I think it was in "Futurama" where someone said, "if you've done everything right, it will be like you've done nothing at all." Y2K is a great example. We don't know for sure if it would have been that bad left unchecked, but all the work done to fix the problem ensured that nothing happened - and now the conventional wisdom is that it was always overblown if not an outright scam.
"Duck and Cover" in the fifties is a similar example. Because it was so intertwined with the Red Scare (which in turn was so overblown that people now *underestimate* how many Soviet moles were in the US government, but that's another post) it's written off as Cold War propaganda meant to make people think nuclear war was survivable.
Indeed, if you were near Ground Zero it wouldn't help at all. But if you're further away from the blast, debris, building collapses and shattered glass are your most pressing concerns. Hiding under a desk could literally save your life.
I can add to the aviation fears with a very real data point. If you compare traffic at Heathrow Airport New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 98/99 and 00/01 with 99/00 those two days were down about two thirds on the year's either side.
I feel like it’s cheating to use “the media hyped up a thing as scary” as your bad thing for a year. That’s what the media does! It’s how they sell papers and clicks! It’s not a property of any particular year.
So for the record, I am a GenX software developer and I was mildly worried about Y2K, to the point that I took my young family up into the mountains to celebrate new years. We packed some extra food and my shotgun, just in case.
I'm a little more worried about January 19th, 2038. I am sure that most critical infrastructure will be fine, but there are a *lot* of embedded devices all over the world using Unix Epoch time, and I have no confidence that they'll all be replaced.
I think it was in "Futurama" where someone said, "if you've done everything right, it will be like you've done nothing at all." Y2K is a great example. We don't know for sure if it would have been that bad left unchecked, but all the work done to fix the problem ensured that nothing happened - and now the conventional wisdom is that it was always overblown if not an outright scam.
"Duck and Cover" in the fifties is a similar example. Because it was so intertwined with the Red Scare (which in turn was so overblown that people now *underestimate* how many Soviet moles were in the US government, but that's another post) it's written off as Cold War propaganda meant to make people think nuclear war was survivable.
Indeed, if you were near Ground Zero it wouldn't help at all. But if you're further away from the blast, debris, building collapses and shattered glass are your most pressing concerns. Hiding under a desk could literally save your life.
I can add to the aviation fears with a very real data point. If you compare traffic at Heathrow Airport New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 98/99 and 00/01 with 99/00 those two days were down about two thirds on the year's either side.
I feel like it’s cheating to use “the media hyped up a thing as scary” as your bad thing for a year. That’s what the media does! It’s how they sell papers and clicks! It’s not a property of any particular year.
So for the record, I am a GenX software developer and I was mildly worried about Y2K, to the point that I took my young family up into the mountains to celebrate new years. We packed some extra food and my shotgun, just in case.
I'm a little more worried about January 19th, 2038. I am sure that most critical infrastructure will be fine, but there are a *lot* of embedded devices all over the world using Unix Epoch time, and I have no confidence that they'll all be replaced.