International transactions are suspended. Despite safeguards, stock markets crash, triggering trillion-dollar lawsuits. Food riots erupt. Civil disorder follows. Interconnected by a vast and now dormant electronic matrix, the world is in disarray.
Computers are basically stupid.
They follow instructions that humans program them to do. If the instructions make no sense to the computer, strange things can happen. Maybe the program will run erroneously. Maybe it will cease to run altogether. The date problem is crucial because dates are fundamental to the calculation of algorithms for virtually every type of electronic operation.