"Server Busy - We'll back soon, don't panic!"
That was the last message ever returned from a GLP server on the Internet. I read it at 12:43pm, CMT on a Friday.

I had just finished reading about Chinese hack attacks on US cyber infrastructure, Janet Napolitano's shrill warnings about an impending "Cyber 9/11", and yet another call from the Obama White House for absolute control of the Internet in the form of an "Internet kill switch" to save us from “terrorists”.

I think Cyber 9/11 happened on that day. And I'm not ashamed to say I'm scared. I'm writing this on a word processor and saving it to a local file on my laptop, because all Internet access is down. No GLP, no Google, no Facebook, no email. I can't even get DHCP from my ISP. That was 6 days ago. I guess I’m hoping the ‘net comes back up so I can blog this. Hoping, praying…

At least cellphone networks stayed up for while longer. But just voice and SMS, no Internet data access. The last SMS I got was a Geomagnetic Storm Warning from spaceweather.com. It was K-index 5, which isn’t a big deal. Then it went to a K-index of 6, then 7. I talked to my parents in Kansas, and asked them how they were doing. They don’t have Internet access, so nothing seemed out of place to them. That was 3 days ago.

This morning, the radio and TV networks switched over to the EBS, multi-tone test pattern and everything. But no announcement was forthcoming. So we’re in some emergency, deaf and blind, and nobody is telling us what it is. Was a North Korean air burst nuke EMP attack? A new Carrington Event? Chinese cyber first strike? A barrage of meteors? What’s going on?

The silence and not knowing, that’s the worst part.
Actually, that’s not the worst part.
The power just went out...


(Entry #1)