In believing that a crisis is imminent and seeking to prepare, people have a way of helping it to come about. While Y2K may affect some people for the negative when an electronic device fails, we are not staring at the apocalypse until we introduce the human element.I fear the public's reaction... I fear food shortages because idiots think the world will grind to a halt and must stockpile. I fear financial collapse because people will withdraw their money from banks thinking their funds will be erased come 2000. I fear looting mobs. I fear I may have to reset the clock on my PC or live with it thinking the year is 1900. Notice however that I don't fear the clock rollover itself - just the reactions of an uneducated and rash public.
There wouldn't be much of a problem if everyone didn't fuss so much... the media frenzy over it doesn't help matters any either.
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McSpotlight: there were similar outbreaks of millenial panic around the turn of the last millenium; people thinking that the Day of Judgement was at hand.
True, there would be less panic if people didn't fuss so much; but this is not something that humans do. The major banks and institutions are expecting a massive run in the autumn. It is also possible that a nuclear exchange could be triggered by accident.
(However, what not many people have realized is that there is a more serious problem before the New Year; many of the older mainframes treat a date of 9999 as a condition for rollover; meaning that the 1st of October could be...interesting. There was a survey of UK banks that were informed about this problem last year; only 2 out of 15 banks had even heard of the problem...)
