This all reminds me of the Millenium Bug.
On the stroke of the new millenium, computers were supposed to fail causing power supplies to fail, planes to fall from the sky, everything to stop working. In a word, Armageddon.
And what happened? A load of IT people made a shedload of money, companies shelled out thousands on bug fixes and the rest of us crossed our fingers and hoped.

Apart from a massive hangover, I did not notice anything different about Jan 1 2000. The harbingers of doom were all piss and wind!!