Twenty years ago this week, people were in fear for their lives. Everything could fall apart: hospital equipment would stop working and patients would die, planes would drop from the sky, emergency calls would go unanswered, electric grids would fail and cities would go dark.

It’s hard to believe today, but the impending Y2K threat was such that governments around the world spent the equivalent of $448 billion in today’s money to counter it. The fear was that computers and systems dependent on them would stop working on at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000. It was scary enough that TIME shouted “The End of the World?” on its cover.

Of course, none of that happened. “It barely affected us professionally,” says Tom Barrons. He and his brother Tim of Byte Productions were among the early pioneers in the digital world in northern Michigan. “We have always worked on Mac and Linux machines whose operating systems didn’t really have an issue with four-digit years.

“The web was in such a state of infancy, there were just so few customers who really had anything that would be date-affected. E-commerce just wasn’t an affordable thing for a small boutique shop to have. Think about how long ago that was – Amazon didn’t sell anything but books at that time. Facebook didn’t even exist.”

The potential for Armageddon stemmed from the fact that when computer engineers worked on complex computer programs in the 60s and 70s, they used two-digit codes to represent the year, leaving out the first two digits. Storage space was at a premium and was terribly costly, so instead of coding “1960,” they just used “60.” As the new millennium neared, computer experts worried that the software might recognize “00” as 1900 instead of the year 2000.

Steve Weaver, IT Administrator at Cherryland Electric Coop, says the year leading up to Y2K was spent running tests on servers to make sure they would pass without any problems. “Which they all did.  I don’t recall a single program or system that needed to be replaced due to any bugs related to Y2K. Our electrical plant was still largely manual at that time and wouldn’t have been affected,” he says.

Dan Sal, now assistant airport director of operations and maintenance at Cherry Capital Airport, was then working for United Airlines. “We were prepared to do things manually – manually issue tickets and boarding passes. It took longer but we were prepared. But everything went fine,” he says.

There was a little more trepidation at Munson Medical Center. Leslie Casperson, MSN, RN-BC, Administrative Supervisor at Munson Medical Center, says the hospital was ready for anything.“Planning for the switchover from 1999 to 2000 started several months before the day arrived. There were emergency measures in place just in case our phones stopped working and computers crashed,” she says. “Every unit had a backup red phone – we called them bat-phones – with a different phone number. The list of alternate phone numbers was distributed by runners throughout the building.”

Casperson says there was an ample supply of electric lanterns and flashlights in case the lights went out. The EKG re-programmers were available on standby just in case there were interface problems. And all of the red plugs for backup generator power were confirmed to be working properly. “We had extra staff available throughout the organization and an extra switchboard operator on duty … just in case.”

Another place where there were jitters was 911/Central Dispatch. Jason Torrey, now the director there, says preparations were underway well in advance. “There was considerable concern at the time because of the critical nature of the computer systems we use here in 911, and the unknown affects the Y2K bug might have on those systems,” says Torrey. “Obviously this was not only a local concern, but a national and global conversation as well. We are always looking at redundancy and resiliency when building and maintaining these systems, but the more unsettling question in 1999 was the fact that even those redundant systems could be affected.”

As the moment of truth approached, the level of apprehension increased. “Everyone was in ‘countdown’ mode, just like watching the ball drop at Times Square in New York,” says Casperson. But as it turned out, the event was completely anti-climactic. “What we were prepared for and what actually happened were two totally different situations. Nothing happened. We didn’t miss a beat. Nothing failed. It was smooth. The turnover was exactly like every other year.”

Torrey was similarly relieved. “As the clock rolled over to midnight on that New Years Eve we had staff on site to address any issues, and were pleased to see that everything just kept ticking, without even the smallest problems.”

“I remember being at Sugarloaf that New Years Eve – yeah, it was still open back then – and for a brief moment I think everyone thought about it,” says Byte Productions’ Barrons. “You cheered, then you sang ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and then you had a discussion with your friends that went something like, ’Hey, cool, the lights are still on.’”