Terrifying the public can be a dodgy undertaking nowadays, and in fin de siecle America it's not hard to see why. After a formulaic procession of quotidian disaster flicks such as Asteroid, Deep Impact, and Volcano, audiences seem to be rendered catatonic by catastrophe.

NBC's Y2K, airing Sunday at 9 p.m., falls just as flat.

Technical glitches and Y2K woes are an unconvincing pretext for what turns out to be a rather pedestrian action movie, in which our Hero Designate (Thirtysomething's Ken Olin as Nick Cromwell) must pull the plug on a Seattle nuclear power plant before it vomits radioactive detritus over much of North America. Bonus incentive: His daughter and wife are downwind.

Sound familiar? It should. Anyone who's suffered through similar brink-of-the-apocalypse flicks knows what happens next. (It's no coincidence that the movie's executive producer is David Israel, creator of the even more banal viral-terror miniseries Pandora's Clock.)

In fact, the most interesting thing about Y2K might be the buzz. Can fictitious depictions of a jet screaming toward the Potomac River, blackouts spreading from Virginia to Canada, and cash machines not doing what they're told panic Americans?

Without even seeing the two-hour movie, industry groups have become as jittery as Bill Gates near a pie factory. The Edison Electric Institute – a trade association representing the big power companies – has repeatedly asked TV stations not to air it. "It is our hope that your station might be willing to consider alternative programming that evening," EEI wrote in a letter to all NBC affiliates.

Bankers got queasy, too. "We strongly urge you to pull this movie," the Independent Community Bankers of America wrote in a letter to NBC. The network did not return phone calls.

But they shouldn't worry. It's not particularly likely that NBC would air a movie that would incite a riot at the local supermarket – "cause the herd to stampede," in typically unflattering Y2Kese – and anyway, in the end, Cromwell manages to stave off disaster.

That's an ending sure to disappoint both computer buffs hoping for a sober discussion of the risks of unreliable technology, and Y2Kers who have busied themselves stockpiling guns, gold, and grain – while hoping for a movie that would demonstrate to their family that it isn't entirely nutty to stuff one's attic with bulk beans and rice.

It won't be this one. Y2K shows us one too-stereotypical survivalist busy girding his suburban ranch home with barbed wire.

He gets shot by US Army soldiers.

But the biggest problem with the movie isn't its hackneyed approach to storytelling, which is no worse than similar efforts in the genre. It's not even the predictable onslaught of horrors designed to play on human fears: Missing children, airplane crashes, problems giving birth, getting lost in a rowdy New York City crowd, blackouts, riots, and martial law.

No, it's the sheer implausibility of the last few minutes that should make any rational person irritable. If a nuclear plant in Sweden really did contaminate "millions" of acres of Europe and Asia and there really were blackouts that left half of the United States paralyzed and open to looting and riots, why is that a happy ending?