You're quite right in your comments about Y2K -- I was one of those techies who spend scores of hours finding and fixing all the places where the clock would step on itself. Unfortunately the modern internet doesn't lend itself to that kind of pre-emptive fix. The next big one that -is- predictable is the 32-bit unsigned int Unix clock rollover in 2038, but most modern OSes use a 64-bit representation these days.
I spent over a year working on Y2K for a company, from inventorying to code fixing to system testing. There were literally hundreds of programs and thousands of lines of code involved, any one of which was a production killer. It was no myth or false alarm. Most people didn’t have to worry about it though, and weren’t even aware of the crisis, unless they thought it was overhyped. It was probably the most stressful and overworked year of my life.
Is COBOL still alive anywhere?