The sun came up right on schedule this New Year's Day. The telephones still rang, the electricity was on and banking and stock market officials were confident that it will be business as usual come Monday.
So what caused the vast hype and paranoia about Y2K?"There certainly has been a tragic and comic aspect to all of this. Many of those people who stocked up on water, food and other things may be surprised," said Paul Kurtz, a professor of philosophy in New York and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
"We faced a puzzle as we entered the 21st century," Kurtz said. "We are the most scientific and technological of societies, but we also have a vast undercurrent of medieval superstition and paranoia."
Experts and government leaders agree that Y2K was a serious problem and it was fixed, but not before millions of Americans purchased small stockpiles of dried and canned foods, withdrew unusually large sums of money from their savings accounts or installed back-up electric generators in their homes, according to national surveys conducted throughout 1999 by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.
Others retreated from civilization, building homes in rural areas and learning to live "off the grid" without utility-generated electrical power.
"The panic-mongers were suggesting that every American had to have a personal contingency plan; that we all had to have a lot of bottled water, food, shotguns and lots of shells," said Harris N. Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, a computer industry group. "But we collectively solved the problem rather than relying upon individual action."
Throughout the year there were many voices whispering -- and sometimes shouting -- prophecies of doom because older mainframe computer programs and embedded microchip circuitry could not distinguish between the years 1900 and 2000. Some of the claims were staggering.
"The sad fact is that millions of American's lives are going to be disrupted," said Chicago-based stockbroker Dennis Grabow in February. "This will be the greatest wealth-transfer event of the 20th century. We are looking at a recession that is going to last for years and it is going to be bumpy."
Grabow, like several other professional financial advisers, toured the nation last year, giving terrifying lectures and inviting investors to consider hedge funds like the one he created through his Millennium Investment Corp.
Then there was best-selling author and programming expert Ed Yourdon, whose book "Time Bomb 2000" is credited with spurring businesses and governments to work harder on the glitch. Some of the dire warnings Yourdon presented in that book bordered on the bizarre.
"It's also possible that certain careers or professions will vanish because of sharp changes in the fashion, taste, or hobbies of society following a massive Y2000 failure," he wrote. "Maybe we'll abandon baseball as the national hobby -- a change that will not only be catastrophic for today's highly paid athletes but also for those who sell peanuts and beer in the stadium."
As 1999 progressed, Yourdon maintained what he called a "pessimistic outlook" on America's efforts to fix the problem. He became increasingly strident in his criticisms of the government and the news media, which he said were guilty of "spin control" and presenting "a widespread theme that they're in control of the situation."
Yourdon moved into a solar-powered home in Taos, N.M., announced in June that he would no longer be available for interviews and posted a message on his Web site that it was time to "say goodbye to Y2K."
"Ed Yourdon just gave up and moved to New Mexico. He's a bright guy, but he essentially said, 'Phooey on all of you' and left. That certainly was not helpful," Miller said.
Then there was a mighty multitude of gloomy voices on the Internet, perhaps the most prominent of which came from historian and former congressional research assistant Gary North, who started a Web site in January 1997 dedicated to the "millennium bug." Recently he has been especially scornful of government confidence that the problem was being solved.
"All things are going according to standard operating procedures -- the public relations handouts, unverified positive statements and verbal assurances that everything is fine," North said in his current Internet statement. "Things will not break down all at once in early January unless the power grid goes down and stays down. But the domino effect will create ever-increasing institutional noise and confusion throughout January and beyond. Your check will not be in the mail."
At the same time, fears about the computer glitch were resonating throughout many religious groups. Television evangelist Jerry Falwell produced the video "A Christian's Survival Guide to the Millennium Bug" and several religious broadcasting groups devoted hundreds of hours to the subject.
"Ultimately our trust is in the Lord," said John O'Farrell, who began stocking up on food stuffs at mid year along with other members of his Rio Rancho, N.M., church. "But we need to do a little on our part. In Proverbs it talks about ants preparing for the off-season, and we believe we have an obligation to be prepared."
Yet the overwhelming majority of the public did not buy into the fears and grew increasingly confident as 1999 progressed, according to polling data.
"This thing is winding down," said dry food wholesaler Steve Portela in late April. Sales were slumping at his Walton Feed Store in Montpelier, Idaho, long a favorite of Y2K survivalists who stocked up on a several-years supply of dried beans and other imperishable food stuffs. "All of the news has been good. The fears are falling off."
By early June, 78 percent of adults participating in a national survey conducted by Scripps Howard and Ohio University said they expected the computer glitch will produce either "no problems at all" or only minor inconveniences. An even larger number said the realities of Y2K would not be as dire as many of the gloomy scenarios sometimes portrayed by the news media.
By the end of 1999, surveys found that the majority of Americans were becoming emphatic that they would do "absolutely nothing" to prepare for the Y2K bug.
"The panic-mongers did not win," Miller said. "They were a very small group of people and they pretty much failed abysmally. What about all those Y2K kits filled with water, some dried beans and flashlights? I think a lot of people in the year 3000 will be taping 3's over the Y2K kits they still have."
Both Miller and Kurtz warn that Americans must not come to believe the threat was an illusion.
"We have to remember that Y2K was a genuine problem," Kurtz said. "But there have always been prophecies of doom and people who worry about the future."
Given time, he said, Americans came to realize this.
Thomas Hargrove is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service.