Y2K incident and apocalyptic obsession 20 years ago

Tram Ho

People used to turn the earth back to the Stone Age just by an incident that came from the computer’s time recording.

These days, 20 years ago, I clearly remember the people around me gossiping about what was “the end of 2000” and “the Y2K incident” that caused the computer system to collapse. Unknowingly, people see Y2K as a disaster that can cause the earth to perish.

Not only do I see that. My neighbors in a central province were frantically hoarding instant noodles before New Year’s Eve in 2000. Going to the market, people told each other about the end of the world, passing hands on sensational articles about the time to come. come.

My uncle, a rare person who had computers at that time, explained that the Y2K incident was being overcome by software and no one died. Even so, the apocalyptic fear still haunts the mind of a middle school student like me, making me not dare to celebrate at the time of New Year’s Eve. I watched the new millennium news on TV with a cautious attitude, though quickly fell asleep later.

What is the Y2K problem?

About 20 years ago, the whole world was racing to prevent a global disaster from the Y2K incident. Many pessimistic forecasts are made, such as the computer system will collapse completely, the traffic system is stalled, banks, governments, manufacturing corporations and computer users will manage their jobs. must close.

Y2K is the name used to refer to computer problems that took place in the first moment to 2000. This word is so popular that it was included in the Cambridge dictionary with the meaning of “refers to a problem that is expected to occur on a computer.” when the time shifted from 1999 to 2000 ”. What is the cause of this incident?

Since before 2000, in order to save storage space in the context of extremely expensive memory, computers and electronic clock circuits have only used the last two digits of the year. For example, instead of saving 1991, the computer at that time saved simply 91.

Everything has been going on since the 1960s and 70s, but by the end of the 1990s, programmers realized that computers could not distinguish between 1900 and 2000 because they all had the end of 00. Thus, when transferring to the new century, all activities that use computers and electronic clock circuits will be turned upside down.

A dark perspective that the researchers point out, the global computer system collapsed with everything it was responsible for managing, embedded systems using electronic clock circuits also suffered the same number. fate.

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People have thought about the chaos that took place on the first day of 2000, the global financial crisis, congested transport infrastructure, uncontrolled nuclear missiles … Life on the planet will return. about the Stone Age just because of how to encode time.

The race before the “end of the world”

Fortunately, technology experts have discovered this a few years ago, so humans have the opportunity to correct and avoid an artificial apocalypse. Billions of dollars and millions of people have joined the global scale campaign, racing against time to fix computer system errors.

Governments around the world have established special committees to assess and correct incidents. Important areas such as transport infrastructure, banking management systems, stock exchanges, security and defense systems … are top priorities.

The whole world is working on reprogramming the entire computer system, replacing unsuitable old hardware, installing new software versions that have been fixed for storage errors and year displays.

There are no accurate statistics on the amount of material wealth and human resources spent to prevent this disaster. According to Wikipedia , global estimates have spent more than $ 300 billion at the time to fix the problem, equivalent to $ 436 billion at the time of January 2018.

In 2006, market research firm IDC said that the US spent about 134 billion USD on Y2K troubleshooting.

To modify the entire system related to computers and devices with embedded software, it is obvious that other countries also have to spend a lot of money.

What happen?

New Year’s Eve 2000 is probably the most exciting New Year’s Eve in human history. From the leaders of governments, technology experts or every citizen are anxious during the transition.

However, in the end everything went smoothly. No serious incidents were recorded, not a nuclear bomb explosion, no completely paralyzed transportation system or an incident with heavy consequences as people still worry.

However, there are also some things that happen in the manner that was foretold. On December 28, 1999, 10,000 cards of HSBC Bank were produced by Racal Company, which stopped the transactions of receiving and withdrawing money, so transactions had to be transferred to paper transactions.

In Japan radiation monitoring equipment does not work at midnight, but does not pose any risk. Osaka Media Port has a telecommunications device that is faulty because of data processing, errors are fixed in time and not harmful.

In Australia, the machine checks bus tickets to stop working. In France, the national weather forecast service, Meteo France, appeared on the website with programming reasons, the site displayed on January 1, 1900.

In the US, the Coast Guard’s message processing system has been affected. Reagan National Airport, check-in routes last long after baggage handling programs are affected by incidents. At the Offutt air base in southern Omaha, the records of aircraft maintenance parts cannot be accessed.

The lesson about Y2K is still valid

The Y2K incident has not been as dark as what was predicted, but will things go back without the drastic, urgent action of governments around the globe?

Today, inherent errors in technology systems still exist, sometimes people accidentally forget and by the time it suddenly becomes a disaster.

The GPS navigation system stops working after completing the 20-year cycle at 7:59 pm 6/4 European time, ie 7 am 7/4 Vietnam time. In theory, this incident may affect traffic navigation systems and even some important infrastructure in communications, traffic and electricity networks.

However, in fact, manufacturers and units using GPS have received warnings about this for many years, along with the experience gained from the Y2K incident, the satellite used for GPS has been upgraded. so the global positioning system can run for another hundred years.

In addition, by 2038 computers using software using 32-bit integers to store information will have similar problems Y2K nearly 20 years ago. This incident is more than 20 years away, while computers have gradually shifted to 64-bit systems, allowing up to 292 billion years of storage.

The Y2k incident has shown the great role of information technology in social life. Today, this position is strengthened and becomes a key element of human society.

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