January 19 2038: The epochalypse?
Leading up to the year 2000 people became worried that computers would not be able to deal with handling the year going from 1999 to 2000. This led companies and institutions to invest in pre-emptive measures to prepare their technology. And some people prepared for an acopalyptic situation by stocking up on food, water and cash.
A likewise situation known as the Epochalypse may unfold on January 19 2038, but to better understand what could happen on that date, let’s first look at:
What was the Y2K scare about?
The Y2K scare was caused by the way some computers represented the number of the year: only using the last 2 digits, like 99 for the year 1999.
What people were worried about was that when the year 2000 would arrive, these computers would represent the year with 00 and that this would be mistaken as the year 1900.
When the year 2000 came, no major problems occurred. The worries might have been ungrounded. Or were the pre-emptive measures, like software updates, the reason that nothing happened?
Although the bug was referred to as the millennium bug, it didn’t really have to do with the changing of the millennium but rather the changing of the…
