The miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.
For the anecdote, the same argument was made in Paris in the 16-17th century. So many holes and tunnels had been dug underneath it (in addition to the natural holes due to the geology of the area) that an occasional building would crumble.
By the time entire city blocks were collapsing into the ground, directives had been given to fill the unneeded holes and tunnels with gravel and bones (they also had over-crowded graveyard problems). The city survived that way until concrete was invented.
My point here is that many organizations tend to wait for the last minute to do any software maintenance, but coders (like civil engineers) as a lot get the job done, fast and well.
We survived the Y2k bug. The Y2036 bug will force many an organization to upgrade its hardware and software. The world could end in 2012. But computer scientists are not sociologists or literary critics.
Oh, and as the saying goes in the meanwhile: write code as if the next maintainer is a vicious psychopath who knows where you live.