If you didn’t live through it, the barely-contained (mostly) hysteria around the changeover from 1999 to 2000 might seem a little hard to imagine.

A new trailer released by HBO for Time Bomb Y2K on Tuesday gives a small glimpse into what it was like to have end of the millennium celebrations tempered by the thought of having the every system that used computers, like air traffic control, phone and electrical systems, and the government, all shutting down at that moment, leading to mass panic.

While that doomsday scenario never materialized, the threat of the end of days felt very real at the time, and prompted many to prepare for the worst. The film uses archival video to present first-hand accounts of that time from various people – computer experts, survivalists, scholars, militia groups, conservative Christians, and even pop icons as they confront their fears of a world that could descend into chaos.

Time Bomb Y2K was directed by Brian Becker and Marley McDonald, and documents the events leading up to the year 2000 when then entire world scrambled to update its computer systems or risk global catastrophe, all because computers were formatted using two digits to indicate the year rather than four. Fearing that computers might misinterpret the year 2000 for 1900, which could cause every computer everywhere to crash, (because they didn’t exist in 1900, or something like that), leading to the worldwide meltdown.

The documentary looks at how then-Pesident Bill Clinton tried to get ahead of the problem in 1998 by creating a “Y2K Czar,” but that didn’t allay the fears of everyone: some people stockpiled supplies armaments, moved off the grid, or even formed cults, so sure were they that the end of the world was nigh.

Though the Y2K fears have all but fizzled out, technology takeovers are still very much in the forefront of the national consciousness due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence in technology, business and even the arts, and the doc will also explore more broadly how modern life has been transformed by the digital revolution of the past 30 years or so.

Y2K Time Bomb can be streamed on Max beginning December 30th, 2023, just in time for your New Year’s Eve party.