And the eternal question: Were the millions spent to fix the Y2K bug well spent? Well, maybe so because in the end the world did not end!
Interesting details on the technical parts, the bugs that really caused some problems, and the government initiatives that were made to avoid problems from occurring:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
Quoting (interesting parts):
"The U.S. Government also established a Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability, as a joint operation with the Russian Federation. It was a liaison operation designed to mitigate the possibility of false positive readings in each nation's nuclear attack early warning systems."
(...)
"No banks failed, no planes crashed, no wars or civil war started. And yet not one of these prophets of doom has ever apologised for their scare-mongering tactics."[55] Some prominent North American Christian ministries and leaders generated huge personal and corporate profits through sales of Y2K preparation kits, generators, survival guides, published prophecies and a wide range of other associated merchandise. Christian journalist, Rob Boston, has documented this[50] in his article "False Prophets, Real Profits Religious Right Leaders' Wild Predictions of Y2K Disaster Didn't Come True, But They Made Money Anyway""
(...)
"The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K is estimated at over US$300 billion ($417 billion today, once inflation is taken into account).[57][58] IDC calculated that the US spent an estimated $134 billion ($186 billion) preparing for Y2K, and another $13 billion ($18 billion) fixing problems in 2000 and 2001. Worldwide, $308 billion ($428 billion) was estimated to have been spent on Y2K remediation.[59]"
PS: A similar problem on a space mission that did have impact on the mission:
"The Deep Impact space mission was lost when its internal clock reached exactly 232 one-tenth seconds since 2000 on 11 August 2013, 00:38:49."
