Library Network (WLN), a consortium of libraries that did a lot of cataloging of books & materials through this automated system. Its main program was called "The Grinder," which took the raw data and parsed it into useful information to produce such things as catalog cards, OPAC entries (Online Public Access Catalog), acquisitions entries, etc. It was so full of Y2K issues that the entire system was brought to a halt and the organization merged with OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) based in Ohio. WLN was on the verge of failure anyway, but the bottom line was that Y2K brought down WLN.

Y2K did not prove much of a problem financially because people like myself fixed the issues before it happened. But it was very real and took a lot of time and money to fix.

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
reply to post by Destinyone

 

Such a world would be very interesting I mean which country would be a major a player in a post Major Y2K disaster world? Cuba, North Korea, South Africa etc

It appears we may very well be heading in that direction now. If things continue to deteriorate in our world economic structure, you may get to see it in person....

Des

Y2K was nothing more than l̶a̶z̶y̶ programmers (myself included) who opted to design programs using a two digit year (99 instead of 1999). The problem came when the application rolled over to 2000 there would be no way to determine the actual year and most applications would default to 1900.

This wouldn't have caused planes to fall out of the sky or nuclear reactors to meltdown, however it would have spelled disaster for the financial industries, and anyone who relied on computerised dates for shipping. The whole debacle was blown way out of proportion by scaremongers and is still discussed today as a supposed technological "near-miss".

If the problem wasn't fixed, then you would probably have seen a freeze in trade, both financially and physically, and a collapse in the banking system. As it was, myself and thousands of other developers all worked tirelessly to fix their respective systems well before it ever became an issue.

From personal experience.

ETA: Removed 'lazy' as that's not entirely true (although in some cases it was). Older systems had to be designed using two digit dates to save on memory and disk space. Doesn't seem like much but 20-30 years ago, each byte counted

reply to post by starwarsisreal

It would be like the good old days here in New England...Fine with me!

reply to post by starwarsisreal
I wouldn't mind a Titor link, although I think his story is on shaky ground - and I was just teasing you, no offense taken. If there had been no preparation and more serious results anywhere near the degree of what I mentioned, somehow, I would say martial law (at the VERY least) would be possible.

Perhaps Schuyler or someone with more knowledge on the steps taken to mitigate the situation could advise what might have happened had we just shrugged it off altogether?

reply to post by starwarsisreal


There would be a lot of angry teens who couldnt tweet or access facebook. Other than that, I doubt much would of come of it

Originally posted by MattC
Y2K was nothing more than lazy programmers (myself included) who opted to design programs using a two digit year (99 instead of 1999). The problem came when the application rolled over to 2000 there would be no way to determine the actual year and most applications would default to 1900.

Yeah. You're correct, of course, but to be fair memory was a precious commodity back then that cost a lot of money, plus we were writing in assembly and told to be frugal. Nobody thought those old programs could possibly last until the next century! How much did a byte cost in core memory? By those standards my laptop has millions of dollars worth of RAM in it.

reply to post by Praetorius


well here is a thread about it

www.abovetopsecret.com...

here is a quote

Dear Art,

I had to fax when I heard other time travelers calling in from any time past the year 2500 AD. Please let me explain.

Time travel was invented in 2034 off shoots of certain successful fusion reactor research allowed scientists at CERN to produce the worlds first contained singularity engine.

The basic design involves rotating singularities inside a magnetic feild. By altering the speed and direction of rotation you can travel both forward and backward in time.

Time itself can be understood in terms of connected lines. When you go back in time you travel on your original time line when you turn the singularity engine off a new time line is created due to the fact that you and your time machine are now there.

In other words a new universe is created. To get back to your original line you must travel a split second farther back and immediately throw the engine into forward without turning it off.

Some interesting outcomes of this are: You meet yourself. I have done it often. Even taken a younger version of myself along for a few rides before returning myself to the new timeline and going back to mine. You can alter history in the new universe that you have just created. Most of the time the changes are subtle. The oldest one was a sky scraper that don't exist in New York. Interestingly when you travel in time you must compensate for the orbit of the Earth since the time machine doesn't move you have to adjust the engine so you remain on the planet when you turn it off.

Now for the future you might want to know about. Y2K is a disaster. Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. The government tries to keep power by instituting marshall law but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail. A few years later communial government system is developed after the constitution takes a few twists. China retakes Tiawan. Isreal wins the largest battle for their life and Russia is covered in Nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors.

imaginativeworlds.com...

Originally posted by schuyler
Yeah. You're correct, of course, but to be fair memory was a precious commodity back then that cost a lot of money, plus we were writing in assembly and told to be frugal. Nobody thought those old programs could possibly last until the next century! How much did a byte cost in core memory? By those standards my laptop has millions of dollars worth of RAM in it.

Very good point, and i've revised my post accordingly. That said, I have worked with my fair share of lazy developers who would cut corners for no other reason than to produce code quickly. Unfortunately, it's always someone else who then has to untangle and decypher their mess at a later stage and the majority of systems I had to fix were exactly these.

I never got a chance, back then, to look at any true legacy systems.. although from speaking with my peers i'm kind of glad I didn't. It seems they got even less sleep than I did