epoch-brick

February 2016. Word spreads that you can brick any 64-bit iPhone by setting its date to January 1, 1970. People try it as a prank and their phones never boot again, not even after a charge or a reset. The clock counts seconds from that exact epoch, and once a timezone offset pushed the value below zero, a service buried in iOS tripped over the negative time and hung forever on the boot screen. Catch the underflow before the counter slides back past 1970.