There's a Y2K38 coming up for UNIX in 2038. Similar problem.
I was in high school at the time. It was a real problem and luckily around 1996-1997 people started taking it seriously. Programmers of old systems were taken out of retirement to help. If they hadn't taken it seriously and had the prep time the world wouldn't have ended but more likely global society would have been set back at least a decade if not more. Payments wouldn't have been processed. Supply chains would have ground to a halt. If you want to imagine what a bad case scenaruio for Y2K would have been imagine the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster happening multiple times. As the Earth turned, each time zone having at least one nuclear power plant haviing computer failure as the clock struck midnight.
The problem began with punchcards in the early days of computers. A standard computer punchcard had eighty digits. Programmers figured out that for a year number that had to be in the data they could leave out the 19- saving sparing two of the eighty digits. For example, if you invested $1000 in 1970 and wanted to calculate what you would have in 1972 by leaving out two ones and two nines for the years that's four digits on the punchcard saved. As computers progressed those old programmers taught the new programmers how to save memory by having the data assume a two digit date occurs in the 1900s. So those programmers went on and by the 1990s a whole bunch of computers were assuming that instead of 2000 it was 1900. In the investment example, the computer would be calculating your $1000 investment in 1970 and calculating what it would be worth in 1900. Or the Social Security office would stop paying you because how could you be eligible for retirement in 2000 when it's 1900 and you won't be born for another 35 years?
Keep in mind that even by the 1990s a lot of computer networks were interconnected so even if most were "Y2K compliant" a network or two not set up would be propagating the 1900 error to the functioning networks
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wow that was a lot to handle, cant imagine if those moment will be chaotic or not because humans are easily scared during this kind moment. I had to reach about Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster, our gen z generation really didn't have any idea about the thing of the old and how disastrous it could be.