The Millennium Bug

 

The Millennium Bug aka Y2K, or the Y2K error, was a portent of an approaching mass computer malfunction caused by the limitations of the standard six digit calendar format used by most computers. This means the current date, the 14th of March 2022, would be stored in such a database as 14/03/22. The obstacle is obvious. In this format the year 2000 is identical to 1900. This contradiction was predicted to lead to electronics crashing in enormous numbers. Such a crisis was considered by some an approaching Armageddon scenario and in preparation for New Year 2000 people stockpiled food, bought weapons and prepared shelters in their basements; like they still do today for other reason like nuclear holocaust, asteroid impact, viral pandemic etc. Comedians found inspiration from it too, like with The Simpsons episode entitled Life's a Glitch and Then you Die, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whu5nr17DYA and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbQsxZvHeI0. Luckily there was a simple solution, to introduce a new calendar format with eight digits, which would record today as 14/03/2022. However the task of upgrading every computer in the world was Herculean. It was only half finished when the clocks chimed midnight on New Year's Eve. As it happened, there were a small number of breakdowns, but happily the DoS Doomsday never came to pass.
 
When it came to the upgrading campaign, a number of institutions were prioritized. One of those was of course hospitals. Imagine the catastrophe if intensive care life support machines suddenly stopped working. Despite the worthy effort by the IT's in the NHS, my hospital was not prepared to take any risks. In December 1999 we took action. I was assigned to a team dealing with anaesthetic machines. These are interconnected systems of oxygen and medicated gas delivery used during surgery. For information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaesthetic_machine. All the ones in the JRH were modern and computerized; in fact I remember bringing the new ones into the Delivery Suite theatres a couple of years earlier. They replaced the older and purely mechanical ones that had been there since I joined the department in 1990. We had luckily kept them in the Level 0 storeroom! No doubt they were bound for the scrap yard and would have been gone before much longer. It took a couple of days to move every one of the heavy devices all the way from theatre to a temporary storage location. This had to be secure though because modern anaesthetic machines are worth about a million pounds each and there was always the fear that somebody might steal one. Therefore we had to find a spare chamber with a lock on the door which could be monitored by security. When the older machines were in place the theatre techs installed them and these were used for the entire new millennium period. During January 2000 tests were carried out on the modern machines and when it was certain they would work alright, we carried out the same assignment in reverse. We did get overtime pay so maybe apocalypse scenarios aren't all that bad. It was not only we porters who benefited from the "Y2K industry". Software manufacturers are estimated to have made billions in sales of their new suites. Cynics said afterwards that the threat of the Y2K error was exaggerated deliberately for this purpose. They pointed to South Korea, a country which had no state Millennium Bug alleviation programme and yet did not suffer more computer crashes than any other country which did. Who knows what was true or false? It's all hypothetical. I suppose if I were a patient at that time I would have wanted to play my caution card. As it was, thanks to the good old HP's and other NHS staff, we played it for them.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2020/07/programme-379-podcast-apocalypse.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html.