blog.area51.org

Hear that sound? The wind in the trees? The deafening silence?

That’s the media blackout on the huge telecommunications service outage that hit the U.S. last Thursday.

You know, the one where no one could use landline phones for an extended period of time (estimates vary from minutes to hours), apparently starting at 7:20 PM EDT/4:20 PM PDT. Where dialed numbers were greeted with “this number does not exist” or “all circuits are busy” or “that number cannot be reached”. Where cell phones told their users “emergency calls only.” Where there was no explanation.

Oh, and in case I forget to point out: all this happened mere hours before the London spooks took out that bomb, and before the truck-bomb hit the Glasgow airport. I’m not necessarily saying the two are connected, but when you combine terror attacks with a mysterious outage of a major utility that affects millions of people — I’m just saying we can’t rule it out.

So I have a question: do you know anything?

I ask because there isn’t an iota of information available. Nothing on the net. No one is blogging it. Our calls to AT&T and other service providers were fruitless; no one was able to comment “at this time”. At one point, AT&T seemed to deny the event even occurred. The Department of Homeland Security, as expected, had no information it could provide “at this time”. There is zero mention on the massive outage available on the DHS website.

On January 15, 1990, telephones across the U.S. were useless for the better part of a day, all due to a tiny but deadly bug in the phone network. That made the news. But then again, that was 11 years before 9/11.

So we’re left to speculate:

• Maybe the terrorists hit us with a physical attack, knocking out enough phone switches to interrupt service for hours.
• Perhaps, even more frighteningly, cyber-terrorists hit our phone switches with an attack via the Internet or a private network.
• Or maybe it’s FEMA, “testing” something. I say this because an Associated Press story on June 26 reported: “Radio listeners and television viewers across Illinois got some unexpected −− and unexplained −− interruptions Tuesday morning, June 26. Tones from the Emergency Alert System were inadvertently broadcast on radio and TV stations, sporadically interrupting programming. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says in a statement it is installing a new satellite warning system and that the tones were part of a test.” In other words: they’re screwing around with our communications systems. Maybe they screwed around just a little more.

If you think I’m reaching: maybe I am. But when there’s a total news blackout, you’re forced to speculate.

If you know anything at all about this huge outage, leave a comment, or email us at reports |at| area51.org.

• Farmer Bill said:
  July 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm |
  

  Don, I think this was a case of a freak accident, not terrorists.

  Let me tell you why:

  I raise squirrels for a living on a farm outside Joliet, Illinois. You may not be aware of this, but Lithuania and Belgium have a HUGE market for squirrel meats. It is an impressively lucrative business, let me tell you.

  Anyway, two of my best studs, Nuts and Tweeter, got loose outta their cages. You may not think homosexual behavior exists in the animal (non-human) world, but let me tell you, Don, it DOES. N and T were going at it something awful when my riding mower clipped off the top of Nuts’ tail.

  Those darn things got so startled, they ran up a nearby telephone pole and gnawed through a line! Believe it!

  Poor Nuts was thrown fifty feet off the pole, and the line came crashing down to earth. Needless to say, telecommunications activity in Northeast Illinois was fucked up something awful that day.

  R.I.P., Nuts. We all miss ya.

  
  
• codenamesheba said:
  July 2nd, 2007 at 6:47 pm |
  

  Thank you for your comment; I am sorry for your loss. That goes a long way toward explaining the landline outage.

  To wit:

  “Squirrels are often the cause of electricity outages. The animals will enter transformers or capacitors looking for food. The squirrels are then electrocuted and cause a power surge that short-circuits equipment. Squirrels have brought down the high-tech NASDAQ stock market twice and were responsible for a spate of power outages at the University of Alabama [1]. They will often chew on tree branches to sharpen their teeth but cannot tell the difference between a tree branch and a live power line. Rubber plates are sometimes used to prevent access to these facilities.

  Squirrels caused 177 power outages in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1980, which was 24% of all outages. Estimated annual costs were $23,364 for repairs, public relations, and lost revenue. In Omaha, in 1985, squirrels caused 332 outages costing at least $47,144. After squirrel guards were installed over pole-mounted transformers in Lincoln in 1985, annual costs were reduced 78% to $5,148. [2] – Wikipedia

  Unfortunately, that doesn’t suggest a reason for the cellular blackout.

  As for the gay animals, I’d venture to ask whether or not your squirrels are of British origin. There seems to be a spate of homosexual activity amongst English birds.

  Thanks again for your comment, Bill. Sign me up for some of that squirrel meat. The rattlesnakes here are getting tough. You anywhere near Olney? I’d like to try some of that albino squirrel.

  Sheba out.

  
  
• Farmer Bill said:
  July 3rd, 2007 at 1:59 pm |
  

  Sheba – you (much like Princess Diana and Pamela Anderson) are a queen of my heart.

  My buddies kept telling me there was no way Nuts could have caused the telecom nightmare, so thanks for backing up my theory. Thanks, too, for your kind words about Nuts.

  Actually, funny thing about Nuts. I had a dream last night that I was bowling with Dick Cheney and Ann Landers when all of a sudden the 10 pin turned into Nuts’ tail. I woke up screaming and covered in balls of sweat. Scared Tweeter half to death…he’s been bunking with me after Nuts passed.

  Sheba, I cannot explain the cellular outage, so I best chalkk that one up to Mr. Alfred A. Queda, better known as Al Queda.

  Ta ta for now.