In Memorium of Bob Bemer, without whom Turbo and the others wouldn’t have had 20 years of work to build off of to fix the Y2K issue in the first place. February 8, 1920-June 22, 2004
This is a 9 minute long video about Y2K, a news broadcast about it. It really shows how scared people were of what they thought was going to happen.
And an article actually explaining what it was and why it scared people.
It’s about this time when we got distracted learning about the Y2K Czars! So here’s a link to where you can also read more in depth about the many czars we’ve had.
There were so many ridiculous commercial and infomercials on the TV in 1999 for products related to prepping for Y2K survival. Here’s just one. If you really want one of these, you can find them on Ebay for like, $30.
I mean, this article just looks back at more ways Y2K was used to try to sell us stuff.
Let’s not forget all the weird survival guides that people were putting out at the time. People were really pushing for everyone to just become a doomsday prepper for just a little while.
Of course we’ve also got this very odd movie about how devastating Y2K might be! It goes right in there with other doomsday movies like 2012 and Day After Tomorrow.
Look at this absolutely odd Time magazine cover from 1999. Whether they intended it to be satirical or not, it comes across as very fearmongering and the article is about how to prep for the possible apocalypse.
In contrast, and very strangely, look at the cover to the satirical paper The Weekly World News. This one is definitely intended to be tongue in cheap, but it looks more presentable. At least when buying this one, people know what they’re getting.
Honestly, for a good, concise list of conspiracy theories and the glitches that happened as a result of Y2K, look at Wikipedia and come through the sources on the bottom for more about a particular one you’re interested in.
This article talks about what happened in the aftermath when Y2K didn’t actually happen.
People who were small children or who weren’t born yet can look back on Y2K and laugh about how panicked everyone got, but it was a problem no one had to face before. The only reason it wasn’t a bigger deal was because people like our guest Rissa’s dad and Bob worked hard to make it a smooth transition.
And, you know, like we said at the end of the episode, we should all be thanking Bob, the guy who saw the problem 20 years before everyone else and worked on the solution the whole time while no one else believed him. For you, Bob!
Feb 8, 1920 – June 22, 2004
Leave a Reply