In a standard 32-bit OS you can store a date for exactly 2,147,483,647 seconds after January 1, 1970.
This leads to the famous Year 2038 Problem (or "Epochalypse").
The Breakdown
- The Deadline: The clock will "run out" at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038.
- The Reason: Systems traditionally used a signed 32-bit integer to track time. This format uses one bit for the positive/negative sign, leaving 31 bits to count seconds.
- The Result: One second after the deadline, the number will "overflow" and wrap around to a negative value. Most 32 bit systems will suddenly believe it is December 13, 1901.
The MySQL Timestamp Field still has this issue as per the latest version
The TIMESTAMP data type is used for values that contain both date and time parts. TIMESTAMP has a range of '1970-01-01 00:00:01' UTC to '2038-01-19 03:14:07' UTC.
See also: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/23/the_unix_epochalypse_might_be/
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