Why would elevators and stuff fail during the y2k theory?

Question

I get why the computer would think it would be 1900, but I don't get why elevators, and traffic lights and computer programmed things would stop working. I mean like will the computer thing "Oh, it's 1900, there were no elevators in that time, so I'm gonna stop working." It's so confusing!

Answer 1

Its amazing that people are so stupid that they won't check things out for themselves; churches, schools, and businesses were having classes on the doom that was waiting.

They thought that planes would fall from the sky, elevators would fall, atm's would stop functioning, blah blah blah, due to the computer systems failing which would stop their workings. Just like if your computer system went out in your car it would stop running.


I couldn't stop laughing. People were paying thousands to "fix" their computers.

The avg. American is literally clueless. It was like when people were buying up duct tape by the rolls so that they can stop poison gas attacks. Unreal.

P.T. Barnum said it best; A sucker is born every minute.

Answer 2

That would give the computers too much credit.

They are programmed to follow the date along. They aren't like an odometer, that simply goes back to 00000. There would be a malfunction, and at least elements of the computer wouldn't work correctly.

The Y2K situation was real. It cost all sorts of money to reprogram affected devices, and people who knew old computer code even had to be tracked down. It was done well enough to prevent some serious programs that day (1/1/2000).

Answer 3

They believe it had something to do with the Programming in the computers, they thought that something about the year 2000 would make the programming fail, so the computer for planes would shut down and they'd fall out of the sky or something.

Answer 4

People thought the world was going to stop spinning on y2k... they were just freaking out for no reason.

Answer 5

Power outages