Reply #16: As for "surpass Y2K on the crazy scale"...

[Silent3]

I hope you don't think there weren't any real issues of concern regard Y2K.

Yes, there was a lot of overblown hype, and excessive worry about some pretty remote to non-existent possible failures (huge power failures, complete break down of emergency services, etc.), but there was a mountain of work that had to be done to make the Y2K transition go smoothly. It's only because plenty of people did take Y2K seriously and did nearly all of the hard work that had to be done ahead of time that things went as smoothly as they did on 1/1/2000, with only a few scattered incidents of ATM and billing problems.

If you take the fact that Y2K went fairly smoothly as evidence that there never was any reason for concern, that's learning exactly the wrong lesson from history. Y2K preparedness was one of the rare incidents in human history where people reacted to a seemingly abstract danger (like global warming is for far too many people) and put in a lot of effort ahead of time to avert a problem rather than waiting for crisis to strike and then having a much bigger mess to deal with after the fact, the usual modus operandi for humanity.