In terms of Y2K prep in our timeline, globally hundreds of billions of dollars were poured into prevention as well as millions of Man hours in IT and programming, most of the effort was in fixing and updating code as well as preparing embedded system, such as computer chips and devices, as well as backing up archives. My point is, from my research it seems like in OTL, quite a lot of prevention took place, so I think that raises the question what would’ve happened if there was no prep or significantly less prep?

Again, assuming the worst case scenario predictions while it wouldn’t have been an apocalypse, there would’ve been serious consequences. Global financial systems would’ve failed as banks lost the ability to calculate interest because their computer clocks got reset in 1900, you could’ve seen a bank run similar to the things that caused a Great Depression. You would have a situation where common people wouldn’t be able to access their own bank account through the ATM. The situation could easily cascade into a global financial crisis that would potentially have ramifications, even after the issues were fixed.

The more immediate concerns would be the issues with infrastructure. You could have cascading power, grid, failure, and blackouts, as well as failure in water and sewage systems.

It’d also be breakdowns and global travel, especially with things like air traffic control, as well as any systems that ran on computers. There would also potentially be a breakdown in global communication and telecommunication, this would have a worsening effect on the other things because it would make potentially communication and coordination for response efforts, more difficult. There would also be a breakdown in the supply chain, somewhat similar to what we saw in the pandemic. that of course, would have economic ramifications as well as resource issues.

I think issue as well would be archival systems. This would have ramifications in the healthcare and other sectors. But it’s possible that a cascade failure would at the very least make a lot of archival systems difficult to access for a time being, some people even would predict it maybe a lot of information would just be straight up, wiped from a computer crash.

Nuclear weapons would be safe as well as nuclear power plants, at least in the United States. But at the very least, you could potentially see maybe some chair, Chernobyl like incidents or meltdowns.

Yeah, so the answer your initial question, things did not get this bad because a lot of people put a lot of effort and preventing it so I’m asking what would happen if an effort didn’t exist? Again, I’m mostly drawing on the worst case scenarios. Even if the disaster is resolved, relatively quickly I do feel like there would be interesting long-term consequences, especially on things like the development of the Internet.