The problem is overflow of 32-bit integers. If any systems using 32-bit timestamp are in service at that time, they won't necessarily crash. The date will simply roll back to January 1, 1970.
For software that depends on date calculations, that could be a problem resulting in a crash. However, lots of systems would remain functional, with only minor annoyances, like wrong date stamps in logs, wrong date displayed or printed. A traffic light controller that uses different timings for weekdays and weekends may get confused about what day it is, but I don't see any obvius reason why it should stop working completely.
By the way, all of the above also applied to the Y2K issue, except that was overflow of two digit decimal numbers. My Y2K non-compliant microwave didn't stop reheating my food, it just failed to automatically update the clock to daylight savings time four months later.
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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
In all honesty, who would really be expecting to use a 32-bit PC in 2038?
It has nothing to do with how many bits your architecture is; it has to do with the size of the integer used to hold the timestamp. A 32-bit CPU is perfectly capable of working with a 64-bit integer, except that on the machine code level single instruction operations become a few instructions (operating on 32-bit halves one at a time).
