>We are lucky that the Y2k issue was so understandable by the public.
As someone who was forced to spend Y2K in a "prepped" cabin on the side of a mountain with two years of supplies buried underneath, I think you might overestimate the quality of the public's response to Y2K.
The public did not maturely understand that software needed to be updated and everything was OK.
There was some real panic out there. It was arguably the biggest "End Times" event of the modern era, definitely IMO surpassing "2012" and other "apocalypse panics".
The Y2k preppers and panic, I think, was the foundation for the modern prepper movement and the public's desire to flip from conspiracy to conspiracy to predict collapse.
I think you probably misunderstand the actual size of this public. Between 30% and 40% believe that the earth was created as is between 6k and 10k years ago.
People who believe that the earth evolved over time due to a completely natural process is mostly gaining ground through losses to "god guided evolution" not young earthers who are going strong.
May I ask why you were “forced” to this? Y2K was the only “apocalypse panic” I can recall in 50 years (not counting the Cold War “The Day After” nuclear Armageddon) and I never knew anyone that considered 2012 to be other than a joke.
I remember someone on Usenet (probably in 1998 or 1999) using the term "programmer denialists" to insult programmers who said the Y2K problem was mostly under control.
As someone who was forced to spend Y2K in a "prepped" cabin on the side of a mountain with two years of supplies buried underneath, I think you might overestimate the quality of the public's response to Y2K.
The public did not maturely understand that software needed to be updated and everything was OK.
There was some real panic out there. It was arguably the biggest "End Times" event of the modern era, definitely IMO surpassing "2012" and other "apocalypse panics".
The Y2k preppers and panic, I think, was the foundation for the modern prepper movement and the public's desire to flip from conspiracy to conspiracy to predict collapse.