It is 25 years since the Y2K panic: Do you remember it?

For people over the age of 30, the Y2K panic of 1999 was a real concern. It seems silly now, but for many people a quarter century ago, it was the dawn of an impending global meltdown.

The tension that built to a crescendo as Dec. 31, 1999, approached stemmed from what appeared to be a small software glitch, NPR reported.

Many older computers had coded dates using only two numbers for the year. When 1999 rolled into 2000, a misinterpretation of “00″ seemed destined to cause errors -- and panic. After all, the programs would assume the “00″ meant “1900.”

Globally, fixing the Y2K problem was a years-long process that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, Lancaster Online reported. Research firm Gartner estimated the cost of Y2K remediation to be between $300 billion to $600 billion, according to the National Museum of American History website.

It was also a source of panic and fear, as people stockpiled supplies and some religious groups prophesied the end of civilization.

According to a Gallup Poll taken in August 1999, 21% of Americans had stocked up on food in anticipation of the Y2K meltdown, TCPalm.com reported. Several industries invested billions of dollars to tamp down concerns about the conversion.

There was basic confusion and wariness, Lancaster Online reported. For example, if a person born in 1982 applied for a driver’s license in 2000, would the computers at the Division of Motor Vehicles read a person’s age as 18 or 82? It was a fair question.

One bank discovered that interest checks for seven-year bonds that were due in 2000 were being issued for millions more than they should have been, according to the website. That was because the bank’s computer system interpreted “00″ as 1900.

Computer specialist Paloma O’Riley compared the scale and urgency of Y2K preparation to telling somebody to change out a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge, NPR reported.

Changing out just one rivet is simple, but “if you suddenly tell this person he now has to change out all the rivets on the bridge and he has only 24 hours to do it in -- that’s a problem,” O’Riley told reporter Jason Beaubien in 1998.

It all seems quaint as 2025 looms, but why was infrastructure not ready for the change?

Stephanie Moore, then a senior analyst with Giga Information Group, told NPR it stemmed from a data-efficiency measure in the expensive early days of computers: formatting years using two digits instead of four, with most computers interpreting “00″ as the year 1900.

“Now, when we roll over to the year 2000, computers -- instead of thinking it’s 2001 -- are going to think it’s 1901,” Moore said.

She added that Y2K would have been avoidable “had we used four-digit year dates all along.”

In October 1998, the U.S. government passed the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act. It was passed to “encourage the disclosure and exchange of information” about computer processing problems, solutions, test practices and test results in connection with the transition to the year 2000.

The act also provided some protection against false compliance statements and limited liability for companies issuing Year 2000 Readiness Disclosures, according to the National Museum of American History website.

As it turned out, the worst fears were anticipating a problem that never materialized. Humanity moved into 2000 without a glitch.

“I’m pleasantly surprised,” John Koskinen, chair of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, told NPR’s “Weekend Edition” on Jan. 1, 2000. “We expected that we would see more difficulties early on, particularly around the world.”

Jack Pentes of Charlotte, North Carolina, said he had filled 50 large soda bottles with tap water to augment his emergency stockpile.

“I used a half a dozen in the washing machine,” he told NPR. “I can’t bear to just pour it out and throw it away. There are too many people in the world that can’t get any decent water.”

Jack Southard, the St. Lucie County public safety director in South Florida, recalled spending Dec. 31, 1999, in the county’s Emergency Operations Center.

“Even though we were 99% sure everything was going to be OK because we’d been preparing for Y2K for over a year, there was still that 1% chance that a switch somewhere might not switch,” Southard told Treasure Coast Newspapers at the time. “When the new year came and nothing happened … I went home, relaxed and had a drink.”

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